I have been getting pretty used to the gritty and grippy texture of the new 4th generation of Glock pistols.

Neither my Gen 3 G23 or my Gen 1 G17 have this sort of texture so I thought WWH45D — what would  Hickok45 do — and he’s a huge fan of Talon Grips, which he says, at least in sandpaper, help out with his accuracy and handling, so I ordered a couple sets and they were a snap to install.

Pretty much just use an alcohol wipe to remove any oil, schmutz, or dirt, and then you remove the sticker backing, place it according to the instructions, make sure the three front strap pieces go under the left side panel, and the just blast it with a very hot hair drier until everything shrinks-to-fit.

Err on the side of more heat and also make sure you press everything down and make sure there are no gaps or bubbles. And squeeze and press. Doesn’t it look great!

I installed it myself so it really must not be very tough and each grip was cut perfectly for the pistol I ordered it for.

My Ruger MkIII Target “678″ is way better than me. Reliable, hyper-accurate, solid, durable. You should get one. Even better with a Volquartsen trigger job and a set of ergo grips.

Sadly, they don’t make this tapered-barrel model anymore with the 6 7/8″ barrel, but since they’re bomb-proof, used is as good as new when it comes to an MK — some people actually swear to the MkII Rugers above the MkIII anyway, so get what you like.

Some say there’s nothing better than the MkII Government Target — it was professionally accurized and also came with a 6″ bull barrel, which supposedly does a better job at preventing muzzle vibrations and issues with rapid-fire-associated overheating which can temporarily warp the barrel just a wee bit.

That said, I will never be good enough to concerned with microvibration- or heat-related inaccuracy.

I laugh all the way through the 30 minutes of 2 Broke Girls every Monday night. And I laugh through reruns, too. There’s no one cooker than Max.

An article this long in the Washington Post says to me that 2 Broke Girls is a force to be reckoned with.

I had my television début on Washington Business Report this morning on WJLA ABC7. I was invited on by Rebecca Cooper because she stumbled upon the Abraham Harrison website and liked our humor and our business.  So, here’s the video of the segment for you to check out:

I just received this note from Scott Schenkelberg, Executive Director of my favorite charity, Miriam’s Kitchen, where I volunteer as Sous Chef and Dining Room Campaign at least a couple-times-a-month, and any time they need a pinch hitter:

All of us at Miriam’s Kitchen have been impacted by your generosity this year.

From the homeless men and women who join us every day for a healthy meal and support services, to the volunteers who have the great opportunity to work with our guests because of your support–you have changed lives.

As we prepare to ring in the new year, we want to take a moment to let you know just how much your support really means to us.

Here are just 3 of the life-changing events you helped make possible in 2011:

• More than 3,200 homeless men and women received support services aimed at increasing their self-sufficiency and improving their quality of life,
• we hired our first Director of Advocacy and adopted a new vision of ending chronic homelessness in Washington, DC, and
• nearly fifty of our guests received keys to their very own home.

We’ve had a remarkable last few years here at Miriam’s Kitchen, and have you to thank for allowing us to continue to serve our guests in the best ways possible.

From all of us here at Miriam’s Kitchen, thank you for helping to change the lives of our guests this year.

Happy New Year.

Scott Schenkelberg, Executive Director

Related articles

• 24% of Miriam’s Kitchen’s guests are homeless veterans (chrisabraham.com)
• Please Support Miriam’s Kitchen on Give to the Max Day (chrisabraham.com)
• Why there are so many homeless people in Washington, DC (chrisabraham.com)
• Testomonial from Miriam’s Kitchen (chrisabraham.com)
• Tomorrow is Give to the Max Day (deaconjohnspace.wordpress.com)
• Must-see video about homelessness in Washington (chrisabraham.com)
• How to write an irresistible blogger pitch email (chrisabraham.com)
• Tomorrow is Give to the Max Day (deaconforlife.blogspot.com)
• Detailed analysis of the perfect blogger pitch (socialmedia.biz)
• Two fun ways to support Miriam’s Kitchen (chrisabraham.com)
• Some shelters dish out organic Thanksgiving to homeless (usatoday.com)
• Auntie Miriam’s Potato Kugel – Crispy Goodness (jitterycook.com)

Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun is not the work of a Glock fanboy like many of these gun books are.

It is the gun version of Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World. Of course it is an historically-accurate representation of the life and times of Gaston Glock and everything GLOCK, Inc., and its line of handguns.

Some accounts claim that Glock developed his gun in just six months, or perhaps even three. Glock himself said the process lasted a year—still a startlingly short period of time for a novice firearm designer to produce a prototype. He filed for an Austrian patent on April 30, 1981. It was his seventeenth invention, so he called his gun the Glock 17. Coincidentally, his creation could store an impressive seventeen rounds in its magazine, with an eighteenth in the chamber, if the user so desired.

It is also a complete history of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, a history of gun-related politics and policies, and also a very accurate and sober portrayal of America’s love for and of guns.

For the first time, in 2008, the US Supreme Court stated clearly that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to private possession of handguns in the home, as opposed to a right related to the maintenance of a civil militia or other armed force. The court by a 5–4 vote struck down a Washington, DC, law that effectively prohibited private handgun ownership. In 2010, the high court extended its ruling to other municipalities and states, invalidating a similar law in Chicago.

In the same way you read Cod even though you’re not into fish or fishing, you really should read Glock even if you’re not into sports shooting.

If you’re anti-gun, you’ll learn both about the culture of firearms in America and how powerful and intelligent — savvy — a force your enemy really is.

If you’re pro-gun, the Glock revolution will blow your mind, especially in contrast with how pathetically every gun manufacturer in the world performed against GLOCK, especially poor Smith & Wesson, a company that watched as GLOCK came in and single-handedly replaced every .38 Special revolver in every police station in America with not only a high-capacity, semi-automatic, magazine-fed pistol, but with a Glock 17.

The Glock, introduced in the 1980s, inherited all aspects of the American firearm heritage: It was seen as an instrument of law and security, but also menace, danger, and fear. It became the handgun of choice for cops and a favorite of some demented mass killers. Its black plastic-and- metal construction set it apart from everything else on the market, suggesting modernism and efficiency. The handgun is the weapon Americans really care about, and within a decade of arriving here, the Glock had become the ultimate American handgun.

I can keep on going.  Each story is more amazing than the next.  The chutzpah of Gaston Glock is only bettered by the cajones of his right hand man during the early days in Atlanta, Mr. Karl Walter, a man who turned the conservative and serious world of arms sales and arms dealing in America into a discotheque, into a circus, into a strip club, into a world of Hollywood action flicks, rap music videos, and an army of Glock devotees that is only bettered by those mad men and women who are obsessed with their antiquated 1911s.

Let me explain why I know so much about this book and it’s not even out yet.  Well, I read an advanced Galley copy of the book.

