As one letter writer so aptly put it, “that sound you hear is America going down the toilet.” What have we become as a nation when vigilantes fired up and fueled by the racist, hate mongers on vomit radio and Fox News are able to terrorize other American citizens just because of their nationality and religious beliefs. This is just too perverse for words. It takes me back to the early 60′s when I remember African American churches being fire bombed in the South and people of color being terrorized.

What you are seeing is the rise of the American version of the Taliban disguised as flag waving, Christian Patriots. Makes me ashamed to share the same citizenship with these morons. One only hopes that hate crime prosecutions will follow.

And does vomit radio or Fox news accept any responsibility for inciting this kind of behavior. I don’t think so. Wake up America, the American Taliban is coming to your town soon.

And why does this not surprise anyone? Ever since the recession began those businesses that were able to survive did so by adopting the “do more with less” business model. The beauty of this model is that it can be applied to any business of any size and serving any market from hospitals to advertising agencies and everything in between.

From the perspective of the employer/business owner this is a great time to be alive. They have motivated and loyal employees who will do most anything to keep their jobs. The amount of work place complaining I would suspect has dropped dramatically.  And probably most importantly, the employer can stop the disingenuous conversation with the employee that starts out with some variant of, “we are all like a family here at company X.”

So while their is no doubt that businesses are doing better and the bottom line is looking good, it might be wise to remember that the unemployment lines are just as long.

An awesome update to their amazing DIY e-commerce site. There are now 640, yep count em 640 configurable layouts. Amazing stuff.

It is astounding to me that there isn’t a great moral outrage from average citizens in this country about the insane and totally unjustified vilification of the Islamic faith and it’s practitioners. To make matters worse, there are politicians who are making this hate centered propaganda the center piece of their campaigns. What have we become as a country if we don’t stand up to this kind of insanity? Are people really so ignorant that they totally buy into everything they hear on vomit radio and Fox News? If this hate monger in Florida follows through on his plan to build a bonfire with Korans he should be prosecuted for hate crimes.

Wake up America…you may be the next target of the lunatic fringe.

Certainly good advice and well worth remembering if you have any hopes of having clients come back for repeat business.

All too often we as freelancers might think that clients are impressed by only the big things such as, deep discounts, low prices and other such giveaways. In my experience it indeed is the small stuff that matters and it must be working because about 50% of my business is currently coming from existing clients.

“President Obama showed his understanding of the Constitution, and his respect for the American people, last week when he defended the right of a Muslim community group to build a mosque and Islamic center two blocks north of ground zero in Lower Manhattan.

Mr. Obama and all people of conscience need to push back hard. Defending all Americans’ right to worship — and their right to build places to worship — is fundamental to who we are.”

I couldn’t agree more. If clear thinking Americans don’t stand up to this hate mongering, racist, intolerance, our once great country will be the worse for it. It is astounding that people are so willing to buy into the nonsense spewed forth by the hate mongers. It’s never too late to stand up and do the right thing. Tale a stand, don’t let hate and ignorance rule the day.

An increasingly disquieting feature of today’s political discourse is that bits and pieces of misinformation are regurgitated endlessly, indulging the feeding frenzy that fills the airwaves and print media. Constant polling and partisan talking points are the order of the day whether or not they contribute to rational debate.

It’s only human nature to gravitate towards perceived winners, a tendency too often persuaded by the quick takes of glib correspondents who are not only poorly informed but who celebrate their ignorance, as the members of the Fox team do, by pointing to their ratings. That ratings are somehow meant to convey relevance is an all the more discouraging indication of how poorly voters are served by people who speak with authority but lack the background, intellect or education to make the kinds of critical assessments they so loudly broadcast. No doubt Dancing with the Stars gets good ratings too, but participants aren’t usually interviewed about their political inclinations.

From deep in a national psyche battered by the right-wing ridicule machine come the most absurd and insulting broadsides against the president. In one instance the suggestion was made that electing someone whose experience consisted of handing out pamphlets on street corners was a choice that has brought the country down – - a reference to Obama’s work as a community organizer that ignores his other substantial credentials. Did such a person actually vote for George Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain, Sarah Palin?

For it would be difficult indeed to find anyone less qualified to be president than Bush or more deeply enmeshed in energy-industry power brokers than Cheney. And what business exactly did McCain operate unless he opined about his wife’s extensive beer company holdings? As for Palin her service as mayor of a smallish city and her half term as Alaska’s governor aren’t what most people would call extensive business experience.

In fact W’s business ventures didn’t do well despite help from his father’s friends. As for his political credentials he served as governor in Texas, a state where the legislature only meets every other year and where his circle of supporters included Enron’s disgraced CEO, Ken Lay or as Bush labeled him, “Kenny Boy.”

