29 June 2006 
I Was A Soldier
Only one American male in nine has worn a military uniform. This includes the WWll vets passing on.
Charmaine and I were talking about war and rumors of war and she remarked that it seems as if no one cares, if the polls are to be believed. This is a common conversation, when you have sons who want to serve and sacrifice.
Because some folks these days, usually in Blue States, don’t understand the military. And people these days are not having kids.
And so, as the cliche goes, The Greatest Generation has begot the Me Generation. A sad MyGration.
But there is hope. There are still soldiers. And the Roe Effect is rolling in. Soon.
I Was A Soldier
By Colonel Daniel K. Cedusky, USA, Retired
I was a Soldier: That’s the way it is, that’s what we were…are. We put
it, simply, without any swagger, without any brag, in those four plain
words.
28 June 2006
Book Review in The Weekly Standard
The Weekly Standard Last year Charmaine wrote a book review on Does God Belong in Public Schools? published in The Weekly Standard.
Read how academia doesn’t care much for church-going folk.
The Four Rs
Readin’, writin’, ‘rithmetic, and religion?
by Charmaine Yoest, Ph.D.
10/24/2005, Volume 011, Issue 06
Does God Belong in Public Schools?
by Kent Greenawalt
Princeton University Press, 296 pp., $29.95
IN 1925, JOHN SCOPES, a 24-year-old science teacher, violated Tennessee law by teaching his students the theory of evolution. The result was State v. John Scopes, the infamous “Monkey Trial” immortalized in the classic play and movie Inherit the Wind.
Nearly a century later, the Scopes trial still is being replayed in schoolrooms and courtrooms across the country. Today, Ground Zero in the evolution-creation conflagration has shifted to Kansas. The Kansas State Board of Education began hearings in May to consider including intelligent design in the state science standards. A nationwide coalition of scientists is boycotting the hearings. Kansas is not alone: Controversy over teaching evolution has erupted in at least 20 states.
In Alabama, Arkansas, and Georgia, the focus is on attempts to modify textbooks so that arguments for evolution are labeled clearly as “theory.” And parents in Pennsylvania filed a federal lawsuit after a school board decision requiring schools to teach intelligent design. The conflict in the schools, of course, goes beyond questions about
Charmaine Yoest is the author of the Reasoned Audacity blog.
Thankyou (foot)notes:
Be sure to subscribe to The Weekly Standard.
Continue reading…
21 June 2006
Sales: Never Give Up vs Never Going to Happen
Your Business Blogger often advises sales guys on peddling products, programs, services. Tangibles and intangibles.
We know Winston Churchill’s 1941 quote to Never never never give up. And in 1813, Captain James Lawrence said, “Boys, Don’t give up the ship.” The American Way to Never Say Die. (Well, Churchill was half American.)
So, three options: 1. When to know when to go once more into the breach? (Shakespeare thinks like an American. Or is it the other way around?) And 2. When to pick a hill to die on, or 3. When to go home.
Most often we sales guys pick # three too soon.
And of the three, which one is best? What is needed?
Into the breach with “Persistence, Persistence, Persistence,” says Gloria Berthold, President of TargetGov
Gloria reminds us that sales reps often quit too soon. They will bail out before they get tossed out.
Persistence. I was fortunate to have a sales trainer over two decades ago who taught how to measure persistence. In the high-pressure elite cadre of medical sales. His advice:
If you’re not getting thrown out of an account once a month, you’re not working hard enough.
This is always a challenge: balancing being nice, with being good . . .and persistent.
Sorry. Being nice is over-rated. Your Business Blogger always recommends being good.
But most of us sales guys want to be nice and good and never want to quit.
So when does persistence begin to look like lunacy?
Typical sales managers will typically berate their teams to never give up! to keep pounding the pavement! overcome that objection! flog that prospect!
I know. Your Humble Business Blogger used to do the berating.
But there are times when sales reps need to spend more time hyper-qualifying a prospect before any time is wasted. No need to talk with 5 cold call strangers per day, when one warm referral will get quota.
Persist, to be sure. But Qualify, Qualify, Qualify.
And then you will never be able to quit.
Read more at Small Business Trends with Sales Persistence & Knowing When To Stop. Your Business Blogger has a weekly column that runs on Tuesdays. Do visit for the best for small businesses.
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Thank you (foot)notes:
Small Business Trends is the creation of Anita Campbell.
19 June 2006
The Best of Me Symphony Carnival is Up at The Owner’s Manual
The Owner’s Manual Emo Philips is the host of this well crafted carnival. A must visit.