On November 4th, Paul Barrett contacted me to review his upcoming book, Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun. He chose me because I guess I am pretty open about both my gun ownership and my attraction to Glocks.

Though I have only been shooting for a year, I already have a pretty nice collection of three Glock handguns: a Generation 3 Glock 23 in .40 S&W, a 9mm First Generation Glock 17 — the original — a retiree from the DC police department, and my Generation 4 Glock 26, my  Baby Glock, in 9mm.

So, in an exemplary blogger outreach campaign, Mr, Barrett sent me a Galley copy to read. And I read it. I consumed it and was mesmerized. I was mesmerized by how much I didn’t know about these United States, about gun legislation, about gun bans and bans on high-capacity magazines.

I was flabbergasted by the loopholes in these bans that were so big you could taxi a 747 through them.

I was not mesmerized by the typical fanboy depiction of their favorite gun and gun maker, I was mesmerized by a book written by an investigative journalist who dug deeply into the GLOCK empire and its ripple effects on not just Law Enforcement but popular culture, rap music, politics, television, and hundreds of movies.

I really didn’t know anything about the history of firearms in America or how they’re sourced and have been banned; how they’re imported — or, rather, sourced and then assembled — and how they’re marketed and sold.

Glock built a veritable cash machine, with margins in the neighborhood of 70 percent—the kind of performance that would warrant a Harvard Business School case study were Glock not so secretive about his decision making. Few outsiders knew how he had accomplished what he had done.

And that’s not even scratching the surface of all that is GLOCK, Inc, and its illustrious founder, Gaston Glock, an Austrian nerd who ended up developing, designing, and producing the most iconic pistol since the Colt 1911.

Glock asked the colonels to describe the Army’s requirements for a new handgun, which they did. “Mr. Glock, in his credulousness, said it shouldn’t be difficult to make such an item,” according to an official company account published years later. “To him, the handgun was simply another accoutrement that attached to a soldier’s belt, similar to the knife he already produced.” Or, as Gaston Glock himself put it in an interview: “That I knew nothing was my advantage.”

If you liked Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, Salt: A World History, The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, or Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, you’ll love Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun by Paul M. Barrett.

Related articles

• Reading a galley of Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun (chrisabraham.com)
• Glock denies slowing for Hamilton (autonetinsurance.co.uk)
• Gabby Giffords District Republicans Raffle a Glock! (outsidethebeltway.com)
• Ariz. GOP raffling off Glock gun (politico.com)
• GOP raffles Glock in Gabrielle Giffords’ district (cbsnews.com)
• Cleaning a Glock (or the 2nd Amendment argument), never looked so good! (Video) (politicsandfinance.blogspot.com)
• Pima County GOP Officials Raffle Same Type of Gun Used in Tucson Shooting (foxnews.com)
• Pima County GOP Raffling Glock, Same Gun Used in Giffords Shooting (abcnews.go.com)
• Glock admits need to ‘google’ 2012 teammate Pic (inautonews.com)
• Virgin’s Glock starts work in McLaren simulator (inautonews.com)

Over the last five years that Abraham Harrison has been pitching bloggers on behalf of clients, we have learned a thing or two about how best to reach bloggers, how to engage them, how to get them to carry our client’s message to their readership. Whether we’re doing an outreach to the bloggers of mainstream media and celebrity blogs or to someone who has just set up a blog for the first time, it all begins with the message model.

Below is an example of a message model we developed for Miriam’s Kitchen for National Homelessness Month. We didn’t use it because we focused on Give to the Max Day instead, but I think it is an example of our best work and I’ll put it aside and we’ll use it next year for sure. I will share the entire email pitch in total below but then I will go through a line-by-line explanation as to what we did and why we did it:

From: Chris Abraham <cjabraham@miriamskitchennews.org>
Subject: November is National Homelessness Month

Hi <<First Name>>

November is National Homelessness Month and I’m reaching out to you to discuss the issue of homelessness in America. I’m also hoping that you’ll discuss this issue with the readers of <<Blog Name>>. I am a volunteer at a small kitchen for the homeless in DC and while working there it occurred to me that this issue affects every town, village, and city in America.

I have put together a microsite that puts the issue of homelessness in perspective and also uses Miriam’s Kitchen, the kitchen where I volunteer, as a model for addressing homelessness and untreated mental illness in the US capital city. There are a multitude of news, facts, videos, photos, and banners so please feel free to repost any of it:

www.miriamskitchennews.org

If you are able to post about this issue in any form, it would really help spread the message of homelessness in its many diverse forms and maybe suggest ways to help improve many lives. Please let me know if you have any questions and if you are able to help. Thank you so much.

Chris

–
Chris Abraham,
On behalf of Miriam’s Kitchen
www.miriamskitchen.org

OK, now I will go into more detail, section by section …

From: Chris Abraham <cjabraham@miriamskitchennews.org>

The first thing you’ll notice is that I am doing the outreach in this example. Though not the norm, I personally volunteer and donate to Miriam’s Kitchen and people know that, so I decided to reach out as me because that’s the most authentic relationship. In other cases, the names of Abraham Harrison team members fit the bill. The next thing you’ll notice is that the email doesn’t come from either miriamskitchen.org or chrisabraham.com domains. Instead, we virtually always reserve a completely new and unique domain name for each campaign, in this case miriamskitchennews.org. Why? Three reasons:

1. Clients protect their domains. Most companies and organizations have very restrictive IT policies that limit the use of their domain and the allocation of email addresses. This makes it almost impossible to place social media news release content on their site, so we reserve our own because it gets around any of those issues.
2. Bloggers don’t trust PR firms. We prefer to reach out to bloggers as the client instead of as Abraham Harrison on behalf of our clients. Why? Not to be deceptive but because a strong majority of all the bloggers we reach out to are not trained in public relations processes and don’t generally feel comfortable being communicated to via a broker, so we always try to communicate as clearly and as simply as possible, so choosing something in-between the two is best, in this case cjabraham@miriamskitchennews.org.
3. Spam detectors are always a risk. Because we reach out cold to upwards of five-thousand bloggers at a time, it is essential that we don’t put ever put mission-critical domain names in jeopardy of being black-listed as spam or being taken away by a fickle registrar such as GoDaddy.com. While we’re exceedingly careful when we target and how we engage each blogger, it is amazing how few email recipients need to report a single email as unwanted before the gray-bearded email wizards can ban and block an entire domain from being deliverable–we never want to put ourselves or our clients in that precarious position. While this has never actually happened to us or our clients, we have felt enough saber-rattling and there have been enough shots over our bow that we make sure we never put anyone into a defensive position. Ultimately, protecting our clients’ brands as well as our own is of top priority.

Let’s move on to the all-important subject line.

