We spent time on the presidential primary campaign trail.

We can tell you: Sarah Palin has never eaten a donut.

Sarah Palin, mother of 5
Impossibly thin
credit: The Dude

We saw Sarah Palin up close and learned what is most important to Hollywood and others -- that the TV screen adds 10 pounds...and that even more that being smart is being thin.

Palin is impossibly thin for a woman with five wee ones. Marathoner or not.

Alert Readers know that Charmaine also has five children and has run three marathons. Charmaine knows about the work needed for women of a certain age to maintain an ideal weight.

Sarah Palin thinness does not come easy.

The thinness we witnessed is the result of solid discipline and hard work. A real prerequisite for high office.

Old:
Men don't make passes
To a girl who wears glasses.

New:
Liberal men don't make passes
To a girl who surpasses.

Smart women are now Republicans. Has to be true: A Democrat said so.

See Sarah Palin's a Brainiac by Elaine Lafferty,

Elaine Lafferty is a former staff correspondent at Time magazine and the Irish Times of Dublin, features editor at MORE magazine, editor in chief of Ms magazine. The former editor in chief of Ms. magazine (and a Democrat) on what she learned on a campaign plane with the would-be VP.,

Now by "smart," I don't refer to a person who is wily or calculating or nimble in the way of certain talented athletes who we admire but suspect don't really have serious brains in their skulls. I mean, instead, a mind that is thoughtful, curious, with a discernable pattern of associative thinking and insight. Palin asks questions, and probes linkages and logic that bring to mind a quirky law professor I once had. Palin is more than a "quick study"; I'd heard rumors around the campaign of her photographic memory and, frankly, I watched it in action. She sees. She processes. She questions, and only then, she acts. What is often called her "confidence" is actually a rarity in national politics: I saw a woman who knows exactly who she is.

As Charmaine has said, "Palin is authentic."

Your Business Blogger(R) took the Penta-Posse on the past two Republican rallies here in Northern Virgina: Fairfax and Leesburg.

23,000 showed up for McCain and Palin in Fairfax. Some 9,000 showed in rural Leesburg -- a third more than expected, traffic jams at 6am. (In contrast, 400 show up for Democrat VP nominee Joe Biden.)

The Penta-Posse were volunteering until shunted off to the bleachers as the cute kid backdrop behind the podium. They loved it. They love politics.

Republicans are now
the party of the working man

The offspring know where to sit and why: young political animals, Roe Effect on the way.

The Dude is taking pictures of the line-up of politicians, learning who's who on the GOP bench. Then Pro-Life Frank Wolf gets up to speak.

"Get his picture," I say to The Dude. "It's Frank Wolf!"

The (pre-teen) Diva turns to me and asks, "It he married to Naomi?"

"Not likely..."

These are five fun kids.

The Yoests outside the McCain national headquarters in Northern Virginia.

Bob Livingston working the phones at the McCain HQ in Virginia.
photo credit: The Dreamer

Posted at 2:45 PM | Permalink
Comments (3)

Charmaine and Jonah at National Review both had speaking gigs at major schools.

Q: Who Knew?
A: No one.

Charmaine lecturing on campus

I drove the wife and The Dreamer, The Dude, The Diva, The Dancer, and Baby Boo* down to Mr. Jefferson's University so Charmaine could speak on women in leadership at Darden, UVa's business school. The first thing we see are well-armed police.

Uniformed dark blue. Unsmiling.

I ask the sergeant about his job and the small gaggle of 150 women, "Crowd control?"

He looks me over. I'm holding a four-year old's hand: I am not a threat.

I am the conservative.

The cop's face moves a millimeter into what passes for a smile. His head shakes a millimeter into what passes for no.

His eyes return to the assembly. He's looking for trouble.

I speak to one of the organizers about the number of attendees, the marketing of the event...the security. (Your Business Blogger(R) cares about such things; teaching Business at the Northern Virginia Community College. Where James Carville also taught.)

The event planner whispers, "We didn't publicize the event...we weren't sure who would come..."

