Mobile Marketing: How Smart Phones Muddy Waters

“Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.” - American Marketing Association (2004)

The term "mobile marketing" has been used widely, but as mobile device technology continues to evolve, its meaning becomes less and less clear. As early as 2004, when it became obvious that consumers were embracing smart phones, academia was beginning to question(pdf) whether or not the term mobile marketing would retain any meaning over the long term.

With the introduction of smart phones, there has been a divergence in the use of the term. Before smartphones were available, it was generally limited to include text message advertising but even so, falls well short of describing what actually occurs when SMS messaging is used to market a product or service.

After smartphones became available, the term became even less clear. Its use now includes the smartphones themselves, the operating systems and applications available to smart phone owners. Indeed, if you read 10 articles about mobile marketing you may find that only 1 or 2 refer to the same subject matter. This is bad news for industry advocates and those seeking to introduce their brand via cell phones.

To make matters even more confusing, if one were to judge by the sheer volume of news stories and blog articles about smart phones, one could easily come to the conclusion that there are far more smart phones in use than there are in reality.

For firms interested in finding out about mobile marketing, the lack of clarity can be a source of confusion. A simple inquiry can raise more questions than it answers. Just what is mobile marketing? How does my company get involved? What type of campaign will result in the greatest ROI?

Forget The Hype, For Now

In spite of (or perhaps because of) the iPhone hype, Apple announced at the recent MacWorld expo that it, so far, sold 4 million units . Let's put this into perspective. It is estimated that as of 2007 over half of the world's population has a cellphone, or roughly 3.3 billion cell phones in use. The iPhone will definitely expand its market share, but it only represents a little over 1% of the total market at this time. The RIM Blackberry is now in the hands of about 12 million which represents a higher market share but still only about 3% of the total market.

Depending on your business this may not discourage you from targeting smartphone users exclusively, but most businesses do not have the luxury of such exclusivity.

The vast majority of cell phone users own a device which can only make calls and send and receive text messages.

SMS Is Still King

Even smartphones have embraced SMS by introducing qwerty keyboards in some form or another. SMS messaging, or "texting" is not declining with the introduction of smartphones but continues to increase at a rate faster than email rates. 97% of all phones in the US have SMS capabilities and 50% have browsers.

Clearly, based on the available data, marketing to cell phone users via text messaging and WAP/browser represents the largest potential audience.

Convenient Interaction

Marketing to Mobile (M2M) using SMS has netted companies something they have never been able to accomplish using traditional media advertising. In the strictest sense of the word, SMS campaigns go far beyond advertising.

Traditional advertising campaigns represent a constant source of missed opportunities. Since most media campaigns are targeted in publications or shows to which a particular demographic audience has access, the advertiser relies on repetition in order to embed his brand in the consumer's memory.

With SMS, the advertiser has an opportunity to put the brand right in the customer's hand at the earliest opportunity. In addition, because SMS campaigns are able to deliver contextual information based on the customer's input, there are no missed opportunities. The consumer is engaged from the moment of his first response. Advertising campaigns are transformed from a perpetual missed opportunity to a marketing opportunity.

How SMS Marketing Changes the Game

Consider the most famous mobile marketing campaign apart from the Obama campaign, American Idol. AT&T recently announced that the American Idol SMS voting campaign shattered all previous records and generated a staggering 78 Million SMS messages during the last season.

Fox used SMS messaging to give viewers a way to interact with their programming. In this particular case, viewers could vote for their favorite contestant. This engagement has boosted the show's ratings to the number one show on television among several demographic splits.

Fox Sports allows users to also use texting to interact with live talk-show broadcasts by voting or even sending in comments. Jim Rome now reads almost as many "text hits" on his show as he does emails. Allowing customers to interact has been a boost to the brands that have adopted interaction. The rise of talk-radio can be attributed to its interactive nature.

Obviously, talk-radio and television represent a small minority of businesses. However, SMS offers business a unique opportunity to become interactive with its customer base and it can do so without having to hire a 24/7 call center staff to make this happen.

Recruiting and SMS Marketing

So, how can companies take advantage of SMS marketing? One approach is to use SMS as a business automation platform for recruiting. It especially makes sense for companies seeking to fill hourly positions.

There are approximately 76 Million hourly workers in the US. Retail, food service and hospitality turnover rates are anywhere between 100-130%. The business costs of filling these positions - planning, advertising, screening interviewing - are hard to quantify but are significant nonetheless. SMS marketing offers a unique way to reach potential employees while significantly reducing the cost of providing information back to applicants. Coupled with mobile web sites which deliver standardized job applications and contact forms, SMS becomes a very powerful medium with which to recruit and track applicants.

It also offers a sales channel that you may not have considered: your own customers. If you have a public establishment, your customers could be one of your best marketing channels. Parents with college-age sons and daughters looking for work can easily forward your recruiting text message to them. Virtually any shopper who knows somebody looking for work or who frequents an establishment is a potential marketing channel.

SMS' viral nature cannot be overstated. It is the ultimate in social media as it doesn't require special software or hardware that isn't already available on almost all of the cell phones that your customers possess.

While there may be opportunities for companies to market to customers using targeted to the variety of smart phone operating systems, it will be quite a while before this provides a significant return on investment.

Will the browser die?

I think so. I haven't looked to see who else agrees with this but in looking at Twitter's API and the number of clients that have sprung up, I am certain that we will soon see the browser's demise - for the most part. I imagine that there will be some use for browsers but specialization appears to be on the rise.

TweetDeck and Twhirl are specific to twitter but look also at "Spotify" - similar to itunes - which opts for a specialized client rather than a browser interface.

This may seem counter-intuitive. Who wants to run 5 applications in order to get access to web apps? The problem is that HTML over httpd is so limiting and challenging to engineering teams, that it actually may make sense to spend time supplying clients that work on different platforms rather than wading through css hell just to make an app look and act the same for the variety of browsers available.

What may end up driving a move to specialized client development is smart-phone adoption. If you think the time and effort required to deal with IE vs Firefox is bad, try developing an app that works well on a mobile browser. With most of the 2.0 applications making heavy use of image buttons, javascript and CSS - which is spotty at best on a mobile browser, it makes little sense to spend time on such efforts until mobile browsers evolve. But why do it at all when you could simply develop an app native to the mobile device that does the same thing without having to deal with css or javascript?

This translates well to the PC. With broadband access becoming ubiquitous, we may see the end of the stateless web app. Really, the only thing preventing stateful apps from being developed was the HPPD protocol - which insists that everything delivered over the internet be ASCII - and the limited bandwidth available on the internet. That is obviously changing rapidly and broadband cell networks such as 3G and the smartphones which connect to them are pushing us closer and closer to a time when the browser may be a dinosaur rotting in the La Brea tar pits right beside the 56k modem.

Classic

Somebody sent this to me via email. Love it.

Twitter Experiment Part part Deux: Where is this all going?

Somebody retweeted my twitter experiment article today and I thought I might offer up an update. Since I've been using twitter as @guykawasaki mentors, I have made mistakes, learned from them, made more mistakes and realize just how patient people can be.

