It’s our biggest loser program. And the “winner” is…
CARBONITE!
Here’s the first half of the story, pointing out that it’s all right for Ed Schultz to call a conservative woman a slut, but Rush Limbaugh is evil for calling a liberal woman a slut:
Carbonite Drops Ads from Rush Limbaugh but Not Ed Schultz?
Sunday, March 04, 2012 11:04The recent manufactured flap by the mainstream media had a new entrant recently. Carbonite, a company that provides online backup support and apparently hasn’t heard of DropBox, released a statement declaring the end of their sponsorship of the Rush Limbaugh Show following remarks by Rush in which he questioned the definition of the word “slut” as a result of recent testimony by feminist and world’s worst contraception shopper, Sandra Fluke.
CEO of Carbonite, David Friend, had this to say yesterday evening following an apology from Rush:
No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady. Mr. Limbaugh, with his highly personal attacks on Miss Fluke, overstepped any reasonable bounds of decency. Even though Mr. Limbaugh has now issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising from his show. We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse.
His contention that her decision to go on national television to talk about her sex life expenses is “courageous” aside, these are bold words from a man who clearly is attaching no ideology to the matter. Right? RIGHT? Well, that’s come into question by some. And by some I mean me.
You see, Carbonite is also the sponsor for a radio show you probably have not heard of, The Ed Schultz Show. Ed Schultz made a similar remark to Rush’s although his was less a question about the usage of the word (as it was for Rush) and more him just screaming that Laura Ingraham is a “right wing slut.”
But you know what they’re talking about? Like this right wing slut. What’s her name Laura Ingraham? Yeah, she’s a talk slut…
Now I wonder why Friend’s daughters don’t’ come to mind here? Could this be a publicity stunt? Could they just be dropping sponsorship of Rush in an effort to gain some exposure to help their company get new customers? Because let’s face it, they’ll get more exposure from dropping Rush then they’ll ever get from keeping Shultz. And they could probably use it given that companies like DropBox have moved forward into advanced cloud backups and access while Carbonite seems hopelessly invested in remaining in the year 2006, but I digress.
I asked them on twitter and on FaceBook why the difference in treatment and so far haven’t gotten a reply.
In the twitter verse, fellow non-Carbonite user Amish Dude pointed me to one possible reason.
What’s this you ask? Oh, that’s a donation to Barack Obama’s campaign courtesy of OpenSecrets.org.
It’s all starting to make sense now isn’t it? He doesn’t mind Schultz because he agrees with him.
Enjoy obscurity Mr. Friend. I’m sure the trade of 20 million listeners vs 2 million listeners will be looked at as a super duper decision at your next shareholders meeting.
So that was late last week (Saturday) after the markets closed. And then the markets opened and rewarded Carbonite for its heroic stand for its liberal ideology:
March 6, 2012 1:21 PM
Nasdaq stocks posting largest percentage decreasesNEW YORK — A look at the 10 biggest percentage decliners on Nasdaq at 1 p.m.:
Oncothyreon Inc. fell 39.8 percent to $5.06.
Zeltiq Aesthetics Inc. fell 30.2 percent to $7.75.
US Home Systems Inc. fell 13.5 percent to $10.53.
Aegerion Pharmaceuticals Inc. fell 12.8 percent to $15.21.
Nutri System Inc. fell 10.7 percent to $10.61.
Rigel Pharmaceuticals Inc. fell 10.0 percent to $8.74.
Gentiva Health Services Inc. fell 9.5 percent to $6.77.
LCA-Vision Inc. fell 9.5 percent to $6.57.
Burcon NutraScience Corp. fell 8.6 percent to $7.15.
Carbonite Inc. fell 8.5 percent to $8.37.
Carbonite won’t be seeing any business from me, either. There are better outfits that DON’T insult my values to do business with out there these days.
Historically it’s only been the left that punished people with boycotts, because liberalism is fascism and fascists like to punish their victims.
I think it’s high time we borrow as many pages from the left’s playbook as we need to “Do Unto Obama As Liberals Did Unto Bush” and start punishing the crony capitalist corporations that cravenly cave to Obama.