Even though Charmaine spent ten years at UVA, earned her Ph.D. and taught (Politics and the Family) the organizers were fearful. Charmaine, a woman and a conservative who worked for Huckabee, Pro-Life, now a president and CEO of a law firm, might cause two horrors on the Campus Grounds:

1) A violent campus protest, or, worse,

2) A good conservative turn out.

The police were out in force to keep pie throwing liberals away from the conservative speaker.

Or keep a woman from making a citizen's arrest.

Or having a Democrat scratch KKK on our monster SUV, the Huck-a-Truck.

Jonah Goldberg
and wife Jessica Gavora

The police were there to protect us from the Brown Shirts with the party of death.

The police are on the side of law and order...so far.

We have been lucky with Charmaine's public speaking in academia.

It's particularly odd because the majority of the time I speak on a college campus -- even when debating a liberal -- I'm told that I'm the first conservative they've had there for a while and that I was brought in for "balance."
You'd think if that were the case, the various administrations would at least want some credit for providing equal time.
Even though, even a brief perusal of almost any college or university's events calendar will quickly show that they could have the entire masthead of National Review speak month after month and it still wouldn't equal balance...but the idea that simply inviting one or two objectively conservative speakers every couple years provides ideological balance is just absurd.

The joke is even bigger when you discover as I have at numerous schools that many professors tell their students they shouldn't go hear conservative speakers.

Jonah Goldberg gets this right: students should get both sides of any debate.

That would be, well, Fair and Balanced...

* Alert Readers know our five children are also known as the Penta-Posse.

Posted at 7:48 AM | Permalink
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Bill Maher doesn't care much for babies. And less for marriage.

Charmaine on PI
with (the liberal) Bishop Spong.
Part One, circa 2002 Charmaine made over a dozen appearances on his old Politically Incorrect show.

So all our paths have crossed a time or two in the Green Room in his LA studio.

Usually after Your Business Blogger® just changed a stinky diaper on one of the infant Penta-Posse .

I probably did not make a compelling case for fatherhood...

Anyway.

Charmaine did work on Bill Maher's eternal perspective.

At one point Maher asked us, not rhetorically, "So what is death; a dirt nap?"

Maher sums up neatly the atheist's worldview: there is no God, no Heaven.

No Hell.

At death, it all ends on this celestial sphere. A dirt nap in a grave.

Dinesh D'Souza addresses atheism in his New York Times best seller, What's So Great About Christianity?,

From page 274,

What's So Great
About Christianity?"If sex is unhooked from the old moral restraints [marriage], there are going to be unwanted pregnancies [babies]. Here we get to atheism's second sacrament, which is abortion. [The first sacrament is orgasm.] The real horror of abortion is not that a woman kills an unborn child

but

that a woman kills her own unborn child. [Emphasis mine.]

The guilt in doing this, for all morally healthy persons, can only be tremendous.

So it is necessary for atheism to pave the way for abortion with a clear conscience.

The first step is to get rid of God, because then there is no spirit of the dead child to disturb the conscience, no hell to pay for violating the commandment against the deliberate taking of life."

Politically Incorrect,
Part 2One pregnancy in five ends in a miscarriage.

Charmaine and I had one. We still dream of that baby. Now safe on the other side.

The death still hurts and time does heal. But how much more would the hurt be if the mother was responsible for the loss of the baby?

How much more the pain if the mother murdered her baby?

The guilt these women feel must be horrendous.

Can Obama feel no pain?

I will take their heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh.

Posted at 11:13 PM | Permalink
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The Dude is competing for first string quarterback on his football team. But the coach needed him for a defensive play. The Dude went in. The play came his way. The Dude maneuvered for the open field tackle.

The first rule of marriage for men is knowing when to keep your mouth shut.

"Let's not worry mom...until we have to," I said. "The more information we can give her, the better we all will feel." The Dude understood. Uncertainty causes the real pain in life.

While The Dude was dealing with his pain, we all in the ER were subjected to a more intense pain: Keith Olbermann on MSNBC.