For one, in my last piece, I totally failed to include anywhere in my post what my twitter user is. (@rfisk). Marketing idiocy #1.

If you share something and somebody finds it valuable, an absence of contact information is a failure of epic proportions - Homerus Marketeblus - 654 B.C

That aside, I have been thinking about social marketing in general and twitter specifically. I believe that the web as we know it will disappear within the next 5 years, and twitter is the canary in the coal mine. In this case though, it only spells tragedy for people and companies who do not take a closer look at what twitter has done here.

Note: I've never set foot in a college but for an electronics class back in the mid 80's. You need to know that because I am not going to write here from an academic point of view but from personal experience. Sometimes personal experience is very useful and sometimes it can be wrong due to personal bias. I do not suggest I am a social marketing expert. I'm not even a marketing expert. I do however have some relevant experience which has provided me some insight I think you might find interesting.

That being said, I have been working in software and specifically delivering Software as a Service, since the mid 90s. I wrote one of the first on-line ordering CGI sites back in 1993 before anyone trusted their credit cards to an online provider. We sold Porsche parts, and the "shopping cart" - if it could be called that - simply provided a printable form. I wrote it in Perl.

My day gigs were mostly working as a system administrator for some very large companies and I did a 5 year stint in a start-up that eventually failed. I was not in the founder's circle for that endeavor. It was a hardware company that competed with Sun Microsystems called Auspex Systems. The founder was the man who invented SCSI, Larry Boucher. Their file servers are revered even to this day by SA geeks but Auspex made some very poor business choices and finally declared bankruptcy. Most of their technical expertise abandoned ship to start Network Appliances. I went to Lycos to help manage their ad delivery network, and then Cisco to write software for SA's.

Five years ago, I went to work for Hire.com (now Authoria) and after some wonderful experiences there, decided to take the start-up plunge.

In my 20+ years working in Silicon Valley and now Austin, I've seen so much change in technology and business practice it boggles my mind. When I landed my first entry-level job in 1986, Apple had recently introduced the little Macintosh. And I mean little. It had a tiny vacuum tube screen in monochrome. Some of the major Silicon Valley companies were Wang, Control Data Systems (though not headquartered in SV) Sun, Apollo, HP (Silicon Graphics was just in start-up mode), Xerox, DEC, Intel and Apple.

There was no internet even close to what we see today. The browser wouldn't be invented for another 5 years. Email was literally slower in most cases than post-office mail. Really. UUCP delivered mail from one mainframe or VAX machine via modem and to save on long-distance phone charges, would dial a machine and tell it to please call the next in line so the email could arrive 3000 miles away having never made anything other than a local call.

This isn't to say that LANs were as archaic. Sendmail existed but it's goodness was limited to the LAN. If you wanted to send to somebody in Boston (only high-tech or government employees even had an email address as we know it now) you had to find a map of the machine names between you and your colleague or acquaintance. (dec-vax2.stanford.edu!dec-vax2.declassified.garble.gov!xxx-xxx-fred.edu!). It was a pain. No open ports. But there was porn even then and very creative ways were invented to encrypt and compress it into ASCII so it could be posted to USENET. Some things never change.

This may end up a bit long but Please bear with me.

Wang

Wang probably had one of the largest advertising budgets I can remember in the late 80's. They had ads on every radio station in the Bay Area. Wang sold proprietary computer systems that included their own proprietary network protocols. Their business model was to essentially to offer a good network and lock companies into buying all of the peripherals they manufactured which could connect using those proprietary protocols; printers, tape storage, etc.

This model was not unique. Apple also had their own network protocols. Network standardization was 5-10 years away. Apple and Novel were the last holdouts.

Wang went belly up shortly after DNS became a real hit and the backbone was converted to TCP/IP rather than modem. It happened very quickly because their competitors were already adopting TCP/IP for internal LANs where Wang resisted. They didn't adapt.

Innovation by Accident.

Part of that story must include ethernet. Ethernet was invented at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. Xerox didn't think it was a profitable invention and gave it away. You should thank Xerox on every possible occasion. It changed the world even though their management (I'm sure the inventors didn't agree) didn't believe it was terribly useful.

I call this "innovation by accident" not because the inventors just stumbled upon it, but because the useful innovation occurred after the fact. A tool's potential was not realized until it was delivered to a large number of people who turned it this way and that in their minds and started creating incredible possibilities with it.

Twitter
Of all the social networking ideas which have been brought to fruition, I think twitter has the most potential as a game-changer. My reasoning around this has to do with the size - 140 ASCII characters. That is just under the 160 allowed by SMS text on a cell phone - another accidental innovation which allowed carriers to notify you of a waiting voice mail message. Hint to Twitter - this leaves 20 chars for advertising.

Twitter wasn't the first to see potential in SMS. Other companies have used SMS for years as a means to market to consumers. However, Twitter is the first web-based application so far that could potentially eliminate the browser as a web standard.

Why?

1. Its simplicity. Twitter is similar to Google search in its simplicity. It's easy to use and its utility is as limitless as are other simple tools like a hammer or screwdriver. Anyone can learn its basic use in minutes. The downfall (in my opinion) of many other social networking apps is their complexity and dependence on the browser over the long term.

2. Hosting costs.
A huge advantage that twitter will have over say, Facebook is just the sheer resource drain that desktop video and images are when building a storage and delivery system.

3. The API.
Twitter's real utility can be found through the API. Twitter in fact is far easier to manage when used from one of the down-loadable non-browser applications that have been springing up.

I believe that eventually we won't be using browsers to connect to the internet. Over the past 15 years, the web evolved from html pages made "exciing" using <blink> tags - to amazing css tricks - to web 2.0 which is itself merely an attempt to get around limitations of the browser and the http protocol which demands that everything delivered be converted to ASCII. Ajax was created to simulate the way that desktop client applications acted.

But that's just the technical side. Twitter is becoming the next accidental innovation on par with ethernet. It isn't just another social networking site, it's a twool. And its usefulness will only increase. Its developers had the decency to keep its interface simple. They didn't try to add features when follow/follower lists became unmanageable. They didn't fix what wasn't necessarily broke. By merely providing a robust API instead, they encouraged users and developers to bridge the gap. Witness the number of apps that have sprung up to slice and dice its data.

This is all development work that the Twitter team has not had to waste time inventing, planning, releasing, supporting and marketing - and potentially screwing up. Ultimately, they could buy the very companies who provided the useful applications having never burned any seed-money on ideas that weren't embraced by their users.

It's the opposite of the traditional acquisition strategy. Sure, companies like to buy startups that have a successful track record, but with software companies, they then have to integrate the technology into existing frameworks. In this case there's almost nothing to do but slap the twitter brand on it and it's a real twitter product.

One possible way to generate revenue is simply to deliver ads in the free version of a tool like TweetDeck and charge for versions which don't deliver ads.

Another revenue opportunity is an acquisition of smart phone application developer or product. At a dollar a download for an iPhone/Android/Palm follower/manager or other twitter niche product, the revenue potential is enormous over time. With companies and users flocking to twitter to market their brands and engage their customers, twitter clients could become company-wide expenditures and be far more effective an expense than traditional marketing channels.

