I managed to reconnect with some of the rescued POWs and explained the situation. There were all eager to help and offered to write testimonials on my behalf. No act of kindness, however small, is wasted. That’s the moral of the story of the mouse and the lion’s paw, though in my case, the events were sort of reversed. I had been the lion and now they were pulling the thorn out of my paw.
We were lucky in the sense that the district was heavily Democratic, so we only had to worry about candidates from one party. We had four rivals to contend with. This was tricky even for me. I had only ever had to deal with one opposing force at a time. It was an exciting challenge. They were all men, and none were military veterans.
Three were lawyers and the other was a businessman who had inherited a lot of money as a young man. There is nothing inherently wrong with those occupations, though I always found it suspicious that so many of them ended up in politics.
The focus needed to be on our own campaign and to let our rivals attack and sabotage each other. They would all be reluctant to criticize a woman in public. If sexism is acceptable, then it is fair to use it to your advantage. In my own experience, the same behavior can be called chivalry, sexism, or fairness. The only difference is how the woman on the receiving end feels about being treated differently than a man.
We still needed a slogan. I initially favored something like “the real deal” because it rhymed and was similar to the successful “fair deal” and “new deal” slogans. Alexandra hinted she wanted something with “she” or “her” in it. That could help us get more of the female vote, but it could also backfire and seem as patronizing. A focus group would help us decide. It would be sort of an informal process. We’d put four or five slogans on notecards, with a prompt to rank them in order of best to worse as well as a space where the respondent could state their gender. Whichever slogans were hated the most by men and women could then be discarded.
We handed out a few hundred notecards in churches, grocery stores, and elsewhere. About 100 people in total responded, and we saw that slogans most favored by men and women were different, but at least we knew that #1 slogan for women was merely the #3 slogan for men. That slogan was “Murphy: She’s Our Her-o”. It’s hard to go wrong with a rhyming pun, and it was easy to fit on a sign or a button.
Political signs usually go up near busy intersections, and they also frequently get torn down. For that reason, we decided to display signs only on the inside of windows on private property. The value of buttons is greatly underestimated. We made sure to hand them out at local schools. Very few people are petty enough to accost a student over a button displayed on a backpack. Long story short, we got the word out about our campaign.
My attention turned to psychological warfare. We needed to plant some rumors in the newspapers to shape public opinion the way we wanted. The basic idea was to get our opponents to attack each other instead of us. The best way to do that was to plant a rumor that one of our opponents said something nasty about another one of our opponents. Those two would start trading blows, so to say, and meanwhile we would look above the fray and morally superior. It was a classic divide-and-conquer strategy. This was all underhanded of course, but perfectly legal and a common practice in politics. Anyway, it’s a lot cleaner and gentler than actual war, which was what I was used to. I wasn’t a fan of dirty tricks or any of that Lee Atwater stuff, though I must admit it’s impressive he got someone as slimy as Nixon into the White House.
Do the ends justify the means? Often in practical terms, might does in fact make right, at the very least, it settles the question of who gets what they want. It’s a moral dilemma I struggle with sometimes: the desire to win but also to win the right way and for the right reasons. The attempt to be honorable is itself honorable, even though no can achieve perfection in it.
I decided to use a proxy to plant a rumor that one candidate said another was soft on communism. The target took the bait, and for a time, all our opponents were forced to fight on terrain unfamiliar to them. They all wanted to talk about social programs and issues, which was their interest and strength, and I tricked them into arguing about military matters, and they were all dumb as a bag of hammers when it came to that subject. It’s always good to lure the enemy onto ground they’re unfamiliar with. It’s sort of like the way a spider builds its web to draw in prey. Again we see how the study of nature contributes to the science of victory. The Science of Victory is a Russian war manual written by a general named Suvorov in the 1700s. I continue to be amazed by the number of American strategists who have never heard of him.