While waiting in the ER Keith Olbermann was complaining that the RNC showed footage of The Towers going down. This reminded us all that we are at war and maybe we still need a war leader. Rather than talk about Obama's inexperience, Olbermann was miffed that such carnage would be replayed reminding us we live in a dangerous world.

But I think Olbermann was really upset about Sarah Palin.

No one in the elite circles or the media (redundant, I know) understands Sarah and Todd Palin and their five kids.

The Palins are on a family mission.

Somewhat like the Blues Brothers, they are on a mission from God. Our liberal friends do not quite understand this. The Christian prays for guidance and accountability.

The Dude's forefinger knuckle -- note chip on side

Big families know this sense of purpose and the marriage partner who happens to get the ball, get the call goes into the game.

Todd is not the VP nominee. Sarah is.

I am not a CEO. Charmaine is.

Real men understand the talent and the gifts that only women have can be used in these unusual times. Like the ancient Jewish judge, Deborah, Sarah is being lifted up to help John McCain get the country on the right track; to bring the country to victory over evils foreign and domestic.

The American people understand this and love Sarah Palin.

Feminists understand this and hate Sarah Palin.

The story has a happy ending:

The Dude made the tackle.

Keith Olbermann got fired.

Sarah Palin will be elected.

See The Complete Married Man's Guide To Spousal Responses

See The Dude's other big break during the Huckabee presidential campaign.

Not everyone who appears on MSNBC is an elitist.

Posted at 8:39 AM | Permalink
Comments (5)

The Dude broke his hand in a football game for the Yorktown Patriots. Charmaine and Your Business Blogger(R) and Baby Boo sat with him yesterday as a cast was applied and immobilized his hand.

The Dude was not in especially good spirits. And friends rallied around him to encourage and commiserate. To lightly cheer him on.

Teenagers who showed compassion?

Lots of adults, too showed real interest -- and not just the coaches....

Lyndon LaPlante It seems that The Dude was indeed lifted up. But Charmaine and I noticed something more. The giving, the compassion, the caring did more for the giver than the getter.

The Dude was injured and would play again in a few weeks. However, we were able to get the briefest glimpse of the good, the Divine that is seen in small acts of charity.

Life's real challenges are designed, it seems, not for the afflicted but for those who surround the sufferer. Life's pitfalls, large and small, reveal the character of the bystander.

Does the onlooker render care or complain? What does the Good Samaritan do?

Another football story, a few years ago, came out of Texas. It's the story of Lyndon LaPlante who scored a touchdown. Lyndon has Down syndrome . The Dallas Morning News reports:

Keller Senior with Down Syndrome Fulfills Dream

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

By TIM MacMAHON / The Dallas Morning News

The home crowd at Keller ISD Stadium rose to its feet as soon as Lyndon LaPlante jogged onto the field during the fourth quarter Friday night.

The fans went wild during LaPlante's 99-yard touchdown run, which ended with him being mobbed in the end zone by his Keller teammates.

Never mind that the pre-arranged play didn't count. It fulfilled a dream for LaPlante, a senior who has . . .

Watch the video clip here.

Continue reading at the jump.

Continue Reading »

Posted at 11:42 AM | Permalink
Comments (3)

In the Yoest household kitchen Answer: She's not married to Todd Palin.

On CNN yesterday Charmaine reinforced the point that women can succeed in any position at any level, if she has a deep support system. Beyond the government safety net.

The best support system is to marry a guy who will embrace the family mission, the family business. A husband who is not distracted by interns at 2am.

And will lift up his wife when her time comes...

And I'm not just talking pregnancy.

About half of all women who enter into a Ph.D. program do not finish. When Charmaine was working on her disertation at the University of Virginia, Your Business Blogger(R), MBA, and Charmaine's parents, Mom, Ph.D; Dad, Ph.D; Brother, Ph.D. and Penta-Posse gathered together and strategized on the path to make sure that Charmaine was in the half that got 'hooded.'

The extended family decided to invest in Charmaine.

Money was key but not the entire issue. Wisdom and logistical support were the real needs of house hold and five little ones.

Extended family and a hubby who will sacrifice for the family mission is the solution to whatever success the family, the mother, the mission will achieve.