The potential here for changing the world (twitter has already changed the world) beyond social networking is intense. Companies would be wise to follow what twitter has accomplished whether they intended to construct this new paradigm or not.

Though you and I may not be the next Cisco or Microsoft, we can also emulate this pattern because it has an underlying philosophy to match: Don't try and be something you are not.

By focusing on your strengths and building networks which include people with the skills you lack, you don't need to know everything or control every outcome. The old practice of hiding weaknesses or spinning them as strength will be turned on its head if it hasn't been turned already. People do figure it out. @perrybelcher has some extremely good videos explaining his vision of transparency and your social presence which illustrate this. Check him out and thanks for reading this. Your feedback is appreciated. @rfisk

Help a Brother Out

As you can see, I have been updating the template here and have lost some good links. If you used to be on my blog list and aren't anymore, I promise it's not a snub. I just screwed up when updating the template. Please either add a comment or send me an email and I'll add you back.

Creating Terror

I have a new article up at United Liberty, Creating Terror.

In the U.S. we cry out when our government rewards companies who manage their businesses poorly. But we don’t seem to have any problem giving out billions to governments that cannot manage their affairs or protect the rights of their citizens. But that is exactly what we are doing in the case of Israel and Palestine. It is Israel’s responsibility to secure its own peace. However, its actions make it quite clear that it wants nothing to do with peace. The same can be said of Hamas.

Both sides just suck and the people who live there are being punished.

Shades of Red

United Liberty published one of my articles. The neocons have descended on twitter thinking that enough technology will win elections.

Very few conservatives today seem to realize that the “strong defense” label applied to this Wilsonian/Trotskyite nonsense is just so much spin. Prior to 9/11, nation-building - U.N. doublespeak for aggressive invasion - was a reviled phrase in old-right circles. Once 9/11 occurred, it was acceptable to defend these same failed policies because the event “changed everything.” But, if 9/11 changed everything, why didn’t foreign policy change?

Because 9/11 didn’t change anything. 9/11 merely gave neoconservatives a ready-made excuse to further escalate. The constant threat of terrorism issued by neoconservative columnists alienated the anti-war faction of the GOP base, and convinced the mushy GOP moderates to support what they had so recently protested under Clinton. So much did they protest nation-building prior to 9/11, they elected a Republican as President who promised not to engage in it.

BEWARE: Twitter PHISHING SCAM hits users hard

At 4:52 I received a private message from a follower that read:

hey! check out this funny blog about you... http://jannawalitax.blogspot.com/

I clicked on the link and it redirected to http://twitter.access-logins.com/login/. I am pretty sure that the guy who "sent" it, was already a victim and whomever hijacked his account was the person who sent me the DM.

There's no problem clicking on the link, the problem is in being fooled into thinking you must login to twitter in order to see it. But it's not twitter and so some clever people (or not really that clever) ended up with an unknown number of twitter accounts in which to perpetuate the phony "blog about you" message.

What makes this so insidious is that DM's can only come from your "trusted" network. My belief is that the hackers were going to use this in order to create a SPAM network where they could advertise via DM.

There's not a lot of personal information stored in profiles so it doesn't seem likely that they had anything more sinister in mind.

Update III: Lots of people fell for this and the phisher is using new messages. I have received many since Saturday when I first posted this with this new message:

• fixed it.. hehe here is that blog i wanted to show you

The perpetrators are apparently from China:

Domain Name      : access-logins.com
PunnyCode        : access-logins.com


Registrant:
  Organization   : zhang xiaohu
  Name           : zhang xiaohu
  Address        : changningzhonghuainanlu192hao
  City           : changning
  Province/State : Hunan
  Country        : CN
  Postal Code    : 421500

Administrative Contact:
  Name           : zhang xiaohu
  Organization   : zhang xiaohu
  Address        : changningzhonghuainanlu192hao
  City           : changning
  Province/State : Hunan
  Country        : CN
  Postal Code    : 421500
  Phone Number   : 86-0734-3211451
  Fax            : 86-0734-3211451
  Email          : zhangxiaohu_0098@126.com

Technical Contact:
  Name           : zhang xiaohu
  Organization   : zhang xiaohu
  Address        : changningzhonghuainanlu192hao
  City           : changning
  Province/State : Hunan
  Country        : CN
  Postal Code    : 421500
  Phone Number   : 86-0734-3211451
  Fax            : 86-0734-3211451
  Email          : zhangxiaohu_0098@126.com

Billing Contact:
  Name           : zhang xiaohu
  Organization   : zhang xiaohu
  Address        : changningzhonghuainanlu192hao
  City           : changning
  Province/State : Hunan
  Country        : CN
  Postal Code    : 421500
  Phone Number   : 86-0734-3211451
  Fax            : 86-0734-3211451
  Email          : zhangxiaohu_0098@126.com

Be careful out there.....

Update: I've pulled the user names. Twitter is on the case.

Update II: I *think* I may have been the first to report this at exactly 17:00. Twitter tweeted about it at 17:19 CDT, added a warning on their homepage linking here

Just in Time for Christmas: Top 10 Ways to Spend your European Lottery Winnings

I just got this note which begins....

You have been awarded 750,000 Euros in the SWISS-LOTTO Satellite Software email lottery in which e-mail addresses are picked randomly by Software powered by the internet through the worldwide website.

Asking around a bit, I realized that so many of my online and offline acquaintances and friends have received similar winnings, we could probably do a lot of good for the world if we pooled them. But what to spend them on?

10. A Monogrammed golf bag with matching ankle bracelet for Bernard Madoff. (Club Fed)
9. Complete Set of econ literature for the Congress and Federal Reserve Board Chairmen.
8. Buy back the Federal Reserve for $500 Billion, eliminating the necessity of an Income Tax
7. Book a permanent vacation on a remote desert Island for Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson. Send Gilligan with them so they are never able to escape.
6. Buy a lifetime supply of nicotine patches for Obama (it's for the children)
5. Provide resume services for GM and Chrysler execs after their companies go bankrupt
4. Help widows in Nigeria transfer husbands fortunes into US accounts
3. Provide "Golden Chutzpah" awards for anyone on the Obama "investigatory" team clearing itself of any wrongdoing in the Blagojevich scandal.
2. Close down Washington for Cleaning until 2012 while the citizens fix the economy
1. Bring all of our soldiers home for Christmas (Hurry! only one more day!)

Twitterer relates his experience in Denver plane crash

Tonight on twitter, I saw the announcement that a plane had crashed at Denver International at least 20 minutes prior to any major news outlet covering the story. What was even more amazing, is that one of the passengers was a twitter user who was one degree away, allowing me to easily find and follow him. Here's the story you probably even now won't get on the major news. To read this properly you need to scroll down and read it from bottom to top. Note: This was his second experience crashing in an airliner....