Subject: November is National Homelessness Month

The first, and sometimes only, thing a blogger sees when she receives our email pitch is the email subject line and the sender. Choosing a title is super-hard because we want to be as neutral and as informational as possible. Teasing or tricking a blogger into opening by being cute, mysterious, or clever in the subject line has almost always blown up in our faces. The simpler the better, especially when you realize that we follow up a couple times after the first outreach–something I will go into more in a future post. But first, the salutation.

Hi <<First Name>>

When we research bloggers to pitch, we always do our very best to discover the full name of the blog, the first name of the blogger, and the best address possible. We also make sure the name is correct because it isn’t always clear. I can’t tell you how many pitches my blog, Because the Medium is the Message, and my corporate blog, Marketing Conversation, get from marketers who address us wrong, mostly as Abraham. “Dear Abraham.” Those go straight into the trash. Next, our mailer, nicknamed “The Cloud,” has a mail merge feature, allowing us to personalize our email a little bit, within reason, and appropriately.

What’s behind that first paragraph?

November is National Homelessness Month and I’m reaching out to you to discuss the issue of homelessness in America. I’m also hoping that you’ll discuss this issue with the readers of <<Blog Name>>. I am a volunteer at a small kitchen for the homeless in DC and while working there it occurred to me that this issue affects every town, village, and city in America.

The most important thing is to make sure the first paragraph of every pitch is simple, clear, concise, and immediately addresses why you’re emailing. Yes, answer who, what, when, where, why, and how–but in very short order, so get to it! Who? Miriam’s Kitchen. What? Homelessness in America, an issue that affects every town, village, and city in America. When? November. Where? On your blog. Why? To share the issue with your readers How? Posting to your blog. I added the last sentence to proactively address why I was the person to be writing at all–because I am personally invested and this is meaningful to me, for real.

I am lucky enough to have Dan Krueger and Phillip Rhoades on my team. They’re both excellent BS detectors and masters of minimalism. For a pitch like this, Dan or I generally create a first draft. Then, the other two of us go through the draft line-by-line. As if it were poetry. We cut to the bone. This process is a direct result of three things:

One, you only have a blogger for a few seconds–if she opens it at all–so you must cut to the chase.

Two, we have all received enough pitches ourselves to know who does and doesn’t read our blogs, so the entire “I am a real fan of your blog and have been reading you a long time” are generally lies. So, after you write your first draft, cut out all the inauthentic praise. Truth be told, if your targeting is good and you have a great offer and are clear as to what you want, you’re effectively doing the blogger the favor of providing good content that they can easily and quickly pop onto her blog–and you really don’t need to flatter. I am not saying that you should be short, rude, or curt, but surely be very clear as to who you are, what you are, what you want, and what you need.

Yes, I do volunteer at Miriam’s–many times-a-month. If I didn’t–or if I sent the email out as someone else in the company, an online analyst, and that person hadn’t ever graced Miriam’s, I would never make that up. Everything in the email must be honest and true. This isn’t a con job, this isn’t a cheesy 11pm pick up, this is the sharing of relevant information–don’t feel like you have to sell to someone or fool someone to cover you. Also, be very careful about playing the heart strings too loudly when you’re doing an outreach on behalf of a charity. To be honest, the less said the better–allow the blogger to come up with her own conclusions–you really don’t have to tell the blogger what to think. Not only isn’t that necessary but it can be downright insulting to bloggers, who are by their very nature free spirits.

Now, on to the meat of the pitch.

I have put together a microsite that puts the issue of homelessness in perspective and also uses Miriam’s Kitchen, the kitchen where I volunteer, as a model for addressing homelessness and untreated mental illness in the US capital city. There are a multitude of news, facts, videos, photos, and banners so please feel free to repost any of it:

www.miriamskitchennews.org

One of the results of making the email pitch so efficient and tight is that there’s a lot left behind. Most folks who pitch to bloggers still include the kitchen sink in their email pitches: PDF or MS Word attachments are still very common. The majority paste their rich-text traditional press release inline in the email, along with inline images, logos, and graphics. We refuse for three reasons.

1. Our email pitches are all about starting a conversation. We’re more interested in getting an email reply that we can respond to than we are in firing and forgetting.
2. We always send plain text emails. We do not include anything that might result in spam-boxing. We don’t even include any “http://” prefixes in our links, assuming that the webmail or email client will activate the link when the blogger opens up their email and views the content.
3. We don’t take the blogger’s interest in our pitch for granted. The email, to me, is a speed date. We don’t want to waste anybody’s time or good will, so we allow the blogger to decide whether she wants to go on a second date. We like it best when the chemistry is so intense that our client and the blogger drive to Vegas immediately and get hitched–by which I mean we reach out, the blogger immediately likes our pitch, immediately posting to their blog as well as Facebook and Twitter–but we don’t want to assume any of that. We like to play it cool because a heavy sell never works, especially in an earned-media PR campaign.

On to the end of the email:

If you are able to post about this issue in any form, it would really help spread the message of homelessness in its many diverse forms and maybe suggest ways to help improve many lives. Please let me know if you have any questions and if you are able to help. Thank you so much.

Chris

As I said before, being clear as to why we’re writing is essential. Being clear what you want and what you expect is essential, too. Too many pitches I receive simply share their message but are never bold, brave, or courageous enough to make an ask: please post it anywhere, anyhow, to help spread the message of homelessness in America.

The most essential thing, however, is that this is really just a speed date. If we pass muster but the blogger just isn’t sure who we are or why I am emailing her, we need to be painfully clear that this email is not a fire-and-forget. That this email is the beginning of a connection and that simply hitting reply will result in swift answers. Also, accountability. We end just about every email with a direct request to the blogger to please let us know if she ends up helping and sharing–and that we’re appreciative either way. At the very least because she’s spent some of her time opening and reading our email.

Finally, the signature.

–
Chris Abraham,
On behalf of Miriam’s Kitchen
www.miriamskitchen.org

If you’ll notice, we don’t misrepresent ourselves–or myself–as being on the staff of Miriam’s Kitchen; however, we also don’t want to confuse the purity of the message by bringing a second brand into the brief message model, such as would be the case if I included Abraham Harrison LLC in the signature. So, we chose to split the middle.

What you’re thinking right now is “how in the heck could you blog so much about such a short email?” Well, it is because we spend a lot of time, many revisions, and three or more staff cutting, editing, re-ordering, and BS-detecting each message model. We’re very intentional, very formulaic, and also very careful. We don’t want to tell bloggers what to think. We don’t want to put words in their mouths, and we surely don’t want to alienate a blogger because we color the copy in such a way that they reject our pitch based on style instead of content and mission.