Todd Palin is my kind of guy. Like me, he married way over his head and is not afraid to let the world know.

We are both married to CEO's who advance the family mission. Our extended families have made sacrifices and investments to advance very talented women, very talented wives.

If more feminists had devoted husbands, maybe they'd enjoy more success. As well as the other benefits of marital bliss (re Five Children...).

And this is the real reason the liberals hate Sarah Palin. She is normal.

Thank you (foot)notes:

Fish on a bicycle by Ray Troll Feminist icon Gloria Steinem can be blamed for a lot problems these days in verbiage and communication in the battle of men vs women.

But not this phrase.

Gloria Steinem writes to Time Magazine,

"In your note on my new and happy marital partnership with David Bale, you credit me with the witticism A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. In fact, Irina Dunn, a distinguished Australian educator, journalist and politician, coined the phrase back in 1970 when she was a student at the University of Sydney."

Credit should go to Irina Dunn, graffiti artist and Australian Senator from the Nuclear Disarmament Party.

And made popular more by U2.

Posted at 10:31 AM | Permalink
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Obama is the smartest man in the room. I know this is true because his campaign staff told me so.

During the Iowa Caucuses, Your Business Blogger(R), Charmaine and Penta-Posse stayed at the same hotel as many of the other presidential candidate staffers.

We all often talked in the elevators or at the coffee bar. The Obama staff would remind us that Obama, the smart academic law professor (for 12 years!) was brilliant and well briefed...of course.

This made Obama's statement at Saddleback all the more interesting. He said that abortions have not gone down in the last eight years.

Abortions, in fact have declined over the last eight years.

Did Obama, the smartest man in the room, not know this simple fact? Was he poorly briefed?

Or did Obama, with the best staff money can buy, know the truth and say otherwise?

Was Obama being duplicitous a politician from Chicago, or perhaps he cannot remember a simple fact that he volunteered?

Charmaine was at Rick Warren's Saddleback church for the civil questioning and examines Obama's contradiction in an article up on National Review Online.

She reviews Obama's new marketing and messaging campaign.

Absolute Reduction
Barack Obama and abortion.

By Charmaine Yoest, Ph.D.

Milling around the media room after the Saddleback Forum, I learned that while John McCain was onstage talking with Rick Warren, Barack Obama was sitting down backstage to an interview with David Brody of CBN News. Brody took the opportunity to press Obama on the issue of his record of opposition to legally protecting babies who are born alive after an abortion.

Obama became visibly irritated and replied to Brody: "I hate to say that people are lying, but here's a situation where folks are lying."

Read the rest here.

Charmaine Yoest is president and CEO of Americans United for Life. She served as compaign adviser to the Mike Huckabee presidential campaign.

See Charmaine's previous article in NRO: Huckabee and McCain -- The Enthusiasm Gap

Posted at 2:07 PM | Permalink
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Following is from a Naval Aviator. The Dude, pictured on left with Baby Boo a few years ago at the Air Force Academy, loves jets and jet noise and wants to fly.

Charmaine is not so sure.

The Air Force crashes about 75 jets in routine training accidents apart from the war zones. The Navy budgets two jet losses per carrier per deployment.

Producing a number of widows, orphans and grieving families.

Even training is dangerous.

Our cousin Will was an F-18 pilot after graduating from Harvard.

He assures us that Naval Aviation is safe.

Except when it isn't.

Subject: Oyster Here . . I Think We Need To Rig The Barricade [ To Catch This Thing ] !

Here's a personal story of an F-18 pilot's . . at o'dark thirty . . with the carrier's barrier in place. The barricade's an impressive 20 foot high stiff net, that can be stretched across the deck to ' capture ' birds during extreme emergencies.

" Oyster, here. This note is to share with you the exciting night I had the other month. So There I was .

. . manned up with pins pulled on the hot seat for a 2030 night launch on the Hornet about 500 miles north of Hawaii. I taxied off toward the carrier's island where I did a 180 and got spotted on Cat number 1. They lowered my launch bar into position and the take-off routine began. On the run-up, all systems appeared to be ' in the green.'