• 2drinksbehind: @mjcarrasquillo this was on takeoff. I'm not sure, but I would speculate some type of mechanical failure.
  10 minutes ago · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation
• 
  2drinksbehind: fortunately, there didn't seem to be any life-threatening injuries
  16 minutes ago · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  2drinksbehind: there was a fire station nearby and that's where we all ended up right after the crash
  16 minutes ago · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  2drinksbehind: I made for the exit door as quickly as I could, fearing the right wing might explode from the fire. once out, i scrambled down the wing
  18 minutes ago · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  2drinksbehind: whoever was on the left side exit row, god bless him, was johnny on the spot and instantly had the door open - people crowded out in a mass
  19 minutes ago · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  2drinksbehind: by the time the plane stopped we were burning pretty well and I think I could feel the heat even through the bulkhead and window
  20 minutes ago · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  2drinksbehind: i believe it was after the jolt that the right engine, which was near my row, caught fire
  21 minutes ago · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  2drinksbehind: i think we might have gone into a ravine and dropped some distance as there was a sudden bottom-dropped-out feeling and then a jolt
  21 minutes ago · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  2drinksbehind: shortly after we veered off, the plane quite obviously left the runway at high speed (maybe 100 kts) and proceeded to go 4 wheel driving
  22 minutes ago · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  2drinksbehind: a 1st class passenger I talked to indicated he saw the left engine come off at the time, but it's unclear if this was a cause or an effect
  23 minutes ago · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  2drinksbehind: to all who've asked, it's hard to know exactly what went wrong -- we were in the middle of a normal takeoff when we suddely veered off
  24 minutes ago · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  2drinksbehind: Thanks for all the well wishes everyone. Sorry for the radio silence, but my battery died in the middle of all this and I just made it home
  29 minutes ago · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  2drinksbehind: You have your wits scared out of you, drag your butt out of a flaming ball of wreckage and you can't even get a vodka-tonic. Boo
  about 3 hours ago · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  2drinksbehind: Continental keeping us locked up at the presidents club until they can sort everything out. Won't even serve us drinks. :(
  about 4 hours ago · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  2drinksbehind: Can't see much, but that's the crash site. http://twitpic.com/ut2c
  about 5 hours ago · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  2drinksbehind: This was crash #2 for me. Maybe I should start taking the bus.
  about 6 hours ago · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  2drinksbehind: Ugh ... My glasses fell off in the mass exodus getting off the plane .. Can't see very well
  about 6 hours ago · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  2drinksbehind: Holy fucking shit I wasbjust in a plane crash!
  about 6 hours ago · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  2drinksbehind: I'm at Denver - http://bkite.com/037kb
  about 8 hours ago · Reply · View Tweet

The Twitter Experiment

Or:

Almost Everything I needed to know about Twitter I learned from Guy Kawasaki.

Back in March I signed up for twitter. I don't even remember why. It may have been that one of my business partners pinged me. At any rate, I am fairly sure my story isn't uncommon. In the beginning, the only followers I had were followers of whomever invited me.

I didn't know what to write. ("Hi...uh is this thing on? Testing 1,2,3"). Pretty sure my first tweet touted a press release describing a partnership our company had completed with Top Producer. I had maybe 3 active followers and didn't yet understand how twitter worked. The tweet landed on no ears. The announcement was terrific for the company but nothing happened inside the twitter domain revealing to me twitter's potential as a marketing tool.

Between infrequent following and people randomly following me, I had roughly 70 followers as of December 12, 2008, one week ago today. That was the day I started the twitter experiment.

Things happen fast on twitter. About 2 months ago, I started following Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki), the marketing guru over at AllTop and formerly at Apple. He's legendary among startup junkies and spends a great deal of time helping starry-eyed idiots like myself who walk away from perfectly good, paying jobs to create "something" while running up credit-card debt. Idiots, because we tend to go off and start building without any idea how we'll generate profit, funding or market our product once it is completed.

Yes, you may detect some self-effacement, but God bless the idiots because we sometimes figure it out in time to go to market with our "better mouse traps." Yes, far more fail than succeed, but I remember Alta Vista as the top search engine and never foresaw Google.

My fascination with Guy Kawasaki began when I found a video of a presentation he gave instructing budding entrepreneurs to keep their "pitch deck" to 10 slides. The 10/20/30 rule of Powerpoint was the first Guy Kawasaki piece I read. I may even have been directed to it via retweet. (Tip: retweeting, is a great way to help others. On some web discussion forums this is called "bumping". It keeps interesting information in the public eye and also credits the original tweeter. This can earn you an appreciative follower).

On accident, I went looking to see if any of my old high-school chums were on twitter which resulted in a thorough scanning of my gmail address book. From 8 or so followers I now had 40, some of whom were inactive, but some who were old workmates. Neat!

Then somebody retweeted Guy's How to Use Twitter as a Twool. Guy's advice was to follow some of the SMORES (Social Media [Wh] ORES), send @replies to give the impression that you know them and attract followers (and then follow them back). One of the contacts pulled in from my gmail account was Rob Kall(@robkall from OpEd News. I had written several articles for Lew Rockwell and posted at least one at Rob's last year so Rob was in my contact list. Rob posted to twitter a lot, promoting new articles published at OpEd News. But Rob wasn't alone. Some of my other contacts were quite prolific! My browser was inundated with tweets! Help, I'm in an aviary and I can't get out!

I suddenly doubted Guy's sanity. Two friends is quite enough thank you. I can't even think in here much less say anything that will be heard over the din.

I then went and visited Guy's profile page. The dude has over thirty thousand followers. No way. Why in the world would you want all of that noise? Maybe twitter wasn't for me. I quickly un-followed Rob and a couple of others to get some peace and quiet. Whew! I clearly didn't understand. Something was missing. How can you possibly follow that many people and have any sort of meaningful interaction?

After a bit of investigation I discovered I hadn't paid close enough attention to Guy's advice. To be fair to myself, there was a good deal of it. Guy and others manage the din using something other than a web browser. Twitter has an API. You can download clients which help you filter, search and categorize tweets. You are suddenly in control. Minimize the window and it still dutifully checks tweets for you. Later, you can scan what you have missed. It also provides a far more user friendly tweet interface than the browser. Icons make it easy to reply and direct message other users. More importantly, you don't need 9 different browser windows open just to format a better tweet.

Before I discovered my new favorite twool, TweetDeck, (it even runs on linux!) I was trying to tweet with tinyurl open in one tab, google in another, a freshly opened window containing an interesting story in another.... If you haven't figured it out yet, part of my personality curse is to do things the hard way.

What a joy tweeting could be! Not to sound like a plug for tweetdeck but, it offers several options for shortening urls, terrific search functionality which refreshes results at an interval you choose, and plenty of columns to categorize your tweets.

Now with some power in my hands, I went off to execute fully, the Guy Kawasaki way. Since our company, DriveBuy Technologies provides a mobile marketing platform for Realtors®, I decided I would start by following every agent, broker and mortgage professional I could find. Those are the people my company can help, especially in today's market.

I was taking actions I wouldn't have considered 3 weeks earlier. I was also encouraged by another twitterer who posted an article describing how dumb it is for employees not in the marketing department, to avoid marketing. I run the operations at DriveBuy - the hosting, deployments and I even code occasionally, so it never occurred to me until that tweet, that I was performing a disservice by refusing to involve myself in the marketing side of the business.