At the same time, I arranged a photo-op with me, Binh, two of the POWs we rescued and Alexandra. It was front-page news. At the event, we lined up with Alexandra in the middle of and we all held hands and raised them in the air in triumph under an American flag and a POW-MIA remembrance flag. That was the moment I was sure she would win the election. The timing was deliberate as it was a subtle way of telling our opponents not to even try accusing us of being soft on communism.
Meanwhile in the real Army: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjgbbZcttPQ
I like what the Army tries to be, but not what it is.
Today I learned the Jawa language is garbled Zulu, though their hooteenee! exclamation sounds a lot like the Arabic word for “gimme” (‘atini).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCtcq_aEGkY
Oh yeah, I might be getting fired from my teaching job because I snapped at a kid. Probably not, but definitely lots of tedious HR meetings. God forbid I require a student in school to do schoolwork instead goof off and disrupt the class. In other news, my AI side gig is picking up speed. Maybe if I get good enough at it, I won’t have to deal with borderline juvenile delinquents as my regular job.
Mammary Monday After Dark.
https://archive.is/RQ5an/0a05b1a59c7c17bd74096f9e004bb47d56dcb42c.jpg
NSFW.
https://archive.is/8xFlt/677e1719447403bfa5c0239b44bd5cfc17ca5d67.jpg
NSFW.
https://archive.is/B2UJf/27873fb5f0d8d062975d708d3ce39ca6b81a0755.jpg
NSFW.
https://archive.is/Q5nKW/4db3271189ee59d1f0d014059918258bfa94a7b7.jpg
NSFW.
I, for one, did not know that Derpy had such nice personalities.
Well-done. I have many comments on your writing style; their similarities to mine and revealing (to me).
“I might be getting fired from my teaching job because I snapped at a kid. Probably not, but definitely lots of tedious HR meetings.”
^^I may be in that same boat. They went through HR and I’m now on Paid Administrative Leave. Paid today for no work, tomorrow off for dr appt, and then Wed-Thurs ‘scheduled.’ No idea what the next step is, though I have thoughts and prepared ways to respond. In my instance, it’s quite helpful for HR to have to be involved.
I wish you the best of luck. Some kids need a Level 7 Snappin’ At, a notch or two below full-on Tiger Momming.
I should explain: I have many comments but I think they would take up too much space here. They would likely reveal myself rather than anything meaningful to any y’all.
I went to college to originally become a teacher and did an observation at a school in Chicago and knew immediately that this wasn’t the path I wanted to go. There are some kids that need to be verbally lit up but knew that I would not handled being shitted on by some kid well.
I would never have survived teaching in America. I did Glorified Daycare for after-school kids for the spring. Fucking. Yuck.
They wouldn’t have accepted me for any length of time if I had actual classes. Or, rather, if I had actual classes, shit woulda gone down just fine. It was me and four-five other adults corralling 90-12 kids in a cafeteria and recess area. Fuck that was miserable.
I too got a degree in Ed but my student teaching cured me.
Student teaching should be about Soph year to allow Ed majors to make a change.
Fortunately, as my kids say, “I never had any class”.
I’ve done so much shit at work that should have brought down the wrath of HR to no avail.
You can’t even manage a first at work. lol
Much second. Large shame.
I’m so First that HR knows my value.
You don’t fuck with The Bro.
No, actually I do.
Fess up; you’re the owner’s daughter, aren’t you?
I am the Undertaker to your Cocoa Beware, you seconding fool.
Mike S when he hears The Bro’s comin’.
“Oil’s not supposed to look like that” -Diesel Creek.
I showed the first 57 seconds of this to my class today as a dramatic visual aid about the dangers of becoming a smartphone zombie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw79RVnlCb0
Then I related it to the recent exploding pager attack in Lebanon.
I woulda kicked ass at 85% of your class.
(Enough benefit of the doubt to give my tomfoolery a pass. Good strat.)