After waiting the requisite 5 seconds to make sure all my flight controls were OK, I turned on the exterior lights, then shifted my eyes to the catwalk to watch the deck edge dude move his head while clearing me, left and right.

With the back of my helmet, I touched the head rest for...what was coming.

The Hornet cat shot is pretty impressive. Particularly at night. As the cat fired, I clicked in both afterburners...and I am along for the ride. But just prior to the end of the stroke there's a huge flash with a simultaneous B-O-O-M ! ...

continue reading at the jump.

This article has been circulating on the web. Credit to John Howland's USNA-At-Large.

Be sure to read Your Business Blogger(R) getting bested by his pre-teen Diva. And no, this is not a case study for women in combat. Read The FireDrill: Practice Success to Avoid Failure,

Your (Army) Business Blogger[R] had no business in the cockpit. My instructor was a Vietnam vet with MigKlr license plates on his truck.

He said the F-14 was a "Man's Plane." He sounded sexist. He explained that the old-generation hydraulics required real strength -- after a couple of hours, even the manliest studs needed two hands on the stick.

No place for girls.

Or so I thought.

But I was wrong, again.

I bring the Five-kid Penta-Posse to Oceana Naval Air Station to show them how macho military men (like their father) defeated Communism.

We get invited to some F-14 training. I climb in the simulator. No photography is permitted. And a good thing, too...

Alert Readers know that the F-14 is now retired.

Continue Reading »

Posted at 3:49 PM | Permalink
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Two items for June 18th:

1) It is a day of remembrance in Your Business Blogger(R)'s household, and
2) Charmaine gave speech.

Charmaine's talk was on the impact that women can have in our culture.
See her From Femme to Fatale.ppt Power point presentation.

MEDIA ALERT: Charmaine to speak at the EPC 28th Assembly

Charmaine's talk reminded us of the eternal values. Life and Death; this side of eternity and beyond.

At a recent funeral -- they seem to come faster and faster as we get older and older -- we talked about burials. Cremation, well, lights our fire and speeds up that dust-to-dust transition.

Charmaine asked what we plan to do with the ashes, where on earth to put them. We talk about the extended family's burial plots.

"Where do you want to get buried?" She asks.

"37º18'N, 137º55'E," I say.

"What?"

"The Sea of Japan," I remind her. Women!

"What's there?" she wonders.

Bonefish.

June 18th is the day we remember the loss of USS Bonefish.

My father, then only a teen-ager from Jersey, left high school, went to war and was assigned to the submarine, USS Bonefish. Just before the final mission of the Bonefish, my father walked off the gangplank - transferred to another assignment. Another man took his place.

On its eighth mission, on June 18, 1945, the Bonefish was lost fighting the enemy in the Sea of Japan, with the loss of all 53 officers and men. It was the last U.S. submarine sunk in World War II...

The article was first published by a number of outlets including the Virginian-Pilot in my hometown.

Posted at 10:38 PM | Permalink
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Al Gore, Jr played high school basketball. Al Gore, Sr was a Senator, a very important man in Your Nation's Capital. Gore Sr never watched his son play. Never watched a game. Never. Dad was too busy.

But there is a highway named after Gore, Sr. And Junior got a Nobel Peace Prize.

Every dad does it different, I guess. And the kids turn out different...

The Dreamer rowing stroke:
closest rower to the coxswain Alert Readers will remember Your (insufferable) Business Blogger driving 20+ hours to watch a five minute boat race.

The Nationals competition was held in Oakridge, Tennessee, Al Gore's home state.

Yorktown High School from Arlington, Virginia had a very respectable showing. We didn't win, but we did watch.

It was important: We Were There.

Business consultant guru, In Search of Excellence, Tom Peters writes and lectures that for important meetings people show up. In Real Life, IRL.

If it's big: be there. In person. Live. Not just in spirit, in the flesh.

Important events: Births, Deaths, Marriages...Kids' competition.

The Dreamer, winner of Most Valuable Rower The Crew Team had their awards banquet and The Dreamer was recognized.

We are so proud of her. It's a Happy Father's Day indeed.