But I'm a political junkie and a cage-monkey. I couldn't transform myself into Joe-annoying-radio-announcer-phone-voice-guy. I'm still just me. Politically, I am closer to Murray Rothbard than Brack Obama. I would love to see the government's size reduced by 2/3 as that would give a better view into what government programs to keep or cut loose. That's just me. I do not begrudge anyone who doesn't agree, I just cannot keep my mouth shut or my fingers away from the keyboard if somebody mentions politics. To my surprise, there are other twitterers who either feel the same way, or are far more tolerant of contrary views than is promoted by the media. I was picking up followers in spite of my controversial opinions, and maybe even because of them.

Neat. But my main goal is to help the people I follow and who follow me. My life depends on it. Really. Guy Kawasaki led me to believe that I could change the world using twitter. When my partners and I started this company, that's what we intended. We wanted to bring mobile marketing into broad use by Realtors® across the country. We also wanted to feed our families and control our own destinies. We can't do that if we offer nothing of value to our customers.

By the third day, traffic to our website was heading upward though I had only added about 200 more followers and hadn't tweeted much about DriveBuy. I did discover that some of my followers were already customers. But I also started getting followers who weren't in real estate at all. Some were part of the #tcot group(Top Conservatives on Twitter), some were followers of followers and by Thursday, I had 500 followers from a start of around 70.

Sometimes creativity is overrated. Copying people who have found a success formula is far better than "figuring it out" by trial and error. Guy's power adapter story is a great example of Twitter's utility.

I'll try and remember to bring my power adapter on my next business trip, but knowing that I could get a loaner in a pinch, or that I could help somebody out is heartwarming. Maybe we're not alone. I mean, let's face it, the government is not going to turn this economy around and they won't be rushing out to do anything helpful next business trip (unless you consider an unsolicited full-cavity search helpful). They still haven't discovered, or admitted, that it was their policies which caused the crises. If there is any economic recovery it will be people like you and me who do all of the working and wealth creation, not Secretary Paulson and his treasury poppin' daddies. We'll fix the economy, we'll help each other figure out how, and we'll have a blast doing it.

I just wanted to share this and let you know that a newbie twitter can greatly increase followers and increase traffic while doing it. I followed Guy's advice, and it worked. I really appreciate advice that works. I've had enough bad advice to last a lifetime and frankly, most of that bad advice was given to me by me....

I'll be following you next.

PS @SandeepVizEdu turned Guy's presentation into a really neat animated slide show. Fun to watch and educational too.

PPS I am still learning. Two weeks after writing this my article was retweeted and an astute couple of tweeters wondered what my id was on twitter. Doh! @rfisk

Credit Suisse to Senior execs: 'YOU deal with these crap assets.'

Sheer genius.

Credit Suisse Group will pay senior executive bonuses with troublesome, illiquid assets, forcing employees to take on the risk that at least some of them put on the Swiss bank's books."

.... "While the solution we have come up with may not be ideal for everyone, we believe it strikes the appropriate balance among the interests of our employees, shareholders and regulators and helps position us well for 2009," a memo from CEO Brady Dougan and investment bank boss Paul Calello said.

When do we see Goldman Sachs or Citibank follow? Probably never but it doesn't hurt to wish.

Merry Christmas

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

The Big Three (via email)

Ron Paul is a Non-Starter

The GOP "leadership" is trying to regroup. But, at least according to what I'm seeing by posts to the twitter #TCOT group, they are still in major denial as to why they lost.

I had one #TCOT member tweet to me that Ron Paul was a non-starter. I have news for the phony conservatives who continue to suck up top celebrity rather than ideology: you are going to have to deal with us Ron Paul supporters.

Today, via one of the meetup groups I follow I received a wonderful post about RP supporters in Arizona.

Just wanted to let you all know that I was just elected treasurer in our district! Also, I was elected to State Committee! We had 9 people from our RP/Liberty group that were elected to State Committee!

We had about 30-33 people show up for voting out of 113 (I think) total---for district elections. There was an official slate presented and the RP "leader" drafted our proposed slate.

This was a surprise to the 'old guard'/insiders. The standing representative from our district stood up and scolded us for our lack of inclusion of all his ppl.... and named ppl that should have been elected. Well, he ranted so much that it did him a disservice! Our 'leader' was given time for rebuttal and she gave a stirring impromptu speech! I think that this is what swayed many people to vote for US! Also, the main thing was that the RP people had actively campaigned for a couple of district candidates and this spoke very loudly that we were there to actively contribute when we could support a candidate!

After her speech, many people came over to speak with her and this was the first time that bridges were formed. With a Dem. in office at the federal level, we can all focus on our common ground with each other. Besides, we have a majority in our state house and senate...and our governor will be Repub. (Napolitano is heading for H.S., which is good for us and BAD for the nation, i'm afraid.)

Our district chair wants to put us all to work, so we see an opportunity to network, educate, and influence!

I am really excited...just wanted to share.

Would love to know what's happening in all of your districts/states!

The Campaign for Liberty is alive and well. People really do crave liberty and the current GOP leadership still wants to defend Guantanamo, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, bailouts etc.

Some of the leadership's antics are almost funny. They are attempting to draft Mike Ditka for the Senate. WTF? When I asked what his "conservative" credentials were, I was told to look at his football accomplishments. In other words, "he doesn't have any, but he's famous!"

That's exactly the same mentality that is destroying the LP.

Just how scummy are neoconservatives?

Utterly and completely. Murderous pragmatists every one. And they love Obama. Change? Like hell.

Max Boot embracing Obama

David Brooks sucking up to Obama

Bill Kristol endorsing Obama's foreign policy

This isn't to say that merely being happy with Obama makes one scummy. What makes these filthy, lying bastards so scummy is that they are gleeful with Obama because he is validating their horrendous foreign policy in spite of the fact that he positioned himself as one who repudiated their beliefs prior to getting elected.

They not only possess unbridled glee that he has apparently flip-flopped, but that in spite of their complete and utter wrongness, they will still have jobs and can still look as if they have some credibility.

They possess utterly no conscience or ability to recognize their own errors.

He was wrong...

The next generation of medical "scientists" ignored the facts and have instead touted vaccination as one of the greatest advances in medical science.

He was not wrong about the absurdity of vaccination. It is a grotesque superstition. Not one major epidemiological study of the past 100 years credits vaccination with significant disease reduction yet it is still "commonly known" to have been effective in eradicating disease.

The Fascist Paulson Says....

"We can use the taxpayers' money more effectively and more efficiently, have it go farther and get more for their dollars and more protection if we develop a standardized program for making and encouraging equity participation."

Reuters

Is it me or....

does anyone else think that Neel Kashkari looks like a demented psycopath? I'm sure he's a truly nice man, a virtual puppy dog, working in the world of high finance and all, but you'd think he could have managed a friendlier PR picture.

Interesting Call

Walt Theissen over at the Nolan Chart just called me and said that Al Jazeera wants me to take part in a live discussion about the potential for a fascist takeover of the U.S. Apparently this will take place around 5:30 EST today. I'll keep you posted.

Patrick Ruffini: How can McCain win!!???

Patrick Ruffini is all in a panic. McCain and Palin have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. He asks his readers for some ideas. My response follows.

