Next Indy blog meet - June 22

Somehow I managed to forget to post this.

Readers/lurkers welcome, too.

One topic sure to be up for discussion:  Is “blog meet” one or two words, and, if one, should it be BiCapitalized?

Thanks to Roberta X for making arrangements, and for creating the graphic.

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The real Memorial Day

Memorial Day used to fall on May 30^th, not the “last Monday in May.” What changed things was the Nixon-era National Holiday Act of 1971. The same law that turned the Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthday holidays into the amorphously generic “Presidents’ Day” made Memorial Day the tag end of just another three-day weekend.

My grandmother always called it “Decoration Day,” which was what it was all about: Placing flowers on the graves of soldiers fallen in (originally) the Civil War^[1] and (after World War I) of any American who had died in any war.

There’s something about a mid-week holiday that heightens the sense of occasion- something we don’t get when the holiday is just the rain date for the Indianapolis 500. Congress may have realized this when, in 2000, it called for a “National Moment of Remembrance” at 3 pm every May 30^th. Good start, but still not the same.

Memorial Day history, and information about efforts to restore the May 30 date, here.



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Protecting your brand

Most of a brand’s sales came from loyal customers, and a very few loyal customers at that. In any single supermarket, for even giant brands like Folgers or Charmin, the destiny lay in the purses of about two hundred customers. Across two hundred stores, therefore, the fate of, say, Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes lay in the hands of about five thousand housewives—out of a customer base of about four million shoppers. If something were to happen to that loyal base—if some mysterious disease were to kill all of them—the brand would die, within a matter of weeks.

Kim Du Toit offers the Republicans some marketing advice.

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“So, how long have you been with the Bureau?”

Wherein it is demonstrated that not much gets past Roberta X.

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Last straw for John Hawkins

Right Wing News:

Put very simply: John McCain is a liar.  He’s a man without honor, without integrity, who could not have captured the Republican nomination had he run on making comprehensive immigration a top priority of his administration.  Quite frankly, this is little different from George Bush, Sr. breaking his “Read my lips, no new taxes” pledge, except that Bush’s father was at least smart enough to wait until he got elected before letting all of his supporters know that he was lying to them.

Under these circumstances, I simply cannot continue to support a man like John McCain for the presidency.

McCain’s problem all along has been that people don’t trust him. His flip-flop-flip on immigration is the canonical reason why.

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Decision marks a “victory?”

Glenn Reynolds:

...in a victory for free speech, British prosecutors have dropped the “cult” prosecution, saying that it doesn’t make out a crime.

It’s not that much of a “victory” when the net result is that you need some bureaucrat’s opinion before you can be sure that telling the truth is allowable.  Despite the sensible outcome, the fact remains that the police response defaulted to supression,^[1] and the speaker involved had to begin to prepare a defense.  Both should remain a concern for any friend of liberty.


The Guardian:
Background (BBC online):

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Really clever, Yahoo!

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Hey Congress, how about some hearings on THIS?

Instead of wasting everyone’s time investigating NFL cheating?

Anderson told him that the desires of the base exchange customers would have no influence and play no role in their decision making process. Anderson also stated that even appeals from high ranking military officers could not persuade Anderson to carry a title. Apparently, in Anderson's mind, they outrank the Joint Chiefs of Staff when it comes to doing business on military bases.

Anderson News Company has almost a complete monopoly over the books carried on Army, Navy and Air Force book shelves in the following US states:

ALABAMA, ARIZONA, ARKANSAS, COLORADO, FLORIDA, GEORGIA, HAWAII, ILLINOIS, INDIANA, IOWA, KANSAS, KENTUCKY, LOUISIANA, MISSISSIPPI, MISSOURI, N CAROLINA, NEBRASKA, NEVADA, NEW MEXICO, OHIO, OKLAHOMA, OREGON, S CAROLINA, TENNESSEE, TEXAS, UTAH, VIRGINIA, W VIRGINIA, WASHINGTON - Michael Yon

We’re talking about stocking a book that presently ranks #204 on Amazon sales.

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Explanation for Monday’s slowness...

The import process was creating duplicate category entry records with every pass - and it was running every 15 minutes. Then it was carefully updating all those duplicate records. After a few days, that started to add up... - our proprietor

All clear now?

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Race to the bottom

“Obama promises to do his best to even the martial playing field world wide by gutting the military strength of the US — ostensibly, to divert that spending (from one of the few areas where government should be spending) to areas more in tune with his “vision” and to the vision of progressives everywhere: a militarily impotent US, whose vast economic resources are used to fund the pet social engineering projects of those too smart to wait around for sloppy and ineffectual democracy to catch up with the plans our betters have for us...” - Jeff Goldstein, who has the video

“John McCain has promised to bring Democrats into his Cabinet and work with Democrats in Congress. ... Does it mean that when Democrats disagree with him he will embrace their ideas just to get along? If so, why should voters vote Republican?” - Cal Thomas (via Daily Pundit)

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