Thank you (foot)notes:

Yorktown Crew 2007 - 2008Alert Readers will recall that Al Gore, Jr., did not carry Tennessee when he ran for president. I would submit that his home state voters didn't want him as president, because his dad didn't watch him play a basketball game: His dad really didn't care; his voters really didn't care either.

Real men know that it is not all about them, "it's about the children" as our liberal friends constantly remind us.

Dads must be crazy -- crazy about his kids.

Al Gore, Sr. was a very smart, very accomplished man. And he wasn't crazy.

Maybe the country would be better off if he was.

See: Teamwork & Rowing: 2008 National Scholastic Championship, Oak Ridge, TN

Your Business Blogger(R) of Management Training of DC, LLC, is a licensed agent for the William Oncken Corporation presenters of Managing Management Time(TM) fondly known as Monkey Management.

UPDATE: Yorktown Crew 2008 Spring Sports Night Awards

Posted at 11:19 AM | Permalink
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Hannah painting in Peru, 2007

Dear Family,

Hi! It's the end of my first year at Yorktown High School and I am planning to join my church’s mission trip to the Dominican Republic this summer. Last year I had the amazing experience of witnessing to Peruvians in the Callao Festival, Lima, Peru. I was able to watch as thousands were brought to Christ. With memories of last year dancing in my mind I can only dream of how awesome this year’s mission is going to be.

This year I want to be an asset to my team and need your help getting me there. I'm raising the money needed to devote to the mission trip which will be from July 23-30. Support goes toward food, logistics, rooming, and baseball equipment (for ministry to younger children in the Dominican Republic). Your support would mean so much to me this year, helping me reach my goal of $1,600. Even the smallest donation can make all the difference. If you’d like to send support online, you can do that at mcleanbible.org/rockevents.

Direct link for donations: HERE

Over the last year I’ve grown closer to Jesus and want to extend that feeling to others through ministry. I've been taking my friends to church and spreading God's word at school and in my sports activities. My electives also include art as a medium I hope to expand in as a ministry tool. This year I’ll be joining the Children's Ministry team, and the General Missions team, where I will be able to interact with all the groups and see all the various ways the Gospel can be spread. Other teams on the mission include: Drama team, Choir, Baseball, Clowns, and Construction.

Last year I was on the construction team, but this year I think I'm better suited for Children's Ministry. Last year the Construction team was delayed by circumstances and I was able to join with other teams and street evangelize. I had the opportunity to witness to Special Needs kids at a children’s school where we washed the kids’ feet, and once we were able to start construction, I was able to help paint the alleyway of the woman’s house we were working on.

Your support this year would mean the world to me and thank you so much for whatever you can give! The smallest donation counts. If you don’t want to donate online, any checks you donate need to be made out to Mclean Bible Church, Dominican Republic Mission; and Hannah Yoest needs to be written in the left hand corner. (The mailing address is: P.O. Box 9300 McLean, VA 22102)

Thank You so much for your help and love, please keep me in your prayers!

Love and Thanks,

Hannah

Posted at 10:04 PM | Permalink
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Virginia GOP Convention
2008, Richmond, VA Your Business Blogger(R) is honored to be a delegate to the Commonwealth of Virginia GOP Convention.

We will be driving down this weekend with a partial Penta-Posse to vote for the future leadership of the Commonwealth and the Nation. The Convention will be a terrific education.

I hope to get the kids into a smoke-free/smoked-filled-back-room deal-doings. Everyone loves kids.

Except the baby-killing Obama. No, no -- Barack X. Obama has never performed an actual abortion.

That I know of.

He just votes for letting babies born alive ... to die. Obama opposed the Born Alive Infants Act. Not even Hillary Clinton did that. Not Ted Kennedy.

Goodness, not even the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) lobbied against the Born Alive Infants Act.

Obama against
Babies born alive
Warning: explicit images
thank you Catholic Fire

Thank you (foot)notes:

Nobody hangs up when a kid callsJeff Frederick is out-polling John Hager for Republican Party of Virginia chairman on the Family Foundation Blog.