Tags: Carbonite, donor, Ed Schultz, Fluke, Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, slut, sponsor
Start Thinking Right 
March 13, 2012 at 7:52 am
CARBONITE, R.I.P.
With respect to high-profile Limbaugh-boycotter Carbonite, the company is doing consumers a public service by going silent — because its 2011 Annual Report shows that NASDAQ:CARB is a dinosaur dot-com disaster that has vaporized a whopping $100 million since 2005 and is bleeding out to the tune of additional $2 million each and every month!
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1340127/000119312512101462/d277280d10k.htm
Carbonite CEO (and Limbaugh-critic) David Friend is thus being paid $500,000 per year to manage the loss of $500,000 per week!
That is insane! (Except perhaps here in spendaholic Washington, DC.)
Carbonite advertises promiscuously on 40 talk-radio shows but because Friend publicly lectured Limbaugh, his company has been spotlighted to reveal a turkey wearing an eagle costume.
Indeed, WSJ MarketWatch’s Chuck Jaffe quickly branded Carbonite the “Stupid Investment of the Week”:
http://articles.marketwatch.com/2012-03-09/investing/31138659_1_share-market-small-firms
Here is the bad news that investors have learned about Carbonite since the company posted its dismal financials on the SEC website last summer in preparation for a murky IPO:
At the time of its IPO, Carbonite was down to six months’ cash in the bank after $88 million of losses. (Now, thanks to public investment, it has 30 months of cash in the bank after $100 million of losses.)
Nevertheless, Carbonite is on the fast-track to insolvency.
In two+ years it will necessarily either be shut down or liquidated by acquisition because Carbonite has simply never been managed as a “going concern.”
Instead its executives and insiders appear to have enriched themselves for seven long years while losing mass quantities of other-people’s-money.
For example, on 8 Mar 2012 at the height of the Limbaugh controversy, Carbonite’s management picked investors’ pockets by conjuring up 1,005,493 shares of stock out of thin air, to be “offered to employees in employee benefit plans:”
“Options, restricted stock, and all other stock-based and cash-based awards may be granted to individuals who are then our officers, employees, directors, or consultants or are the officers, employees, directors, or consultants of certain of our subsidiaries. Such awards also may be granted to our directors. Only executive officers and employees may be granted incentive stock options, or ISOs.”
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1340127/000119312512103879/d309137ds8.htm
Understandably, Carbonite’s newly-minted stock is steadily ski-sloping down toward the $2-$3 range that represents last summer’s IPO loot.
http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/carb/stock-chart
Carbonite long ago missed its window-of-opportunity to profitably dominate the online backup marketplace. It is now surrounded and underpriced by nimble competitors who have read and understood Rob Cosgrove’s definitive how-to book:
There is thus ‘no way out’ for this money-losing company … and no reason for investors to buy its stock unless they are looking for a tax write-off.
Limbaugh’s audience is clearly better off NOT using Carbonite’s service or investing in its stock because the company’s now-public financials depict an Internet throwback that is destined to become another “spectacular dot-com flameout” — of the sort so mercilessly mocked on F’dCompany.com a decade ago. (Remember “Flooz” currency?!)
Ironically Carbonite has done the public a huge service by withdrawing its advertising from Limbaugh’s show – but not the sort of service imagined by its clueless kamikaze CEO David Friend whose personal politics have greatly steepened Carbonite’s glide path to an inevitable fiery crash landing.
Concluding the metaphors, this Turkey is Toast!
Carbonite will be gone, with or without Limbaugh advertising, and his listeners are better off without it.
March 13, 2012 at 12:15 pm
Eliot Ness,
Thanks for all that research.
It gives you the sense of what liberalism is all about: a gigantic failure that depends on successive “jump the shark moments” just to keep from completely crashing.
Carbonite probably signed with Rush just waiting for the chance to abandon him and demonize him hoping it would lead to an increase in sales from liberals for whom such betrayal and conniving amounts to “virtue.”
I sure wouldn’t spend a penny to support them after what they did.