There's no wisdom or judgement in the McCain campaign. McCain trots out logical fallacy after logical fallacy during the debates and apparently believes that his audience is just stupid enough to buy it.

He misunderestimates his own audience (the choir who may be dumb enough to believe it) and completely ignores the part of the audience he wants to sway.

Case in point. At the debates he repeatedly claimed that merely meeting with Ahmadinejad would give credence to everything the man has ever said in the past. He also falsely claimed that he has stated that Israel should be pushed into the sea and that was the intent of Iran. Not so, never was said.

But even if it were true, meeting with him would not legitimize the statements. The claim is grossly wrong and we should be extremely distrustful of anyone with such a low tolerance for logic.

McCain clearly would like to create more enemies for the U.S. Now, this is funny to an anti-war Republican such as myself because Obama is as hawkish as McCain. McCain can't differentiate himself from Obama. They're both Wiilsonian wanks who think the job of the US military is to go around bullying other countries to satisfy their own personal agendas.

So what can McCain do to differentiate himself from Obama? Nothing. They're both big spenders. McCain voted against Bush's taxcuts and then flip-flopped on the issue of making them permanent.

He's responsible for the un-constitutional McCain-Feingold law. That alone disqualifies him in my mind.

Both Obama and McCain, even in the financial crisis we face cannot even approach the possibility of reducing a 1 trillion dollar per year foreign policy budget which requires that we borrow 3 billion PER DAY from China to finance.

The McCain campaign is clearly doing the only thing it can do: run a grossly negative campaign and shoot itself in the foot. There is no other strategy that they have sans actually embracing constitutional conservatism and they won't do it.

Republicans had the chance to win this election but blew off the only candidate who could beat the Democrats: Ron Paul. You remember him right? He's the guy that predicted the recession of 1987 back in 1983. And he's the guy who predicted that the government would have to bail out fannie mae and freddie mac back in 2003.

He also has the solution. Oh...there's one thing McCain could do to win. Ditch Palin and adopt Ron Paul's platform verbatim. He'd win in a landslide just by repeating everything Dr. Paul has said about this ridiculous bailout.....but whoops...McCain wants to take credit for helping to get it passed even though 90% of Americans are against it. Brilliant. A shoe in for sure....

Martial Law was Threatened

Hat tip: RedStateEclectic

I Pledge Alliegance To The Fed.....

I pledge allegiance to the Fed,
which owns the United States of America,
and screw the public, more which it scams; One Note, under Gold,
irredeemable with liquidity injections forestall.
Forrest Bishop, 2008 Sept 26

A Fascist Coup

Fascism arrived in an unprecedented coup, and the shameless Paulson is already hard at it completely taking over the US financial system.

The hubris shown by Paulson is breathtaking. The "Office of Financial Stability" will be headed by none other than former Goldman Sachs CEO Ed Forst.

Paulson's plan is to buy "up to 250 billion" in 'toxic assets' from his cronies on wall street and then sell them at auction, not to individuals, but to "any financial institution that meets the Treasury's conditions."

Lehman, Sachs and any of the 'troubled' institutions that have their billions invested in mortgage-backed securities will start auctioning off these "properties" through the government to the state-chartered banks - competition to those who now run the show - thereby eventually eliminating their competition.

Sachs et al will be getting a twofer. Not only will they be getting "free" money from the treasury, but will also leave the smaller banks and investment firms holding the toxic waste. When those companies go out of business, Sachs and Lehman Bros. can snatch the assets back up, either for free, when the government seizes the assets at some later date, or at ridiculously low prices.

It is one big Ponzi scheme and the Congress just opened the door wide and totally sold the entire financial system to criminals.

If you thought that the 'Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008' was going to stabilize the economy ,think again.

The Treasury could add three- and seven-year notes, as its borrowing advisory committee has proposed. It also could reopen existing notes and bonds, or even hold a series of one-time medium- and long-term debt sales.

``Under normal circumstances, the Treasury's financing decisions are guided by its desire to be regular and predictable,'' said Louis Crandall, chief economist at Wrightson ICAP in New Jersey.

``However, there is certainly nothing `regular' about this rescue package, so that approach is not relevant,'' he said.

You can already tell that Paulson and his cronies, in trying to cover up the largest economic blunder in history, are throwing all caution to the wind. This seems to be the norm in financial crises. The people are willing to take things slow and weather the storm while the financial gurus are jumping out of windows.

It is already clear that the medicine is worse than the cure and the bill was only passed today. Paulson will tinker and fiddle while Rome burns. With virtually no accountability and an unlimited supply of cash, any mistake he may make will be compounded by many more as he tries to fix the unintended consequences that arise from his tinkerings.

What he cannot possibly admit, and this is the grand irony, is that the fiat system he seeks to control and bend to his will cannot be mended. There is only one, inevitable outcome - bankruptcy. Because he cannot and will not admit this, and every one of the big asset-management companies he seeks to hire will be, by definition, advocates of this fiat-currency-based system, there will be no one to tap him on the shoulder, telling him what he seeks to accomplish is impossible. And were there somebody to do so, they would be dismissed faster than you can say "toxic asset."

We are quite near the end of the current dollar's existence and we should take care to have a say in the currency system that arises from the ashes. The people who brought you this mess will most definitely be advocating that the dollar be scrapped in favor of the Amero, yet another fiat currency. Lipstick on a pig, as it were.

When the system collapses, sound money is going to be the only way we can preserve freedom. But, we don't necessarily have to wait for the collapse to start using sound money. As the economy is wrecked and the hyperinflation starts showing effects, the only recourse is to get out of any dollar-denominated assets and hoard things that can be used as money. Gold and silver are the most obvious choices but there are plenty of valuable barter items including salt.

However it turns out, it's clear that there are a very small number of blameless politicians. None of those who voted for or advocated for the bailout should utter a word when remedies are proposed. And if they do, they should be ridiculed and shunned.

A Letter to my idiot governor

Open Letter to Govenor Rick Perry

An Historic Day

Today is Ludwig von Mises' birthday, the economist who predicted the Great Depression - caused not by an outdated gold standard as many historians claim, but by a federal reserve system.

Today the monstrous bailout of investment banks was defeated. But on Saturday, Congress voted for a 25 billion dollar package for auto manufacturers. Don't let your republican Congressman claim that he's a free market economy guy if he voted for that nonsense.

Governer of Missouri to Obama: You're a slimeball

Apparently, the hope-inspiring Obama has been making threats against those who write "falsehoods" about him. This has upset the governor.

"St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch, St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer, and Obama and the leader of his Missouri campaign Senator Claire McCaskill have attached the stench of police state tactics to the Obama-Biden campaign."

What Senator Obama and his helpers are doing is scandalous beyond words, the party that claims to be the party of Thomas Jefferson is abusing the justice system and offices of public trust to silence political criticism with threats of prosecution and criminal punishment.tion about the election."

...

“Barack Obama needs to grow up. Leftist blogs and others in the press constantly say false things about me and my family. Usually, we ignore false and scurrilous accusations because the purveyors have no credibility. When necessary, we refute them. Enlisting Missouri law enforcement to intimidate people and kill free debate is reminiscent of the Sedition Acts - not a free society.”