Can Pro-Choice Gilmore win? Here's how.

See The Convention Is Almost Here.

Watch The Diva and The Dude work the phone bank in the Des Moines Presidential primary,

Dick Cheney is the headliner for the dinner on Friday nite.

Where are the strongest grass roots? It's not with the Obamanation.

Your Business Blogger(R) of Management Training of DC, LLC, is a licensed agent for the William Oncken Corporation; presenters of Managing Management Time(TM) fondly known as Monkey Management.

Posted at 11:25 AM | Permalink
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The Dreamer scored in the 93rd percentile in Math for her grade in the Commonwealth of Virginia. I promised her a reward night out -- But a daddy-daughter-dinner-date at Subways won't be happening.

A good deal of her education was in homeschooling where Your Business Blogger(R) worked with her on that topic that counted: Counting. The hard sciences that "girls don't do well."

Not good in Math? Not my girls. My expectation was that they would do well in the quantitatives. (Parent and teacher expectations are the biggest variable in the success of students.) My wife is a genius with SPSS and regression analysis . The Dancer and The Diva are rabid readers and love 'rithmatic -- and are bloggers.

The Penta-Posse are outliers on the bell curve of school age young'ums.

So. I promised The Dreamer a night out. But not at Subway. The restaurant is off the good-guy list for two reasons:

1) The company doesn't care for homeschoolers, and

2) They can't spell.

Our friend Don Wildmon at the American Family Association sends this along,

Subway tells home schoolers: We will not allow you to participate in our contest. Subway discriminates against home schoolers.

Subway, the sandwich restaurant, wants to hear your child's story – unless he or she is home schooled.

The national chain's "Every Sandwich Tells a Story Contest" offers prizes and a chance to be published on the Subway Web site and in Scholastic's "Parent & Child" magazine but specifically excludes home schoolers. Subway's website states:

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. Contest is open only to legal residents of the Untied (sic) States who are currently over the age of 18 and have children who attend elementary, private or parochial schools that serve grades PreK-6. No home schools will be accepted.

Subway will probably say they excluded home schools because of the main prize ($5,000 worth of athletic equipment to the winning child's school). But Subway could have given it to a local park, church or school of the winning home schooler's choice.

Subway's Web site promotion not only misspells "Untied (sic) States," but offers the grand prize winner a "Scholastic Gift Bastket (sic) for your home."

Subway's leadership clearly does not understand the value of homeschooling. In addition to learning how to spell, we are keeping our kids clear of the public schools' Family Life Education: Which is, as is commonly known, Sex Ed taught by liberals. When almost 20% of teens have herpes -- one would hope that this objective fact might persuade our feminist free-lovers that the condom classes might not be working.

Nope. The public payroll sex trainers are working even harder.

Here's some of what appears in Family Life Education for grades six through eight,

6.1 The student will learn that there are many health care and safety agencies in the community.
No need to talk with mom or dad, or aunt Sally or uncle Joe. The Planned Parenthood abortion clinic is just around the corner.

6.7 The student will be able to describe the etiology, effects and transmission of the HIV virus.
Clean needles for drug users? Contaminated blood supply? This is more important than spelling or math? The school will not reveal the detail of homosexual sex acts in the spread of the HIV virus. I did see a very nice man who teaches the course, however.

6.8 ...[E]valuate ...sexuality, and gender stereotyping...
The feminists are determined to get women in combat in the armed services.

7.7 The student will recognize that sexual behaviors are conscious decisions...
The public schools are a bit confused even about their own world view: homosexuality is a conscious decision; a preference -- not an orientation. FLE lurched into the truth.

So Subway supports only public schools, can't spell and doesn't like homeschoolers.

Dinner at Subway? No sirree -- We all are a-going to Chick-fil-a.


Chick-fil-A

Thank you (foot)notes:

Tom Peters once remarked that excellence should permeate an organization, especially for managing the perceptions of the customer. This is why managers make so much money. Airlines, in the consumers' mind, must understand that if the tray tables are dirty, the airline doesn't do engine maintenance.