So how do such insubstantial people rise to the level of serious consideration for the highest offices in the land if not for vast infusions of cash and willful misrepresentations that ignored their limited proficiency and nefarious relationships? A national economic meltdown that began before he was elected and bailouts that were structured in the previous administration are attributed in the heat of election-year politics to President Obama. And it is his wars and his debt though clearly the Bush tax cuts while we were at war, underwritten by borrowed funds that started a spiraling deficit impossible to restrain once the country fell into recession.

And because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are targeted Democratic malfunctions Republicans always make them the villains in the country’s financial collapse. They are far less likely to focus on malfeasance in the banking industry and Wall Street for their derivative machinations and deceptive mortgage-writing practices and far more likely to obstruct administration efforts to regulate those giants. In the face of all that has occurred, conservatives continue to insist that government should get out of the way and let unregulated markets prevail, a position that even former Fed Chairman, Greenspan now considers bad policy.

No matter what the issue, Republicans find a way to make it serve their purposes, stonewalling White House initiatives and framing their opposition in terms of liberty and constitutional rectitude whether or not that frame of reference has any factual basis. General Odierno says there has been progress in Iraq though some groups ‘want to halt the way forward’ and do it with car bombs. Here at home Congressional Republicans obstruct the way forward with filibusters and call it patriotism.

In a moment of introspection regarding the super-inflammatory issue of immigration and ‘the law’, someone observed it was a good thing there were no laws when the first settlers arrived or the indigenous population would have had them deported. But in the midst of a partisan sinkhole created by people who have less interest in making things work than in propagandizing every situation and staking out their personal political turf there seems to be precious little time for deep thought about our most important national concerns.

An increasingly disquieting feature of today’s political discourse is that bits and pieces of misinformation are regurgitated endlessly, indulging the feeding frenzy that fills the airwaves and print media. Constant polling and partisan talking points are the order of the day whether or not they contribute to rational debate.

It’s only human nature to gravitate towards perceived winners, a tendency too often persuaded by the quick takes of glib correspondents who are not only poorly informed but who celebrate their ignorance, as the members of the Fox team do, by pointing to their ratings. That ratings are somehow meant to convey relevance is an all the more discouraging indication of how poorly voters are served by people who speak with authority but lack the background, intellect or education to make the kinds of critical assessments they so loudly broadcast. No doubt Dancing with the Stars gets good ratings too, but participants aren’t usually interviewed about their political inclinations.

From deep in a national psyche battered by the right-wing ridicule machine come the most absurd and insulting broadsides against the president. In one instance the suggestion was made that electing someone whose experience consisted of handing out pamphlets on street corners was a choice that has brought the country down – - a reference to Obama’s work as a community organizer that ignores his other substantial credentials. Did such a person actually vote for George Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain, Sarah Palin?For it would be difficult indeed to find anyone less qualified to be president than Bush or more deeply enmeshed in energy-industry power brokers than Cheney. And what business exactly did McCain operate unless he opined about his wife’s extensive beer company holdings? As for Palin her service as mayor of a smallish city and her half term as Alaska’s governor aren’t what most people would call extensive business experience.

In fact W’s business ventures didn’t do well despite help from his father’s friends. As for his political credentials he served as governor in Texas, a state where the legislature only meets every other year and where his circle of supporters included Enron’s disgraced CEO, Ken Lay or as Bush labeled him, “Kenny Boy.”

So how do such insubstantial people rise to the level of serious consideration for the highest offices in the land if not for vast infusions of cash and willful misrepresentations that ignored their limited proficiency and nefarious relationships? A national economic meltdown that began before he was elected and bailouts that were structured in the previous administration are attributed in the heat of election-year politics to President Obama. And it is his wars and his debt though clearly the Bush tax cuts while we were at war, underwritten by borrowed funds that started a spiraling deficit impossible to restrain once the country fell into recession.

And because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are targeted Democratic malfunctions Republicans always make them the villains in the country’s financial collapse. They are far less likely to focus on malfeasance in the banking industry and Wall Street for their derivative machinations and deceptive mortgage-writing practices and far more likely to obstruct administration efforts to regulate those giants. In the face of all that has occurred, conservatives continue to insist that government should get out of the way and let unregulated markets prevail, a position that even former Fed Chairman, Greenspan now considers bad policy.

No matter what the issue, Republicans find a way to make it serve their purposes, stonewalling White House initiatives and framing their opposition in terms of liberty and constitutional rectitude whether or not that frame of reference has any factual basis. General Odierno says there has been progress in Iraq though some groups ‘want to halt the way forward’ and do it with car bombs. Here at home Congressional Republicans obstruct the way forward with filibusters and call it patriotism.

In a moment of introspection regarding the super-inflammatory issue of immigration and ‘the law’, someone observed it was a good thing there were no laws when the first settlers arrived or the indigenous population would have had them deported. But in the midst of a partisan sinkhole created by people who have less interest in making things work than in propagandizing every situation and staking out their personal political turf there seems to be precious little time for deep thought about our most important national concerns.

Here are 14 attention grabbing tactics that you need to know if you’re launching a new blog for your business. The folks at the Social Media Examiner are a must read as far as I’m concerned.