It is like a first date, especially for a man like me: it is more important for me to remember to be a good listener and not to spend the entire meal making it all about me. The longer my message model and email pitch is the more likely the blogger will feel like I might have sent them an email in error. I want each email pitch to be as neutral and factual as possible. All dogma, passion, color, interpretation, and story should be provided by the blogger–and don’t forget that everything that you cut out of the email message model can possibly find a happy home in your Social Media News Release.

While the email might seem very casual and conversational, winging it is not an option when you’re officially reaching out on behalf of your brand. This is doubly so when you’re reaching out on behalf of a client. The message model is a getting-to-know-you process and not simply a product. Before I explain what goes into an email blogger pitch, I need to explain this process and the philosophy that we have developed through trial and error since the Fall of 2006.

Being completely familiar with the client, the brand, the product, and the services, before moving forward with the pitch is essential. Anything we don’t use in our message model and email pitch we aggregate it into a social media, multimedia, social media profiles, news release.

This process of collecting all of the client’s assets and collateral material, including videos, photos, ads, bios, history, background, context, interviews, case studies, testimonials, and media mentions, help us then decide if there are any missing pieces that we need to request from the client or create ourselves.

Then we can interview the client to discuss what the subject of the pitch should be, what the ask is, and then which blogs and bloggers should be included–or excluded–and who to exclude is often more important than who to bring into the pitch.

My next blog post will focus on what I am all sure you’re curious about: the social media news release (SMNR), that “kitchen sink” catch-all supporting document that provides all the details, content, media, images, and greater story that has been pruned from the initial pitch but surely deserves being told.

A future post will be about the value of following up a couple times with any bloggers who don’t reply or post. We have evolved a process that does not email just once but also sends two follow-up emails to those bloggers who don’t reply at all. Funny thing is, we get only 25% of all posts from the first email. We get 50% of all our total earned media posts from the first follow-up email and another 25% from the final outreach, so I really want to go into the why and how of that–and how we handle something that might very well be scary to some of you and and might feel like we’re being a pest to others–and I will address all of those fears and perceptions.

Please feel free to ask any questions or make any comments you might have on your mind after reading this blog post and I will do my best to respond.

Related articles

• Testomonial from Miriam’s Kitchen (chrisabraham.com)
• Agencies are too afraid of bloggers to do their job (chrisabraham.com)
• Please Support Miriam’s Kitchen on Give to the Max Day (chrisabraham.com)
• Authentic Internet inbound marketing the way God intended (chrisabraham.com)
• Set up your Google+ Brand Page right now! (chrisabraham.com)
• Fire for effect when you can’t get a direct bead on your market (chrisabraham.com)
• Live people over Robot Armies and Zombie Hordes (chrisabraham.com)
• How to make friends and influence bloggers (chrisabraham.com)
• Write your blog to be taken completely out of context (chrisabraham.com)
• Amplify Twitter and Facebook with GaggleAmp (chrisabraham.com)

Via Marketing Conversation via Socialmedia.biz via Biznology

Tonight I get to repeat the amazing experience I had last year when I volunteered to sous chef the first annual Thanksgiving Dinner for the homeless at Miriam’s Kitchen.  I excited to share the missive I received from Miriam’s this AM outing the amazing menu we’re preparing and sharing with your guests this afternoon:

• Happy Thanksgiving! (chrisabraham.com)
• Some shelters dish out organic Thanksgiving to homeless (usatoday.com)
• Testomonial from Miriam’s Kitchen (chrisabraham.com)
• Happy Thanksgiving! from The League of Aggressive Progressives – Politics and Your Thanksgiving Dinner (theleagueofaggressiveprogressives.wordpress.com)
• Candy Dish: Thanksgiving Overload (collegecandy.com)
• For A Thanksgiving Dinner That Can’t Be Beat… (wncx.radio.com)
• TV Stars Join Kirk Douglas to Serve Thanksgiving Dinner to the Homeless (aoltv.com)
• Help me make a Thanksgiving dinner for one (ask.metafilter.com)
• Kim Kardashian Reminds You To Think Of The Homeless This Thanksgiving (hills2city.wordpress.com)
• PETA Serves ‘Baby’ for Thanksgiving Dinner (newser.com)
• Survey: What’s Your Mashed Potato Technique? (thekitchn.com)
• Unique Mashed Potato Recipes (livingrichwithcoupons.com)
• Happy Thanksgiving! (growup318.com)
• The story of the three turkeys (tonydelarosa.wordpress.com)
• Can I Make Stuffing and Mashed Potatoes Today? (dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Thanksgiving Alternative Meals (vegontherun.com)
• Alyssa’s Mashed Potatoes (thepantryfairy.wordpress.com)
• Celebrate the Joy of the Season with Special Holiday Values at Mimi’s Cafe (prnewswire.com)
• Mashed Potatoes with Roasted Garlic and Lemon Thyme Butter (savoringeverybite.wordpress.com)

Today I will be volunteering at Miriam’s Kitchen in Washington, DC, as sous chef to cook and serve 8 turkeys along with an an entire organic and fresh menu for our homeless guests.

This is the second annual Thanksgiving dinner that Miriam’s Kitchen has served to the homeless community and I am proud to have been a part of the first annual dinner last year.

Tomorrow I am going back to Miriam’s to act as floor captain, so I get to give back two days in a row, one in the capacity as cook and one in the capacity as the guy who gets to manage the dining room.

I love both job equally and while I love to cook I also love to interact with our guests, our security, and also the amazing social workers.

Related articles

• Testomonial from Miriam’s Kitchen (chrisabraham.com)
• Please Support Miriam’s Kitchen on Give to the Max Day (chrisabraham.com)
• Two fun ways to support Miriam’s Kitchen (chrisabraham.com)
• Must-see video about homelessness in Washington (chrisabraham.com)
• Some shelters dish out organic Thanksgiving to homeless (usatoday.com)
• At Miriam’s Kitchen, the Case Work is Why the Kitchen Exists (chrisabraham.com)
• 24% of Miriam’s Kitchen’s guests are homeless veterans (chrisabraham.com)
• A Thanksgiving Poem (babywithatwist.wordpress.com)
• Tomorrow is Give to the Max Day (deaconjohnspace.wordpress.com)
• Commited to my community as well as my clients (chrisabraham.com)
• Why there are so many homeless people in Washington, DC (chrisabraham.com)
• Obama: Thanksgiving spirit can help nation (content.usatoday.com)
• Caprice Helps Students Dish Up A Feast For The Homeless To Celebrate Thanksgiving (huffingtonpost.co.uk)
• Tomorrow is Give to the Max Day (deaconforlife.blogspot.com)

I received this missive just now from Miriam’s Kitchen on this, Veteran’s Day, 11-11-11:

There are 76,000 homeless veterans in the United States on any given night.

At Miriam’s Kitchen, nearly 1,000 (or 24%) of our guests are veterans.

