.. and that's just your house!

No crime had been committed in the Sourovelises’ house, but the title of the case against them was Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. 12011 Ferndale St. Somehow, a crime had been committed by the house. In civil forfeiture, it suffices that property is suspected of having been involved in a crime. Once seized, the property’s owners bear the burden of proving their property’s innocence. “Sentence first — verdict afterwards,” says the queen in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”

Read All About it - Courtesy of George Will

Oh - and that is the same Jeff Sessions who is now hiding his past of being deemed too racist to be a federal judge

“He left out major details from his years as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, from 1981 to 1993; as attorney general of Alabama, from 1995 to 1997; and as a first-term U.S. senator, from 1997 to 2002. The gaps encompass the time, for example, when Sessions was nominated to be a federal judge in 1986 ― and then rejected after being deemed too racist.”

To succeed, House of Cards has to be wayyy over-the-top compared to the reality of Washington. 

... David Frier

... and of course - that is why they are considering cancelling House of Cards. The excellent script writers just can't beat the wackiness of The Trump Reality show that we will call the US Presidency

• for the next 4 years
• until he is indicted
• unless something else happens

Of course, it might be just a rumour .... who knows?

... that you

1] Can never sell or retire.
2] Can have no more than 10 clients at any time.
3] Will never write unpaid written proposals longer than one page.
4] Cannot sell or track time.
5] Must always say what you are thinking to clients and prospects.

What a great list - provided by my erstwhile colleague and friend David Airey.

Read All About it.

Well - you were probably wondering anyway - right? Now it is official.

In the just released EIP report, North Carolina’s overall electoral integrity score of 58/100 for the 2016 election places us alongside authoritarian states and pseudo-democracies like Cuba, Indonesia and Sierra Leone. If it were a nation state, North Carolina would rank right in the middle of the global league table – a deeply flawed, partly-free, democracy that is only slightly ahead of the failed democracies that constitute much of the developing world.

I read something the other day about how the USA's President-Elect actually has no shame. Adding the North Carolinian Republican State elected officials into that category.

Read All About It. 

More than seven-in-ten (73%) say that Jesus was born to a virgin and 81% believe he was laid in a manger. And similar shares say that wise men, guided by a star, brought Jesus gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh (75%) and that an angel of the Lord appeared to shepherds to announce the birth of Jesus (74%). Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults (65%) believe that all four of these things actually happened, while 14% say none of them happened.

Good grief.

This just in from Pew Research.

I agree ... if only Republican party members in Congress and Senate would realize that it is ok.

You know how America keeps coming up with ideas and calling them their own? Archie Bunker and 'All In The Family' (1971) for example - an excellent show - but close to zero credit for the UK's 'Till Death Us Do Part' (1966) ... even though Norman Lear actually had to buy the rights of 'Till Do Us Part' to make it. Well, there's a new one that has been living in my head recently .

Doubtless, you know Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair who recently gave a scathing review of Trumpet's grill. Graydon is one of the founders of a New York magazine called Spy Magazine - " a satirical monthly magazine that ran from 1986 to 1998.

In the UK a magazine called Private Eye was founded fully 20 years before - in 1966 by - amongst others Willie Rushton and Richard Ingrams - but really took off after funding by Peter Cook. If 'took off' is how it might be described.

Click on the links if you want to compare how Spy Magazine 'honoured' Private Eye.

If you want to sample LIVE Private Eye, now you can. Celebrating 30 years of Ian Hislop editing the magazine.

HTML is precisely what we were trying to PREVENT— ever-breaking links, links going outward only, quotes you can't follow to their origins, no version management, no rights management.

Jaron Lanier explains the difference between the World Wide Web and Nelson's vision, and the implications:

A core technical difference between a Nelsonian network and what we have become familiar with online is that [Nelson's] network links were two-way instead of one-way. In a network with two-way links, each node knows what other nodes are linked to it. ... Two-way linking would preserve context. It's a small simple change in how online information should be stored that couldn't have vaster implications for culture and the economy.

I hadn't heard about Nelson until my friend Louis told me about him this past week .... but - absolutely fascinating. And, it does seem to me that if we could do it - so much of Fake news gets so much harder?

Read All About It.

And did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
A walk-on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?

Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here (1975)

And featured at the top of this post from Mr. Louis Rawlins. It's a wonderful, personal, honest post, but those opening words from Roger Waters ( because we know it's Roger that pens those kinda lyrics don't we ...) just reminded me of the ongoing importance of not letting go of the importance of people. Particularly as we enter 2017 and watch as a few corrupt people will continue to wrest away all that is important to us, our children and our children's children and our children's children's children (with a nod of appreciation to The Moody Blues.) in favor of a few bucks and the corporations that they are beholden to.

