Trump

The media throw fits every time president Biden stutters, stumbles or makes embellishments during a speech.

But what about Donald Trump? Biden may spin some yarns but Trump sounds like a raving lunatic during his rallies.

The New York Times just ran a piece about the president’s tall tales.

On June 9 in sweltering Las Vegas, Trump rambled on about how heavy batteries would sink electric-powered boats, leaving the passengers with the choice of being eaten by sharks or getting zapped by the electric currents flowing through the waters around the sunken vessel.

“Do I stay on top of the board and get electrocuted, or do I jump over the shark and not get electrocuted,” said the likely Republican nominee for president. He told the audience that he would choose electrocution every single time because he’s not getting near any sharks.

Did his brain get fried by the boiling sun? The battery, sinking boat, shark, electrocution nonsense is a story from a madman.

The media have got to stop its “just Trump being Trump” attitude and warn the country about the 77-year-old’s feeble mental state.

Get ready for the trillion-dollar advertising market. WPP’s GroupM has just upped its 2024 growth target for advertising from 5.3 percent to 7.8 percent, and projects the trillion dollar mark will occur in 2025, rather than its earlier forecast for 2026.

Ad revenues will reach the $989.8B mark in 2024 and $1.1T next year, according to GroupM.

What’s remarkable about the GroupM forecast? Its prediction does not include political advertising.

eMarketer predicts political advertising will hit the $12.3B mark in 2024, which is up 29 percent from 2020. Television ads will account for about 72 percent of the political spending, which is great news for CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox News, CNN and MSNBC.

GroupM says the “great economic engines” of the US and China will drive growth in advertising. Those countries account for 57.1 percent of global ad revenues.

Increased globalization of financial systems, commerce and media also bodes well for advertising, according to GroupM. Those interconnected systems are suited to adapt to changing marketing conditions, and deal with local political shocks that may occur in various countries.

There are two wildcards in AdLand's rosy scenario.

Artificial intelligence and China. Will governments move to reel in AI development and growth? The implementation of over-the-top regulations could kill AI, which is AdLand’s potential golden goose.

A Chinese invasion of Taiwan also would crash the advertising party.

NYC makes wind power move…Norway’s Equinor broke ground on June 10 for the construction of a wind power turbine assembly site at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal.

The Sunset Park facility will support Equinor’s first US offshore wind project, Empire Wind 1, which will be located 15 to 30 miles southwest of Long Island. The 54-turbine project will power the homes of 500K New Yorkers when completed in 2026.

The Sunset Park operation will feature an onshore substation to connect 810 MW of wind power to a Gowanus substation, making Empire Wind 1 the first offshore wind project to connect directly into the New York City grid.

Kudos to Equinor for helping to restore Brooklyn’s historic waterfront, and for generating about 1,000 jobs in the low-income Sunset Park community.