Just this morning, we were joined by 15 veterans and had the opportunity to thank each of them personally for their service.

We also had the opportunity to talk with them about the services we provide to veterans.

Those services include:

• meeting their basic needs and providing them with healthy meals and clean clothing,
• providing them with services like medical care, mental health treatment and legal assistance through our case management program,
• linking them with housing programs specifically tailored to veterans,
• connecting them to services through the Department of Veterans Affairs and All Faith Consortium by providing space for their outreach workers in our dining room, and
• helping them find their way by welcoming them into the Miriam’s Kitchen community.

You are already a big part of the work we do for homeless veterans but if you’re inspired to do more today, here are a few ideas from the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.

From all of us here at Miriam’s Kitchen, Happy Veterans Day.

Related articles

• Please Support Miriam’s Kitchen on Give to the Max Day (chrisabraham.com)
• Homeless Veterans More Likely To Die On Streets Than Homeless Non-Veterans, Study Says (huffingtonpost.com)
• Study Finds Homeless Veterans Stay Homeless Longer Than Others (atwar.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Is the homeless veteran problem set to explode? (ctv.ca)
• Homeless Veterans (themoderatevoice.com)
• Group prepares for surge in number of homeless vets (ctv.ca)
• Homeless Veteran’s Day Program (thepittsburghlitterbox.wordpress.com)
• At Miriam’s Kitchen, the Case Work is Why the Kitchen Exists (chrisabraham.com)
• Veterans returning from service to get preference for job openings at Port of New York and New Jersey (nj.com)
• Veterans More Likely To Be Homeless, Study Says (huffingtonpost.com)

Tomorrow is a special day.

Wednesday, November 9 is Give to the Max Day of Greater Washington, “Give to the Max Day is a massive one-day regional online fundraiser that will unite local Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC communities to support nonprofits serving the area.” Please contribute to Miriam’s Kitchen on November 9 — let’s really give DC homelessness a swift kick in the pants!

Here’s a very gorgeous video about Miriam’s Kitchen and some insight into chronic homelessness in Washington: 12,000 Stories:

Here are some facts about Give to the Max Day, Miriam’s Kitchen, homelessness in Washington, and homelessness in America:

• Starting at midnight on Wednesday, November 9, local residents will donate online to help raise millions of dollars for local nonprofits as part of the first annual Give to the Max Day: Greater Washington.
• Give to the Max Day is a massive one-day regional online fundraiser that will unite local Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC communities to support nonprofits serving the area.
• As part of Give to the Max Day: Greater Washington, nonprofits large and small can earn their share of $125,000 in cash awards, including up to $25,000 for nonprofits with the most individual donors and the most money donated.
• Homelessness in Washington, DC, the Nation’s Capitol: there are more than 6,500 homeless men, women and children in Washington, DC on any given night. Of those, nearly 2,000 are chronically homeless–meaning they have been homeless for a year or more, or four or more times in the past three years.
• Miriam’s Kitchen provides free, homemade meals and high-quality support services to more than 4,000 homeless men and women each year in the Nation’s Capitol, Washington, DC. Their core programs are meals, case management, Miriam’s Studio, and Miriam’s Cafe.
• Homelessness at Miriam’s Kitchen: on any given day at Miriam’s Kitchen, 82 percent of their guests are chronically homeless.  In fact, the average length of homelessness of the guests is 5.5 years
• Nearly 80 percent of Miriam’s Kitchen’s guests live on the streets of DC, in parks around the city, under the bridges along the Potomac River, and in emergency shelters.
• Miriam’s Kitchen’s guest demographics: 95 percent of Miriam’s Kitchen’s guests are male, 60 percent are African American and the median age of our guests is 50.
• Mental illness and addiction at Miriam’s Kitchen: Many of Miriam’s Kitchen’s guests suffer from severe mental illnesses and addictions, making them the most fragile and hardest to connect with social services.
• There are 671,859 people experiencing homelessness on any given night in the United States – roughly 22 of every 10,000 people are homeless
• 18 percent (124,000) experience chronic homelessness in the United States:Chronic homelessness is often the public face of homelessness, involving either long-term and/or repeated bouts of homelessness coupled with some sort of disability (physical or mental). People experiencing chronic homelessness often end up living in shelters and consume a plurality of the homeless assistance system’s resources
• 37 percent of the homeless population are people in families: Families become homeless as a result of some unforeseen financial crisis – a medical emergency, a car accident, a death in the family – that prevents them from being able to hold on to housing. An estimated 85,000 families experience homelessness each night.
• 50,000 young people are homeless long-term: Young people often become homeless due to some familial disruption, including divorce, neglect, or abuse. An estimated 50,000 youth experience long-term homelessness.
• 20 percent of the homeless population is made up of veterans: There are approximately 131,000 homeless veterans, accounting for 20 percent of the entire homeless population. Veterans often become homeless due to war-related disability. For a variety of reasons – physical disability, mental anguish, post-traumatic stress, etc. – many veterans find difficulty readjusting to civilian life.
• Non-chronic single adults: Survivors of domestic violence and former prisoners re-entering society are among the other groups of people that often experience homelessness
• Lack of affordable housing leads to homelessness: Homelessness occurs when people or households are unable to acquire and/or maintain housing they can afford. The main reason behind this inability to acquire/maintain housing is the scarcity of affordable housing in the United States – particularly in more urban areas where homelessness is more prevalent

Disclosure: my company, Abraham Harrison, and I are doing a Give to the Max: Greater Washington blogger outreach campaign pro bono for Miriam’s Kitchen.  As I am sure all of you know by now, I am a proud Miriam’s Kitchen volunteer. On some nights I am a Sous Chef at work in the kitchen and on others I am Floor Captain at work in the dining room. John Murphy asks me which one I prefer and I say, honestly, I love them both equally.

Related articles

• Must-see video about homelessness in Washington (chrisabraham.com)
• At Miriam’s Kitchen, the Case Work is Why the Kitchen Exists (chrisabraham.com)
• Why there are so many homeless people in Washington, DC (chrisabraham.com)
• Two fun ways to support Miriam’s Kitchen (chrisabraham.com)
• Give to the Max: Greater Washington (chrisabraham.com)
• How to End Chronic Homelessness (chrisabraham.com)
• Please Help Me Raise Funds for The Children’s Inn at NIH Through Give to the Max Day (mizzinformation.com)
• Commited to my community as well as my clients (chrisabraham.com)
• It is too easy to go from middle class to homeless in America (chrisabraham.com)
• Mental Health of the Homeless on the Streets of Washington, DC (chrisabraham.com)
• It’s a Book: How Give to the Max Day Could Help Kids Read (waxingunlyrical.com)
• Give to the Max Day in in Greater Washington, DC (bloggoschloggo.wordpress.com)
• Miriam Carbajal Blanco : Costa Rica (kiva.org)
• Miriam Wangeci Gitonga : Kenya (kiva.org)
• Miriam Del Carmen Vilchez Madrigal : Nicaragua (kiva.org)
• Miriam’s Kitchen Serves Farm Fresh Food to DC’s Homeless (chrisabraham.com)
• Miriam De Jesús Ruiz Cano : Colombia (kiva.org)

I am reading a galley proof of Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun by Paul M. Barrett as we speak.