Fascism

Chalcedon Foundation's Blog has a great definition of fascism taken from around 1944. It's quite clear that this bailout takes us to a clearly fascist state from the once-great Republic it was envisioned to be.

Look Ma! I'm a published author! (Sort of ) :)

Well, I did contribute a chapter to Ron Paul: A Life of Ideas but Amazon has only two authors listed. A bunch of us contributed and I haven't received my copy yet. That was a much faster release than I anticipated.

Update: Just got back from a trip to the mailbox and there were the two copies the publisher promised me. It's beautiful. All of the contributors are credited. Here's hoping that this one is sent to the top of the NY Times list. :)

Liberty's Last Hurrah

I see the bailout fight as our last stand.

Groveling for Dollars

Paulson got on his knees yesterday to beg Pelosi to wave the magic wand on the bailout plan. Today, Bush makes a short little speech to reporters to once again threaten us with global catastrophe if we don't support the power grab they've proposed.

Let me tell you something. They're panicking and they're trying to cover something up. You do not ask for unprecedented power like this to "save" the American people from financial catastrophe. What really needs to happen, rather than cow-towing to these threats, is an independent investigator should immediately start looking into Paulson's finances. The former Goldman-Sachs executive is up to his eyeballs in something sinister. Put this in perspective. The 700 billion they're asking is almost as much as the entire annual military budget of the U.S. They are facing personal losses. Not everyone was stupid enough to invest in mortgage-backed securities. They're trying to save their own bacon, not yours.

Funniest line ever.....

"The Market is not functioning properly....."

Yes, Mr. President. It is not "functioning properly" because you have decided to meddle in it.

Monsters Incorporated

A new article over at Nolan Chart. The bailout is just another Reichstag Fire.

Earth to Barak

Obama says that the bailout will delay spending programs.

Newsflash you moron, a 700 Billion dollar bailout, benefiting Wall Street bigwigs is a spending program.

So are perpetual wars, welfare programs, social security, corporate welfare blah blah blah. Do people really believe that Obama or McCain represent change?

Who said this?

We do not support government bailouts of private institutions. Government interference in the markets exacerbates problems in the marketplace and causes the free market to take longer to correct itself. We believe in the free market as the best tool to sustained prosperity and opportunity for all.

The Republican Party....

Thanks to The_Expatriate over at the-boondocks.org for this. Priceless. Why do I not stumble across these on my own? :)

It really is Robbery.

You won't hear this on the mainstream media channels. Apart from the fact that the government doesn't actually have any cash that it doesn't either print out of thin air or extract from your wallet - so you are in effect on the hook for the recent bailouts - the AIG bailout in particular gave the investment banks carte blanche to raid your portfolio.

"This is so important a topic, that it deserves top billing!!! Hidden inside the AIG bailout funding package, surely hastily cobbled together, but carefully enough to include a totally corrupt clause, was a handy dandy clause that permits raids. The conglomerate financial firms are permitted at this point to use private individual brokerage account funds to relieve their own liquidity pressures. This represents unauthorized loans of your stock account assets. So next, if the conglomerate fails, your stock account is part of the bankruptcy process. Finally the corrupt USGovt and corrupt Wall Street houses are desperate enough to put into policy, stated by the US Federal Reserve, outlining the authorized raid of your money."

[emphasis added]

Get out while you can.

Freedom's Fodder

A case where I was just handed some lyrics from the ether....

Freedom's Fodder

Gather round you plebes and listen to me sing
All hail the cogs inside our war machine,
In foreign lands they keep you warm and safe
In your good name they kill, bomb and strafe

All hail the King, Won't you kiss his ring?
"Oh you poor thing, I see you've lost your...thing".

Hear the thunder, see the lightning
Behold we bring shock and awe
We seek your praise, sons and daughters
To the glory goes freedom's fodder

What are riches to you in light of these graves
Give your good cheer and spy this flag that waves
Let go your pain let me comfort you
To those who lost a child we honor you
For those who object we have something too

All hail the King, Won't you kiss this ring?
"Just give me that and let freedom ring".

Hear the thunder, see the lightning
Behold we bring shock and awe
We seek your praise, your sons and daughters
to the glory goes freedom's fodder

The Collapse of America in 3 minutes

Barney Frank and the "Free Market"

So, Barney Frank wants to create an entirely new Federal Agency that would buy up worthless securities, and then sell them for pennies on the dollar (if it can find any buyers at all). The inflation that this would cause is mind-boggling. It is essentially the proposal of a direct tax levied against the plebes (you and me) to prop up these banks. The banks would essentially get out from under the worthless paper at some negotiated price that allows them to dump the "assets" without suffering any real losses. But the NY Times reporter who wrote this piece doesn't even ask the question of who is going to buy the worthless securities from the government? Even at 10c on the dollar, who would want them? This is a blatant rip-off of the taxpayer but nobody dares call it that.

"The question is, and it's just a question, is, 'Are we at the point where the private market has made so many bad decisions and is so depressed that it can't get out from under?' " said Mr. Frank, who is planning to hold a hearing next week to explore whether Congress should create an agency to help the markets dispose of hard-to-sell assets.

I guess by qualifying this as "just a question" he can avoid scrutiny.......

More victims of the credit blood bath

Washington Mutual S&L

Ron Paul - 2003

Ron Paul - introducing a bill to eliminate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2003

Ironically, by transferring the risk of a widespread mortgage default, the government increases the likelihood of a painful crash in the housing market. This is because the special privileges granted to Fannie and Freddie have distorted the housing market by allowing them to attract capital they could not attract under pure market conditions. As a result, capital is diverted from its most productive use into housing. This reduces the efficacy of the entire market and thus reduces the standard of living of all Americans.

New Column at Nolan Chart

The Libertarian Party Should Clone Success

[Ron Paul's] success is due to his principled actions and his willingness to accept the responsibility to educate his constituents about libertarian principles in both word and deed. They do not deviate from the NAP. Not even a little bit. The electorate, being much smarter and educable than most people ever give them credit, responded. Many of Ron Paul's most vocal and dedicated volunteers were in fact Libertarian Party members. And the results were and are stunning. During this past GOP primary season, Ron Paul gained more votes than the past two Libertarian presidential candidates received in the past two national elections - combined.

Wayne Allen Root

A radical 100% pure Libertarian cannot get elected.

Gee....W.A.R., how did Ron Paul get elected?

Research

I am studying the LP's demise lately with regards to the party's co-option by a small minority of pro-war "libertarians". Thomas L. Knapp, a pundit whom I used to respect, had this to say back in 2003, before the Iraq war had begun:

I know that I will not endorse, donate to, vote for or otherwise support any candidate proposing to run for public office on the LP ticket, or for any party office, who comes out in support of this war.

I know that to the extent that I am able, I will work to get anti-war candidates to contest the primaries of any pro-war candidates who run for public office on the LP ticket, and anti-war candidates to run for party office against candidates who identify themselves as pro-war.

While Knapp came out against RP - he was promoting Steve Kubby and was concerned that RP would deflect money from his candidate - he is absolutely dead on here. The pro-war "libertarians" are the worst of the worst in politics.