Your Business Blogger has an entry. Here’s Emo’s comment:
When I was a kid, my goodness, corporate America was a bunch of stolid white guys in gray suits trying to be serious, and now it’s stolid white guys in gray suits trying to be funny.
Not quite as bad as TBogg’s comments:
Oh wait. It’s business humor which is usually only appreciated by administrative assistants who mentally convert all punchlines into “Jesus. What an *ssh*le” while grinning maniacally and saying, “Good one, boss.”
And Seth Godin says this is good…
…now that’s funny. I guess.
But do visit The Owner’s Manual.
And continue reading his take on the entries. For another example see his comment on Adam’s Blog:
I think of my body as a temple. Or at least a relatively well-managed Presbyterian youth center.
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16 June 2006
Show Business: Lesson One
Every Friday, Your Business Blogger has an article up on Small Business Trends Radio. Here’s a preview of this week’s edition.
Bill Archer, Left
Your Business Blogger, Charmaine and
The Dreamer
A few years ago, Your Business Blogger and Charmaine and the 18 month-old Dreamer kicked off a press conference for Congressman Bill Archer who was introducing tax cut legislation. As I
dronedwaxed eloquent, the little Dreamer got distracted by the microphones. With their soft, inviting, spongy covers.So she reached out and gave the mike cover a good squishy squeeze. And when she did…
Read the rest at Small Business Trends Radio, Show Prep for Your Big Show Biz Break.
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Thank you (foot)notes:
Small Business Trends is the creation of Anita Campbell.
15 June 2006
Fathers’ Day on Eternal Patrol
USS BonefishJune 18th, this Sunday is Fathers’ Day. It is also the day of loss of the USS Bonefish in 1945. This date is acknowledged each year by our household — for the men lost — the Dads; the sons.
A few years ago Your Business Blogger was honored to be invited to the Submarine Veterans Chapter in North Carolina and share a few words. The podium was on the ocean front. Grizzled vets and wives sat in the sun. Hot. Uncomplaining.
Afterwards, a plane flew overhead and dropped a wreath on the water a few hundred yards out. An honor guard fired a three-round volley. The Dude scampered for the shell casings. I have them in a desk drawer. To remember.
Submariners’ Memorial Service, Saturday May 13, 2000, Outer Banks, North Carolina
Debt of Honor
It is an honor to join you here today and remember the submariners “still on patrol.” And to remember our debt of honor due. I’ve asked my son, John, to join us today — a day I expect him to remember and take to his grave.
During World War II, my dad, a teenager from New Jersey, left high school, went to submarine school and was assigned to the USS Bonefish.
Virtual Painter Photos
Courtesy Tom McMahonWhen John saw previews of the blockbuster movie U-571, he asked if it was about his grandfather. The movie is a story about honor, courage, strength, character, what being a man, a warrior really is. Yes John, your grandfather was in the movie, and so were each of the submariners here today.
But in the movie the men came home. We are here today for the men who didn’t.
My father was re-assigned and walked off the gangplank and another man walked on the Bonefish. The Bonefish was lost in combat on June 18, 1945 with all hands.
My dad eventually went back to high school and married my mother. The other man is on the bottom of the Sea of Japan.
My father, after a half-century later after fighting in and surviving two wars, is buried in Arlington Cemetery. He had the chance to raise a family and devote 30 years to the Navy and pin Second Lieutenant bars on my shoulders.
Like many veterans, he didn’t talk much about being in harm’s way. Still, I imagine, in some Navy Valhalla, my dad and this other sailor linked up and asked the Creator, “Why?”
Why was my father spared? Why each of you? Why was the other man, why did the other men not come home? War forces these questions on us, and they echo for generations — my father had me, and now I have a 5-year old son, John, who carries his grandfather’s name and his love of battle and discipline.
John, like all children, often asks, “Why?” Like all fathers, I struggle to answer. But there are some questions we cannot fathom on this side of eternity. Why was my father not on that submarine that fateful day?
And the answer does not come. Only that John now lives — with a purpose and a destiny and lessons to learn and a debt of honor.
The submarine and her crew is the truest example of a military unit and military cohesion and military mission. And this is what I want my son to see. He saw it in the movie U-571, and in each of you today. But more important, I want him to understand the sacrifice of the men remembered today.
When my wife was pregnant with our first child, someone asked her, “What is your greatest fear?” She answered that it was losing her husband; she feared the possibility of facing the awesome responsibility of motherhood alone.