I must say that the book reminds me of one of the long-form articles in the Atlantic or the New Yorker — the book covers everything, and I am only through to something like 30% through.

I have read from the inception of Glock all the way through to where Glocks took over being the go-to gun on Law & Order. This is really a reporter’s book but Mr. Barrett cannot hide the awe he feels for the audacity of Karl Walter (chutzpah, actually) as the salesman as well as the generosity of Gaston Glock, primarily because the Glock 17 only cost $100 to make and so profits were upwards of 66% on every pistol.

It is fascinating, it is awesome — I never knew any of this, really, though I am sure you all do, anyway. All that I know about concrete I learned in high school from a long form article in the New Yorker, so sometimes there are books that just go soup-to-nuts. Then again, I am only 30% through so I will reserve a proper review until I am done.

Oh, that said, this book does not read like reading the Encyclopædia Britannica — there’s a narrative and a level of the author writing the book and synthesizing and analyzing what he’s learned and so he does tell a story.

Related articles

• The Best Hollow Books in the Business (chrisabraham.com)
• Glock Makes Significant Donation to Second Amendment Foundation (2ndamendmentright.org)

I’m taking a business trip to Atlanta between October 12th and October 15th. Pop me a note if you’re around and would maybe like to get together and connect.

I had breakfast with John Bell of Ogilvy a number of years ago. He didn’t see the value of investing limited budget, time and resources on the long tail when those treasures would better be used to woo the high-fliers, professionals, top-cows and A-listers.

That’s fair enough, and surely a common question, and a question we must address close to the beginning of every sales call we make at our agency when we propose blogger outreach to a prospective client.

The value comes from penetration, permanence, perseverance and persistence. There are only a finite number of members of every organization’s email list. Mashable and TechCrunch have a sizable but vertical (narrow) audience. When we reach out and pitch to thousands of bloggers, however small or niche, if they’re within maybe one but generally a handful of loosely defined topics, we always reach well outside of the echo chamber of a conversation that tends to get contained within the walls of a tech blog or mommy blog.

By reaching out ever further, we don’t assume that anyone outside of the five major urban centers are obsessed with the top five major papers or the top five major blogs. Doing so makes the critical mistake that if you get covered by the FT, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, you’ve got the world covered. In fact, I will use a newspaper analogy to try to illustrate my point.

The top A-list blogs and bloggers are analogous to David Gelles and the top journalists at the FT, the Times, Washington Post and the Journal. Though highly prestigious, getting your new startup covered by Mr. Gelles may very well not be enough. Outside of Chicago, New York, LA, San Francisco, Washington, DC, Boston and Miami, the United States is also a collection of regional, city, town and village daily papers as well as weeklies and newsletters and journals, both academic and professional, and email lists and Web-only news sources.

People have only a finite amount of time, so their consumption of content, information, news, reviews and alerts is limited. The closer you can get to the media organ that your target market consumes primarily and religiously, the higher the probability that content will register with the reader, will resonate with the reader, and will feel like it is intimate to the reader and his local community and experience of the world.

The Internet is such a gift. Never before has it been remotely possible to reach out to thousands of publishing platforms in one go, with just a team of five, globally or geographically, with a couple follow-ups and concierge service, with the reliable results of hundreds of posts and their associated tweets, retweets and secondary coverage. Add to this long-tail “theory of everyone” campaign a more one-to-one, relationship-based, Rolodex outreach to your most connected agents to-to list and you can have all the mentions in the rarefied air of the A-list as you can manage in the time allowed (and with what you have to pitch — sometimes the quality or sexiness isn’t there and it can be a super-tough sell, requiring horse-trading, etc.) in addition to the hundreds of earned media mentions that one can very reliably acquire — with the first posts showing up two weeks after the contract is signed and going on for another four weeks.

Building connections with the top influencers

One of the biggest issues with A-list outreaches that I experienced when I was at NMS and Edelman is that what happens when you only have a prior relationship with only a handful of top-tier semi-professional and professional bloggers and blogger networks that are germane to the topic or demographic of the client? What happens if you don’t know enough and the ones you do know aren’t interested or don’t think it’s interesting or a viable post?

There are times when you’ve been given a huge retainer by a huge client to push a “meh” product to an A-list that’s not interested and the time passes, the bell rings and you’ve rolled snake eyes. Nothing. No coverage — or very little, surely not aligned to the client’s expectation — or your boss’s.

We discovered that we were a lot less vulnerable to panic attacks when we bought insurance. At my agency, we do pursue A-listers, of course. But those relationships are real. They take time. Since we don’t have a strong vertical, we don’t know who we’re going to need to engage in the A-list at any one time. And, when we do sort out the A-list in any particular blogosphere, thanks to the help of eCairn, then we need to spend time building that connection, personally, with the top influencers. While that is happening, we task our seven blogger researchers with finding everyone else, using a very well-thought-out collection of keyword phrases. In general, we have two weeks or less before our first outreach. The clock is ticking.

Via Biznology & Socialmedia.biz & Marketing Conversation

Related articles

• How to make friends and influence bloggers (chrisabraham.com)
• Agencies are too afraid of bloggers to do their job (chrisabraham.com)
• Fire for effect when you can’t get a direct bead on your market (chrisabraham.com)
• We don’t need no steenking ‘Blogger Outreach’ (globalneighbourhoods.net)
• How to pitch bloggers so they’ll post about you (socialmedia.biz)
• CommentLuv Your Way to Business Prosperity (growmap.com)
• How to pitch a blogger (biznology.com)
• Blogger Outreach: 5 Tips for Connecting With Top Influencers (mashable.com)
• Bloggers and PR: Have we reached an impasse? (customscoop.com)
• Update on eCairn’s Directory of Influencers (ecairn.com)
• Real Americans don’t care much about A-list blogs (socialmedia.biz)
• The Long Tail of Blogger Outreach (biznology.com)
• How to make friends and influence bloggers (chrisabraham.com)
• How to pitch a blogger (biznology.com)
• Sometimes I get excited by something I post (chrisabraham.com)
• Build your Twitter following with a theory of everyone (chrisabraham.com)
• We don’t need no steenking ‘Blogger Outreach’ (globalneighbourhoods.net)
• CommentLuv Your Way to Business Prosperity (growmap.com)
• What Occupy Wall Street Wants: Parsing the Unofficial Demands List (curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com)
• Agencies are too afraid of bloggers to do their job (chrisabraham.com)
• Blogger Outreach: 5 Tips for Connecting With Top Influencers (mashable.com)

You all know by now that my one true love is Miriam. Believe it or not, I am going to be making meat chili to compete in the chili competition to benefit Miriam’s Kitchen.