Trustworthy Banks? Is there such a thing?

"Investors will now retreat to the trustworthy banks, though that's not a phrase that trips off the tongue easily nowadays."

Ack! Barr?

I couldn't help but add a conspiratorial twist to this whole Bob Barr implosion.

Barr on Glenn Beck

Barr may end up getting more good press exposure than any Libertarian candidate we've seen in quite a while. Too bad his running mate is such a tool on the war issue. I think the LP can thank Ron Paul for much of this. Personally, I've been a staunch defender of the LP but its hard to do that anymore with the warmongering "libertarians" who have been able to influence the party's direction. Bob Barr is saying the right things. For me the Jury's still out on Barr but I've always personally liked the man even when he was still a GOP member in Congress though he and I didn't share the same views.

Bob Barr polling at 6% in North Carolina

According to Public Policy Polling, LP candidate Bob Barr is polling at 6% in match ups with McCain/Barr and McCain/Clinton.

That's pretty astounding for any LP candidate.

Scott McLellen: Liar

It's not that I'm unhappy about his revelations but anyone with half a brain knew that the administration was lying its ass off to justify the Iraq war. You had to be a complete moron to believe the nonsense that they were peddling. But now Scott has to pretend as though he only now understands how much he was being misled.

And his ex-colleagues are all claiming "this isn't the Scott we knew."

Right, the Scott you knew was perfectly willing to lie to the American public. He was a member in good standing of the "club." You all should rot in hell. There are over 1 million dead civilians who didn't ask to be liberated so and not one of you has the decency to consider the lives you've snuffed out. You knew you were lying when you supported this war, and you know you're lying now.

CPS in Texas: Pwned

I can assure you however that it will not end without some parting shots. CPS will not comply with the Texas Supreme Court Ruling in an immediate fashion. They will drag their feet and put up every barrier they can to prolong their control.

It is still wonderful to see that the judicial system at least meted out a just ruling.

Company Announcement

The company I co-founded, DriveBuy Technologies, announced an integration between Top Producer, the Real Estate Industry's #1 CRM system. This allows leads collected from our text messaging service to be imported into the agent's Top Producer account in real time as the consumers request information.

No Country For Free Men

I have a new one up at Lews. The whole FLDS raid was a mess.

Best Bumper Sticker Ever.

"Warring for Democracy is like Raping for Virginity"....

Ron Paul supporters take over South Dakota

South Dakota sends a full slate of Ron Paul delegates to the National Convention. Gosh...I don't think this thing is over by any stretch of the old imagination.

It wasn't just Missouri

Here in Texas, Ron Paul supporters have wrestled away the GOP from the old country-club neoconservatives who love to put party over principle every chance they get.

This horrified one long-time activist and GOP member so much she said, in an email to her neoconservative friends, "This group is NOT Republican and they will not work together — remember this when you do have to be in contact with them."

Pwned....

Just remember folks, the nominee is chosen at the convention, not in the primaries. John McCain is not the "presumptive nominee" unless you are a member of the Old Media.

Another one at Lew's

War Dream

Boyd Coddington Passes On to that big Cruise in the sky

I just got word that Boyd Coddington passed away Yesterday. Bummer. Here's the You Tube of my uncle Lyle Fisk appearing on Boyd's 'American Hot Rodder'.

See the World

Exotic places and beautiful faces
that's what they said I'd see
Three squares and a roof over my head
now that's a cube at least
they were right about something

When I killed my first man I was barely seventeen
I closed his beady eyes as he read a magazine
He didn't seem real threatening but the Captain he was shouting
and then slapped me on the back while laughing

he said, "Clean yourself up son you look white as a ghost."

I replied

Can you get me out of here
I can't close my eyes lest I see that face
I've got to get myself away from here

maybe, just maybe, dyin' ain't so bad

Now its better him than me
because I am a wiser man
That teenage boy went in to hiding
to keep the man from crying
The man crushes bones
and the boy sends letters home
But I wonder what will happen if I ever make it back

I hear

"Hey boy get your rifle we rolling out again"

Can you get me out here, ma the boys are taking care of me
I've got to get myself away from here,
tell Jimmy not to come there ain't nothin' left to do

Now I see the world
for what it is and what it was
while I was fightin for your freedom
you was starin' at the teevee

I'll let you in on a secret
I didn't set you free
and if I did you'd never know
'cause the flag got in your eyes

I fear

living dead people unliving dead lives

Can you get me out of here
where's the freedom that you offered
Don't you want to get out of here
thirty pieces won't buy a cup of coffee

War and death and taxes ain't no way to see the world

Human Flying Squirrels

Some people are nuts

McCain: Like Hope, But Different

Open Letter to Ron Paul Supporters

Hold fast folks. We have to stay in this till it hurts and then we win.

9/11 Changed Everything?

Mark Silva of the Baltimore Sun apparently didn't get the memo about the media blackout of Dr. Paul. Thank you Mr. Silva for making note of a tremendous and powerful speech. Silva thought that Dr. Paul's claim that 9/11 had nothing whatsoever to do with Iraq may have been a bit off-putting to some of the CPAC attendees. I wasn't there but didn't get that impression from the video. However, Iraq, and this is in George Bush's own words, had nothing to do with 9/11.

9/11 is only relevant to Iraq in that it is being used as an excuse to abandon completely the core principles of the Republican party and the constitution itself. Those who want us to remain in Iraq to preserve "honor" use 9/11 as the reason that everything has now "changed". Well nothing has changed. For thousands of years, leaders have used catastrophe to justify tyranny. This 9/11 fear-mongering is unbecoming to men of substance and principle. Unfortunately, there are very few of those sorts of men left. We've become a nation of women and children (my apologies to women and children), hiding behind the skirts of mommy government and for what reason? Threats from nations that would have to mount machine guns on migrating geese to have a formidable air force?

How far we've come when we could once stare down an empire possessing 45,000 nukes that actually existed as opposed to today where our own foreign policy experts expect us to pee ourselves over nations which may, 10 years in the future, possess a crude prototype. Republicans who call Ron Paul "kooky" or "insane" should be ashamed of themselves for acting like school girls and throwing 9/11 around as if it justifies any of the tyranny that they promote. While many use 9/11 as a justification for everything and unfailingly mention those who died as deserving of honor, they will in the next breath completely dishonor those same victims by using them as political bludgeons against anyone who disagrees with their plans to enslave us.

Ponder that a moment. Who is being provided security when we give up our privacy and other freedoms? Certainly not the common citizen. When Benjamin Franklin uttered the oft-repeated words about giving up safety for security, he was making a very belligerent comment. He was illustrating his utter and complete contempt for the dishonesty and cynicism displayed by those who would attempt to scare people into giving up their freedoms.

"He that would give up essential liberty to obtain a little bit of temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security."

If somebody tells you that they can protect you but only if you will concede a little freedom, they are lying. You should never trust a word that they tell you from that point forward. What they are saying is freedom to act in your own self-interest might impair their ability to protect you. By making such a claim they have conceded that they are not only incapable of protecting you, but also have no intention of doing so.

Dees Strikes Again

Another great illustration from David Dees.