Working tonight with one tab open to the Chiefs game box score and one tab open to the Royals game box score. Lovely.
I was advised by a cooperating teacher not to go into teaching. That was in 1994, and it was bad then.
I always thought it was the administration. Attendance seemed to be more important than learning. Attendance represented money.
My (six years) older brother went into teaching (music). I considered it for say German, but I got enough of an eye/earful from bro’s work that I was easily disabused from that notion before seriously starting down that path. I heard so many horror stories.
Not sure how to put enough snark on this.
We have had major wall to wall national coverage of stories of Trump diving over the seat to wrestling control of The Beast from the secret service. Days of opinion about “hiding in the basement”. Even multi-million dollar defamation verdicts for saying “that didn’t happen” about allegations that clearly didn’t happen.
So here we have some back office guy telling a story about trump… and I don’t know if anyone ever heard of it. Surely it didn’t make the nightly news cycle, or Rachel Maddow.
So how to heap enough snark in the introduction ?
Hmmm.
Maybe just keep it simple.
Democrats really, really hate the military. They say all the platitudes in public, but whenever stories like this come out they are just abusive cunts to the men in uniform who help protect them.
Cool story bro
https://x.com/MichelleMaxwell/status/1843350651604218030
Oh my God! You are writing about an alternate universe Hillary Clinton!
Everyone all nestled in, snug as a bug, and content? How about an overnight nut punch?
https://medium.com/@hrnews1/the-amount-of-police-civil-forfeiture-is-now-more-than-all-civilian-theft-and-burglary-combined-94568bd24cb1
Get up and get down, Glibs.
🌞✂️🏃
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=caINuHPKkFQ
🎶🎶
Why are you running with scissors?
Living on the edge.
Good morning, Sean, U, and Ted’S.!
Morning, How goes?
So far, so good. Found out everything about our new medical insurance plans except how much they’re going to cost us. Almost got payroll finalized because they fixed almost all the errors, so today should be a relatively easy final check.
How about you?
At 3:30, I was wide awake, but went back to bed, because it was 3:30. But 5:30, it took me forty minutes to forcibly drag myself out of bed.
🥱
😴😩😧
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/mega-millions-tickets-will-climb-to-5-but-officials-promise-bigger-prizes-and-better-odds/ar-AA1rQsiG
Nope. Nice way to kill the game.
ÖRF (Austria) with a propaganda story this morning on how, just two weeks after Helene, evil Trump is politicizing the response. And he’s doing it with disinformation to boot!
And apparently Trump is the one responsible for giving FEMA bucks to immigrants.
“Kids in cages” however, was never fake news and never Obama’s doing….
Just curious – do the Austrians say he’s worse than Hitler?
LOL
‘just two weeks’
Kind of a long time if you’re in a disaster zone.
TMITE.
Are you prepared for the oncoming storm?
Mostly. Wishing I had more stuff on hand now and had sent my family away. Technically we’ve got enough per government guidelines, but given what a cluster this could become I’m a bit nervous.
House is mostly boarded up, I’ve got a good style of roof and new shingles… No big trees on the property.
I’m at elevation 50′ so storm surge won’t get me, not in an evacuation or flood zone, so hoping we’re fine there.
Good luck man. Let us know you’re okay when it passes. And whatever you do, don’t let things go bad.
What UCS said.
Current track is 20-30 miles south of us… Definitely too close for comfort, but a lot can change (for better or worse) in the next day.
Given the strength of the storm even if you aren’t in the direct path it’s not going to be good.
Stay safe!
Republicans pounce!
A category 6 hurricane?
Is that possible?
No. That’s like turning it up to 11.
You know, just simple lines intertwining, you know, very much like – I’m really influenced by Mozart and Bach, and it’s sort of in between those, really. It’s like a Mach piece, really.
This one’s called “Lick My Lovepump”.
Live from a hazardous waste incinerator in NE Ohio…
suh’ fam
whats goody