They’re smart. All of the opportunities for participating in fellowship and volunteering at Miriam’s are totally fun, including these two: a chili cook-off and a walk-a-thon — please consider participating:

A few weeks ago, we asked for your continued support to help our guests prepare for the cold winter months. Today, we’d like to give you an opportunity to provide that needed support to our guests with an invitation to our Fall events.

Chili Cook-off

On Saturday, October 22nd from 7-10 pm, we’re hosting our 3rd annual Chili Cook-off!

Think you have the best tasting chili in DC? Just 6 chili chef slots remain!
Want to pick the winner of the cook-off? Only 7 judges’ tickets are left!
Interested in eating a lot of chili? Pick up 1 of the 30 remaining chili taster tickets today!

In addition to having gallons of chili on hand, we’ll also have plenty of desserts and drinks to share. Buy your tickets today, before they sell out!

Help the Homeless Walkathon

Join us for the 2011 Fannie MaeHelp the Homeless 5K Walkathon on the National Mall on Saturday, November 19th at 9 am (or even better–sleep in and participate as a virtual walker). This is the last year the walkathon will be held on the National Mall, and perhaps the last year we’ll be participating (the Walkathon provides nearly 10% of our funding each year, so this is a big deal.)

Our goal is to recruit 1,500 virtual and in-person walkers for our team (which will result in a $25,000 grant being made to MK!) Help now by signing up today.

Questions about either event? Email ashley@miriamskitchen.org!

Related articles

• At Miriam’s Kitchen, the Case Work is Why the Kitchen Exists (chrisabraham.com)
• Must-see video about homelessness in Washington (chrisabraham.com)
• Why there are so many homeless people in Washington, DC (chrisabraham.com)
• It is too easy to go from middle class to homeless in America (chrisabraham.com)
• Miriam’s Kitchen Serves Farm Fresh Food to DC’s Homeless (chrisabraham.com)

A year ago, I attended the bachelor party weekend hosted by my buddy Oliver for our friend David. As the best man, Olly set up an amazing weekend in Philadelphia, his homeland, which included some time on a private shooting range outside of the city.

There, we shot some table trap and I was hooked.  Since then, I have acquired a new hobby, including pistol and rifle target practice as well as a deep desire to learn how to “smoke” those little orange clay target pigeons.

And, I suck.

I used to suck at shooting my .40 S&W Glock 23 pistol but an hour with the gang over at Guns-n-Gear took care of that — and it was all about correcting my stance and working me through some mind tricks and some tricks of the trade.

I ended up with the handgun training only because Guns-n-Gear ran a special on LivingSocial and I scored a $95 training session for $62 — and it would have been worth it for full price.

So, when I took my wooden-stock, bead-sight Remington 870P with a range-compliant 28″ barrel to the Prince George’s County Trap and Skeet Center with my buddy Andrew and proceeded to only hit five clays out of seventy-five — three rounds of American Trap — then I knew I needed to hire a pro.

At the range shop, after Andrew returned the rented Beretta, I picked up a pamphlet from Shooting Star Shotgun Sports, LLC, and called NSCA Level III Instructor Rhys Arthur right from the parking lot.

Yesterday, Rhys spent 90 minutes with me and I must tell you that shooting pistols and shotguns have something in common: shooting instructors act like Yoda!  Here’s what I am saying.

In just a few minutes of starting training and practice at Rhys’ private instruction area, we were talking about doing, not trying.  We were quoting Nike’s “just do it.” We were talking about “focusing through the gun” and “tracking the clay pigeon with your eyes, notice the ridges on the target, track it with your eyes, extend out through the shotgun.”

Rhys was telling me things that were both anti-intuitive but also so true, and were also very spiritual and dealt with the fact that it is way easier to “smoke” and break clay pigeons with the spray of shot than I am making it.  That American Trap, Wobble Trap, and Skeet is was simple as pointing, but there’s just something about the gun, the sights, and the whole stress of performing that is really making it very very hard for me.

One of the things I found interesting and anti-intuitive was that it is easier to acquire and hit targets with both eyes open, with a relaxed grip on the firearm, with a looser posture with knees bent, and with a style that focusing on pointing, on tracking, and on “making a connection with the target” before squeezing the trigger. And it is much easier to make that connection if you allow the shotgun to become the least important part of the game, to make target-shooting as simple and easy as standing there without a rifle and pointing with your finger, which is child’s play and anyone can do it right away, intuitively, and since they were a child.

Rhy’s prescription for me was simple: to spend lots and lots and lots of time shooting at their Five-Stand Wobble Trap. Hours and hours, not at the American or Down-The-Line trap but just at that one stand until “you can show me you can break 24 out of 25 clays.” OK, doctor.

Rhys’ prescription towards mastery is the same solution that Malcolm Gladwell expounded on in Outliers: mastery demands practice and putting the time in and I need to start working towards my 10,000 hours where each hour is progressive, towards betterment and improvement instead of to rote.

In essence, Rhys’ diagnosis of the problems I was having with knocking arching orange clay targets out of the sky is not only spot on but also a diagnosis of my general psychology: over-thinking always gets in the way of my smarter, better, self.

Rhys went even further to share that every time he has won a match, his mind was clear, his mind was empty, and he allowed his body, his training, his intuition, and his better self and better shooter to show through, confidently and effortlessly.

While I am, indeed, becoming a much better marksman, to be sure, and will soon become a proficient trap-shooter, the real value of all this experience is much more spiritual and emotional and personal and can well be taken from the range and into my everyday, into business, into my personal relationships, and into the future.

I am very excited about this — what Rhys is saying is that all the time I will be spending at the Wobble Trap stand will not only make me a better sportsman but it will more completely be a form of meditation, of self-improvement, and of therapy.

Brilliant who who would have ever guessed?

Related articles

• History of Sporting Clays (christinequam.wordpress.com)
• Skeet Origins: Bird Hunting to Olympic Sport…. (christinequam.wordpress.com)
• A-level results: Olympic hopeful reveals A-level grades (telegraph.co.uk)

The other night I attended a lovely fundraising dinner, Miriam’s Kitchen’s first annual “Get the Dish” event. During the meal, Ashley Lawson, Development and Volunteer Manager, presented a video called 12,000 Stories, below, that you really need to see right away, especially if you’re wondering what I am on about when I tweet and blog all about Miriam’s Kitchen all the time.

This is a very important reminder from my friends at Miriam’s Kitchen:

“My grandmother used to tell me I was one paycheck from living on the street. I used to tell her she was crazy. Not with my income! But now look at me.”