Amazing to think that is was over 40 years ago that those words sprang forth with the force of Floyd and the anger of Waters. And only now is the world waking up and realising that maybe people are important.

Excellent Post and Video From Jason Snell.

As Steve Jobs said:

When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, cause that’s what you needed on the farm. But as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, and America started to move into those urban and then suburban centers, cars got more popular and innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things you didn’t care about in a truck as much started to become paramount in cars.

... Jason takes that analogy from 6 years ago - and considers where we are when it comes to the PC world. This because in the Apple world there is a LOT of chatter about 'where is our MacPro'.

Me - I am one of those in the middle. It is going to take me a loooong time to be pad/phone only - BUT - for what I need to do on a computer - I don't need those really big beasts.

... or even asking questions?

When it happened, I commented that in the USA, it would probably take twice as long to get a first meeting to fill discuss the filling in of said hole - but over in Japan - I week ... 'job done'.

That said, I wonder how much of that week was spent by the engineers looking at the foundations of the building ... anyone worried?

It is a loooong story - which I will recount on my main site when I have a moment - but back we are. 

Hilary Lost. We delivered on the request made in the video. Everyone got it wrong. I am not going to bother to comment on broad issues here – enough places are doing that already. Not my job. I want to write this sort posterity as an observation.

I truly hope that I am wrong about what I write below. But everything and anything we have all seen to date is that it won’t be. Here is hoping. I am now paused. I am now just watching. (With possible occasional updates to this single post, as things change.)

Read On ...

#Paused

Donald Trump is like Brexit in three key ways

writes Lord Ashcroft. In his piece he highlights ....

First, the Trump and Brexit movements have both harnessed a desire for change that goes beyond dry questions of policy. 

Second, voters are having to decide how much risk they are prepared to take in return for the change they hope for, but whose consequences are unknowable. 

Third, many in the British political and media establishment completely failed to understand that reasonable people might vote for Brexit. 

I think there's a fourth, which I have touched on here. Let's call it manipulation. 

Since Brexit, it has been clear that the arguments for Brexit were very much based on a pack of lies. And the marketing, segmentation, messaging, targeting to the unsuspecting public was driven by a company called Cambridge Analytics.

Down the road, I suspect that someone will probably write something like;

Since 'The Election', it has been clear that the arguments for 'Trump' were very much based on a pack of lies. And the marketing, segmentation, messaging, targeting to the unsuspecting public was driven by a company called Cambridge Analytics.

I thought I would save them the time and write it now.

This just in from Patently Apple. It is about how the new touch bar borrows from Microsoft and it reminded me of this ...

Apple isn't the first to do anything. Mouse. iPad. iPod. to name but three. That isn't the point.

Filed under 'People unclear on the concept.'

This kind of stupidity has been going on for years. I can't believe that it is still happening.

Considering that over 88 percent of respondents named email one of their top-three most important marketing channels, a serious disconnect appears to arise when moving from challenges to tactics, analytics, and investment.

Despite the more than one-third of respondents who report sending at least one-million emails each month, only 22 percent say they invest at least $5000 per month on email marketing.

My take? Two thirds of businesses who do email need to fail. And my guess is that they will.

This is incredible ... 64.9 percent see that "editors dictate content and manually insert that content into a newsletter" as being 'ideal'. They should be ashamed.

"You can trust Jason Calacanis he’s an expert in incompetence."

... first comment under the video.

 This week he appeared with Leo Laporte on 'This Week In Technology' (another show that passes me by without me noticing, since I wrote them off long ago.) So I guess this show was a marriage made in heaven. 

I have commented on my disagreement with Jason  before.  So, here is another one. He might be 

"smart, savvy, driven, adept at many things, passionate, and persuasive."

as Adam Penenberg described him in his article on Pando, but I would argue that he simply does not understand the Apple trajectory. Pando has an interesting insight into who Jason is, however this video commentary was sourced via 9-5

BTW - the illustration above is by Brad Jonas and commissioned by Pando

What is the fuss all about ?

Read All About it.

I think The ' Prof ' at MarketingProfs must be on sabbatical.

The Headline reads :

Four Ways to Market To Millennials (Without Underestimating or Patronizing Them)

Seriously. How about starting with a different headline?

'Hear', 'Engage', 'Inspire', 'Respect' .... seems to be what you need to do.

You mean that isn't what you should be doing for The Silent Generation, The Boomers, GenX or Centennials .... my god no wonder the country is in trouble!

Read The Article - If You Must.