But now, several children later, as I reflect on that same question, my fear is not losing her, or even one of our daughters. I fear losing my son. In my masculine pride, I believe I can protect my wife and girls, but in my heart, just below the surface, is the dread possibility that I must one day send my son to war.
Just as your fathers sent each of you. And by God’s grace, you and my father came back.
My boy loves my cavalry saber and my dad’s medals. Wearing a military uniform and military service runs deep in our family. My son’s blood line is traced through the Civil War and the Revolutionary War to William Penn to Charlemagne of ninth century France. His great-grandfather helped build the Virginia Military Institute.
I pray the time never comes, but if it does, I expect that he will fight for God and country like his fathers before him. And like you, warriors gathered today, and like the warriors still on “eternal patrol” we honor today.
I have in my office the Norman Rockwell print of the “Homecoming GI” showing a young man coming home from war being greeting by the neighborhood. His back is toward us, his face is each of you and my father. We remember today the boys who didn’t come home, lost at sea — the only thing left was a gold star and a Purple Heart and our eternal gratitude.
Buried at sea, there are no headstones, I cannot mark the grave of the man who took my father’s place. But shortly we will honor that man and each of the 3,505 men lost on 52 boats with a wreath. It is fitting that, as some boats were lost to aerial bombs, that we remember those lost heroes with an aerial wreath dropped over the sea.
There will always be wars and rumors of war, the Bible teaches. When I think of future wars I pray that a lost heroic high-tech Bonefish will not carry my John. The fear of this nearly unendurable loss humbles me. That young submariner who walked — requested permission to board — the Bonefish to take my father’s place was another man’s son. Another father’s dreams lost at sea. War turns civilization on its head: In peace sons bury fathers. In war fathers bury sons.
Today we remember the men buried in the sea. It is a weighty debt. A debt of honor due. This is why I have my boy, the grandson of a submariner, here today to honor those men with you. I expect to instill in him a sense of history, of true sacrifice, of his mission in life. That his body is not his own, that he has a higher calling and that he will honor and obey. That he has a high calling.
I hope that I can teach him the lessons of his forefathers, and the lessons of the men we remember today and each of you — a great cloud of witnesses. The Greatest Generation.
It is my prayer that instilling this sense of mission will drive out the distractions, temptations and destructions of his growing generation. That he will see the hand of Divine Providence moving in his life. That he will know that he has so much to be thankful for. Like his fathers before him. That, as Scripture teaches, greater love has no man than to give his life for another.
I pray that he will be grateful, like his grandfather, and me, to the man and the men who died for us. It is my charge to tell my son that another young man took his grandfather’s place.
My son has the duty, and like us all, to that man and those men. My son has the duty to live with a sense of respect and purpose and awe. To live with a sense of reverence to the tomb, the crushed hull, of that other submariner.
Today we salute and honor the man and the men who died for me and for us all. I want my son to know his debt of honor. And Lord willing, my son will bury me.
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Thank you (foot)notes:
Debt of Honor; USS Bonefish Lost was originally published by The Virginian Pilot and other print outlets.
Be Excellent has Father’s Day Advice.
Basil has a picnic.
14 June 2006
Kill Big Bird, Buy a Raptor
There’s a war on. It’s been in all the papers. And we all have to pay for it. Sacrifice somewhere.
But not the liberals at National People’s Public Radio. They demand continued tax payer funding…for Big Bird.
When should entertainment have claim on the public purse?
Congress wants to reduce the NPR and PBS budget by $115 million. This is not as aggressive as the planned cuts hoped for last year that would have taken the welfare payment from $200,000,000 to a mere $100 million. Our friends on the left are Outraged! Outraged!
Cartoon credit: Blue Girl’s “better half”
Our lefty friends (no friends of the free market) have different takes. Over at Blue Girl in a Red State there seems to be some confusion between work and charity.
For years now the Feminist Minority has feared for a free press:
Take Action for Independent Media
The U.S. House of Representatives is …considering …an appropriations bill which will make drastic cuts in the budgets of the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) …
In their ongoing efforts to control the media, the right wing is using the Congressional appropriations process to decimate public radio and television. We could lose this critical independent voice and quality programming.
Take action today! Click here to urge your Representative to stand up for the independent media free from partisan and ideological control by voting for full funding for PBS and NPR.
Charmaine, The Dreamer and
Your Business BloggerBig Bird can fly on its own. When The Dreamer was 18 months old we comforted her on camera when interviewed — by a stuffed animal we had paid for with real money. Plus tax. (Or more likely, a grandmother paid for with real money. . .) The Yellow Bird to the rescue!
