Opinion pieces, newest first.
119 articles
I've redesigned Opinion Paper, and I'll soon set about writing here again. I've missed it. I mentioned on FB that it's because I moved it all over to a new server last fall, and I'm just now getting around to revising OP... Opinion Paper is a test bed for me. It hurts no one if...
Read the article
I recently was on X Spaces with Republican Party of Texas Vice-Chair D'rinda Randall. Her questions and my answers are below. The asterisks indicate her questions. The Heart Behind the Book * What inspired you to write 'The Goal Is to Win?' Why I wrote the book and picked the...
Read the article
Those who advocate for socialism and for socialist candidates who want to tax everyone more are hypocrites of the highest order: if they truly believe in wealth redistribution, nothing stops them from making voluntary contributions to the government to do exactly that. I asked...
Read the article
Ah, last night's election. I'll start with the big takeaway: there is no "gotcha" you can produce for a Democrat candidate that will cause other Democrats to leap ship. Jay Jones won - the man who fantasized about killing children. No Democrat walked away from him, and he beat...
Read the article
Here's a challenge for any campaign: call up ten of the most ardent supporters and ask them, without prompting, what the candidate will do for the people once elected. If you get ten different answers, you might find that the messaging is not as tight as it needs to be. Think...
Read the article
Almost every grassroots campaign contends with having much less money than their opponent. The incumbent is well-financed, pushing name recognition throughout the district and the grassroots candidate feels mostly alone, fighting for air. Jay Conrad Levinson, author of Guerilla...
Read the article
I'm not excited about AI. I will tell you why. I say this, mind you, as a guy who works fairly high up in the IT food chain. I deal with complex databases, human interfaces with data, the Internet, and so on. I'm not afraid of technology. I embrace it and use it. Let's look...
Read the article
A week ago, we released the House of Good Cards and the House of Bad Cards. We didn't advertise it. JoAnn still hasn't sent out our official email about it to the people in her network across Texas. But one week after release, the sites already have about 20,000 page views...
Read the article
The House of Bad Cards and the House of Good Cards are now out there for the world to see and use. Of course, the purpose of the deck is to tell people about our Texas legislators. For those in the bad deck, it's a list of things that no Republican should ever do. Why would a...
Read the article
It's been a minute since I wrote here, so on this Saturday evening with the insects talking to each other outside and Lloyd Cole singing "Ice Cream Girl," a bit of an update. I don't usually do updates, but it seems right today... Nicole and I are just back from doing a seminar...
Read the article
A brand sets expectations. You come to anticipate certain things based upon a company's or product's branding. If I mention "Waffle House," an experience comes to your mind. It's a diner, it's good but not fancy, and it's friendly. I talked previously about the importance of...
Read the article
The hardest thing in life is to see the world as it really is. We suffer through filters and biases and narrow vision that only sees thing in small slices... it's hard to grasp the whole. In politics, authenticity is the coin of the realm. People believe in those they perceive...
Read the article
At MIT, they've done a preliminary study of 54 participants using AI. Want to know what happens to your brain when using AI for a writing task? Here we go. From the abstract, the researchers explored the "neural and behavioral consequences of LLM-assisted essay writing...
Read the article
Over the weekend, I gave a seminar in Dallas that went very well. I have a sense of humor and occasionally use a local politician as the target of a snarky comment, which I did. People laughed and agreed. A woman came up to me in the intermission and said to me, "You just told...
Read the article
Newly added to my seminar is a series of slides helping candidates define their land of milk honey better. It's the aspect of campaigns, I've discovered, that troubles new candidates more than the rest of the preparation for the campaign. I break it down into principles first...
Read the article