William grew up in a happy, middle class family. His parents had good careers and taught him the importance of working hard. Years of hard work paid off for him too, and he was able to create a happy, stable life for his wife and children.

But now, William is homeless.

I used to open the door to my home and see my wife. Now when I open the door, I see 180 other men. It’s not the same.

William lost his job as a maintenance worker 4 years ago. It’s the first time he’s ever been unemployed, but as a 64-year old man it’s been very difficult for him to find work.

He knows what people think when they pass him on the street: Why don’t you just go get a job?

But how are you going to walk into a place, all dirty, with no skills and get a job? Most of us don’t have but a high school diploma. And then we’re supposed to compete for a job?

When William first came to Miriam’s Kitchen, he was shy but determined to find help. We worked with him to secure social security benefits—the only income he has—and apply for much-needed health insurance.

But being homeless has been really hard for William. He’s separated from his family (he doesn’t want to be a burden on them), and has diabetes and emphysema—conditions that have put him in the hospital three times in the past two years. In fact, he’s there now—recovering from a respiratory illness that put him in the intensive care unit for two weeks.

Two months ago, I was thinking of committing suicide. I couldn’t bear this life anymore. It’s hard to keep my faith when I’ve been out here for so long.

This has been a hard journey for William. Four years of being homeless has taken a toll on him mentally and physically. But he’s trying his best to remain strong.

Asked if he thinks he’ll ever be off the streets, William responded: I know I will.

Read more about guests like William and the life-saving programs you support on our website.

Related articles

• Why there are so many homeless people in Washington, DC (chrisabraham.com)
• At Miriam’s Kitchen, the Case Work is Why the Kitchen Exists (chrisabraham.com)
• How to End Chronic Homelessness (chrisabraham.com)
• Miriam’s Kitchen Serves Farm Fresh Food to DC’s Homeless (chrisabraham.com)
• Commited to my community as well as my clients (chrisabraham.com)
• Group helps homeless find permanent homes (cbsnews.com)
• The Church Myth (thehomelessguy.blogspot.com)
• This was a big day for us. (liv-n-on-the-streets.com)
• Princess Kate Exploring UK Charities To Champion (huffingtonpost.com)
• Youth centre to help homeless teens (windsorstar.com)

This graphic is going around that I believe is going to frame the narrative that will be pushed forward against President Barack Obama over the course of the 2012 presidential race.

I hope they know that “boy” is a racist sign of insult and disrespect that has been used to belittle African American men since slavery.

So, essentially, in addition to being a narrative of patriotic hawks versus peacenik doves, it is also racially charged, relying on gross racial stereotypes pitting the serious Air Force pilot against the young Barack Obama, casual in an open-collared shirt, a tropical hat, and a smoke.

Firstly, who is PVC?  Secondly, I don’t believe that Rick Perry or his people are responsible for this viral asset.

Personally, I think that the 22-year-old Barack Hussein Obama II looks very cool and the photos reminds me of why the world was so exciting to see such a cool cat, such an intellectual, such a scholar, such an epitome of not only multiculturalism and tolerance, both racial and religious, but also a passionate love and acceptance of Barry, a man who is the product of a global confluence of genes, experiences, education, and influences.

Let’s assume that the signifiers of the term “boy” and the contrast between the serious and earnest Perry and the chillaxed Obama are not racist and this is only about love of country and seriousness of character for a second.

If this is a hawk vs. dove campaign, I hope it backfires because, in 2011, when we’re involved in overt military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya and covert ops in who knows where else, who needs someone even more willing to take up the gauntlet of imperialism than the very hawkish and ambitious president himself — don’t we have a debt to pay down, expenses to reduce, and a domestic responsibility we need to focus on right now?

Can we afford a president who is even more willing to rattle the nation’s sabre? To stoke the fire of fear and xenophobia? I, personally, believe the answer is no. It is essential for everyone to really dig into the heart of Governor Perry, to learn more about what he truly believes, who he truly loves and respects, and, more importantly, who and what he hates.

It will be really interesting to see how all of this shakes out by Tuesday, November 6, 2012.

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• The timidity of Ben Bernanke, explained (salon.com)
• When Hawks Cry Like Doves (tbking.wordpress.com)
• Gaddafi’s defeat will not save Obama’s presidency (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
• Obama’s targeted groups are not enthused … (pprnnews.wordpress.com)
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Al Jazeera posted alleged anti-Gaddafi leaflets what were allegedly dropped by NATO forces into and around Tripoli as an intense Psychological Operation in an attempt to convince pro-Gaddafi Libyans to put down their weapons:

NATO has been dropping leaflets in the area of Tripoli, The majority of the leaflets were intended to encourage pro-Gaddafi soldiers to lay down their weapons and to join the Libyan rebels and the wider Libyan people.

I am always amazed and impressed when the same old sort of propaganda warfare works — these fliers are basically the exact same sort of short-form, highly visual, sloganized, messaging that you can reference from world war one, world war two, and all subsequent invasions or engagements. I guess the saying is true: if it works, don’t fix it.

Related articles

• NATO Drops Leaflets On Tripoli Encouraging Pro-Gaddafi Forces To Lay Down Arms (mediaite.com)
• Gaddafi manhunt: rebels and NATO close in (rt.com)
• UK jets bomb Gaddafi control bunker (mirror.co.uk)
• Chemical frustration – the race to find Libyan stockpiles (rt.com)
• U.S. role made the difference in Libya (cnn.com)
• Gadhafi Support Soars Amid NATO Bombing By SCOTT TAYLOR (jhaines6.wordpress.com)
• How NATO Helped Rebels Take Tripoli (globalspin.blogs.time.com)
• Reported breakthroughs by rebels reap rewards (rt.com)
• ‘Before NATO intrusion, Libya was African Switzerland’ (rt.com)
• Ex-colonizers aid Libyan Rebels Assault on Tripoli ‘planned weeks ago’; No easy transition, rebuilding after Gaddafi (rightways.wordpress.com)
• Ex-colonizers help Libyan Rebels Assault on Tripoli ‘planned weeks ago’ (rightways.wordpress.com)
• WAR IN LIBYA:Libyan rebels enter Abu Salim neighborhood in Tripoli (laaska.wordpress.com)
• Rebel government moving to Tripoli (independent.co.uk)
• Libyan rebels say they are attacking Tripoli – The Hindu (news.google.com)
• Libya: rebels move government to Tripoli – live updates (guardian.co.uk)
• PressTV: ‘Libya fighters move govt. to Tripoli’ (jhaines6.wordpress.com)
• Libya: rebel forces reach heart of Tripoli – live updates (guardian.co.uk)
• Libya: hunt for Gaddafi – live updates (guardian.co.uk)