A cool 100 million dollars. We could get one very nice, brand new F-22 Raptor. And the world would be a better place.
Peggy Noonan says, news flash: PBS is liberal. . . and that Democrats may even admit as much. . . (though, obviously, not the Fem Minority who seems to think PBS/NPR is an “independent critical voice”).
Our leftist friends at The Washington Monthly are upset.
A civil hat tip to the liberal GrubbyKid.
See Mudville Gazette with the unsubsidized Open Post.
Right Wing Sparkle has more at PBS Funding: Is It Worth It?
Trey Jackson sick of taxes for Lefty Liberal Bile Hat tip to Trey for pointing us to Atlas Shrugs…
Atlas Shrugs can lift and move any debate especially on PBS
13 June 2006
Manager’s Tips at SBT
Your Business Blogger has 10 Reminders for Effective Management over on Small Business Trends.
I was recently asked by a small business owner to evaluate a manager’s management skill set. The manager was being overwhelmed. And he is not alone.
If you are like most managers, you feel you could be doing better. Much better.
As you set out to plan, organize, lead and control, how can you get the results you want?
The most common complaint I hear from managers is on time management.
But there may be something even more important on which a manager should focus.
Discipline.
We all want military-like discipline as we run our business units.
The Army has the perfect definition for discipline. It has two components. Most would be familiar with the first part:
1) Prompt obedience to orders.
But it’s the second part that managers really need from subordinates:
2) Initiation of appropriate action in the absence of orders.
Most often, we think prompt obedience will get the manager more time. Efficiency.
But what most managers really need is initiative from their team. More effectiveness.
This is a review of the basics to get more discipline in your business. Following are 10 tips to remember as you knock about your office…
Read the rest.
Basil’s Blog has a picnic.
10 June 2006
Marketing from the Academy
The pretensions of the intellectual elite. More authenticity from Princeton University Press, as advertised in The Chronicle of Higher Education:
Marketing. A catchy title would ordinarily sell books. Like half nekked women can sell calendars.
Your Business Blogger recently came across “Professor” Frankfurt’s book in the remainder bin at a book chain store. It’s a wee little volumn. Very thin. The cites for St. Augustine were thinner. I didn’t buy it. And nobody else did either.
I’ve read better blogs.
Here’s a sample from the first chapter of what “one of the world’s most influential moral philosophers” has to say about…cow manure:
. . .we have no clear understanding of what bullsh*t is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, we have no theory. I propose to begin the development of a theoretical understanding of bullsh*t, mainly by providing some tentative and exploratory philosophical analysis.
I shall not consider the rhetorical uses and misuses of bullsh*t. My aim is simply to give a rough account of what bullsh*t is and how it differs from what it is not–or (putting it somewhat differently) to articulate, more or less sketchily, the structure of its concept.
The “structure of its concept?”
Well. Wasn’t there someone, anyone, at Princeton University Press with enough class to tell this, this academic writer that the book is merely juvenile?
Slate loved it. Of course. (”The Bush administration is clearly more bullsh*t-heavy than its predecessors.”)
Who would want tuition dollars to go to these… educators? Now that’s bullsh*t.
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Thank you (foot)notes:
Be sure to see more advanced learning, more higher education at Pin-Up Grrrls at The Chronicle of Higher Education
Yvonne has book cover wisdom.
6 June 2006
Words, Beautiful and Ugly. A Marketer’s Cheatsheet
Not everything is Ugly that comes out of The Chronicle of Higher Education.
A most useful article appeared in the recent edition. Professor Robert Wolverton at Mississippi State University asked one hundred students to list beautiful words; ugly words. Here’s the list. A pin-up reminder for wordsmiths and marketers.
Beautiful
Love
Serendipity
Lovely
Luminous
Melody
Beautiful
Lavender
Lily
Eloquent
Euphoric
Glorious
Gorgeous
Grace
Happy
Harmony
Heaven
Onomatopoeia
PassionUgly
Pus
Vomit
Fungus
Death
Mucus
Puke
Ugly
Cacophony
Hate
Mullet
Phlegm
Pimple
Snot
Your Business Blogger is euphoric over the harmony in this gorgeous list. I wasn’t expecting this from The Chronicle. Love the Serendipity.
I can’t wait to see what the pre-teen Dude does with the ugly, snot, pus list.
See more of The Chronicle at Str*ppers.