Category Archives: Uncategorized

Have had a stomach ache for days now, and Thanksgiving dinner gives me a great opportunity to bellyache about it and chalk it up to being s-o-o full.  It’s the kind of thing where  full and hungry and grouchy all at once, but fear not — I suspect the grouchiness is a pre-existing condition.

Anyway, it’s probably nothing a little coffee and a sammich won’t take care of.

I ran into a couple of people at the Black Friday sale, once I did wrest my bad self off the couch for the last time. Good stuff.  I was just … Continue reading →

The history of the Thanksgiving Holiday is complicated, but the intent is not. Here is part of the story.

My favorite line?

…to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them…

I just had a whopping Thanksgiving dinner at the swankmost US joint in Tokyo, the New Sanno Hotel.  Wife and son and I took another little guy who has been my son’s friend since they were just peas in a pod at the day care.  Also ran into some friends.  This year, I have much to be thankful for.  Kind of like every year.

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Back when things first started going in the primaries, I was a fan of Cruz. I even thought he put up a good fight for much of the race. However, the convention speech really turned me off. I thought Trump was very magnanimous in allowing rivals stage time. IIRC Romney was nowhere near that forgiving (think Ron Paul).

So where is Ted now?  Does he have a political future or has he burned all his bridges?  What do people think of him as a Supreme Court Justice?

In all the hoopala about Trump, I’m curious if Cruz is still a name to be reckoned with – in any capacity.

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Not talking football here, or political posturing. I’m talking 2A! The ultimate defense. The last of the “boxes” – soap, ballot, cartridge.

So here’s a longish article by a guy who once made his living teaching self-defense, aimed at all the “liberals” who now are “terrified”. You will find humour in it, and some good advise if you aren’t already a “gun-totin’ heavy”. My personal favorite was the “LGBTWTFBBQ”.

A Handy Guide For Liberals Who Are Suddenly Interested In Gun Ownership

Witness the power of this fully operational Congressional Oversight Committee:

There is a cry on the right for a rapprochement, a “healing” and a “coming together”, a “moving forward” between the NeverTrump termites on one hand, and decent, upstanding conservatives on the other, although not everybody phrases it exactly so.  The usual caveats apply, and I am pretty sure you can see where I stand on the business — I’m agin’ it.  This is not mere bitterness, although I cop to that, and not mere orenreiness, which I will confess to, nor mere score-settling, although … you get the point.  Plenty of poor adjectives may be applied to my refusal to entertain this nonsense, and I have never shied away from the use of poor adjectives, except to enrich them.

There is a reason that the NeverTrump divide … Continue reading →

Greta’s old place on Fox News has been temporarily covered by Brit Hume, a gentleman I admire for his honesty. No party BS there. But now we have a permanent replacement – Tucker Carlson.

I first noticed Tucker a while back when he showed up on some weekend shows. From there he went to the morning show where he was one of 3. His one characteristic, though, seemed to be a willingness to voice conservative positions and to ask tough questions. It must have made an impression somewhere because they just gave him the 7P EST slot.

I’ve watched his show a couple times this week, and so far I like it. He seems a friendly guy who asks more in-depth questions than one usually finds on TV.

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Donald Trump has done many things, and one of them is to scramble the customer segments for political websites and messaging. As the dust settles after the election, I needed to re-assemble my mental model of the customers of political messages.

When I work with a business owner, a critical component is a map of their customers.  Most owners   work through the exercise  and emerge with a different view of their business.

It is a simple grouping of the groups of customers you want to attract with distinct differences. It serves as a guide to what you offer , how you offer it and to what emotional need they have.

I am going to throw out for your review and comment my rough breakdown of the market for political ideas, … Continue reading →

It’s a nice car.  Oldish Honda Odyssey, the Japanese version, smaller than you think.  More like an Accord wagon.

I’m doing shift work now, in a good way.  It also gives me the odd days off at home, but today was dedicated to sleep.  Ahhhh, sleep.  Mmmm, good good sleep.

An article in Michael Booberg’s outfit uses classic sales tactics to propagandize the meaning of the word “Populism”.

When you first encounter the word “populism,” you might think it’s a close cousin of democracy, with all the positive connotations that go along with it. And for some, it may well seem a purer form of a process by which politicians harness the will of the majority.
But that’s only part of the picture. Populism—ostensibly a belief in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people—often requires a bogeyman, be it an existing government, the supposed cultural elite, the media, or a particular ethnic, racial, or religious group.

Let’s take that in parts, shall we? In the first paragraph, there’s the obvious trap that you (according … Continue reading →