The Army taught if boots were not shined, the soldier couldn't shoot straight.

If Subway can't spell, their food will make you [sic].

Send an e-mail to Subway President Frederick A. DeLuca. Tell him you will not eat with them anymore until and unless they allow home schoolers to participate. ©2008 Doctor's Associates Inc. SUBWAY® is a registered trademark of Doctor's Associates Inc.

This is an unpaid endorsement of Chick-fil-A.

See some commonsense at The sexual ‘revolution’ that keeps on turning

This is a cross post from Pro-Life Unity.

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The Dreamer writes, The Dude, a dominant male homo-sapien, attempts to explode a bottle of diet coke with mentos. Commentaries by The Dreamer and The Diva. Grip by The Baby Boo.

This is a typical Penta-Posse activity when not in the class room and distracted by getting a conventional education.

Proving that the public schools are good for something...

No animals were harmed in the making of this film.

Happy Memorial Day!

The frustrated attempt:

Success:

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Launching area for the crew regatta
click on image for live feed web-cam Building Teams and Teamwork is the mantra of the modern manager.

How does a manager take a group of talented individual contributors and motivate them to, well, pull together as one unit in the same boat?

Last year The Chronicle of Higher Education lurched into the truth in an article All for One.

It was a story on rowing.

And in it Your Business Blogger(R) read a business lesson.

For both my business practice and The Dreamer's crewing at her high school.

Race Course
Click on image for live feed
web-cam The Oak Ridge Rowing Association and the Scholastic Rowing Association of America is sponsoring the 2008 National Scholastic Championships in Oak Ridge, TN. Several thousand visitors will go down to the river and pray for blue skies and flat water.

We are packing up the monster Huck-a-truck and the Penta-Posse (minus The Dreamer traveling with her team) and will gas-guzzle our way to the Volunteer State to watch our girls compete at the regatta.

With a monster carbon footprint.

Listening to the Oak Ridge Boys .

(Ain't America great or what?)

The Women's Freshmen Eight will row at 10:15am on Friday the 23rd. Please check the schedule.

The Women's coach was able to persuade decision makers to allow his team to use the Invictus. A new and faster boat used by upper class men at their high school.

Where tenths of a second determine winners, the perception of crewing a world-class shell can make the difference. If the women think they are faster, they will be.

Rowing is 90 percent mental, the other half is physical.

Apologies to Yogi Berra.

Scholastic Rowing Association
of America
Regatta 2008
Which brings us back to Notes From Academe, in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Writer Scott Smallwood visited the Cambridge University Boat Club in the UK to write about the yearly Oxford-Cambridge competition.

Alert Readers will recall that Charmaine and Your Business Blogger(R) read at Oxford and attended our first rowing event on the narrow creeks that pass for rivers at ox ford.

Duncan Holland, the Cambridge coach with some 20 years experience, helped Dutch rowers to an Olympic medal. He well understands that even though he's got winning seasons, only one race matters as a condition of (enjoyable) employment:

Beat Oxford.

Picking eight rowers seems like an easy task for a coach,

With rowing machines that can spit out reams of numbers about how fast and hard every rower can pull, what's so hard about choosing a team? Why not just pick the eight strongest guys and be done with it? It turns out...that team dynamics are trickier than that. The eight who are eventually chosen will be not necessarily the fastest individual rowers, but the best combination of rowers.

Smallwood continues,

Quintus Travis, a past president of the boat club and now treasurer, puts the mystery more bluntly: "There are always a couple [of rowers] who are stunted, but somehow they make the boats go faster."

The Brits can be brutal.

Mr. de Rond is a professor at Cambridge's Judge Business School and is studying the Cambridge athletes and the team and the coach,

...de Rond sees the answer [of the faster boats] in how team members bond. He draws a comparison from a 2005 paper in the Harvard Business Review by Tiziana E. Casciaro, of Harvard, and Miguel Sousa Lobo, of Duke University. The pair studied likability versus competence. Their work boils down to this: When choosing whom to work with, do you pick the lovable fool or the competent jerk? People, especially managers, often say they value competence above all. But in practice, they'll often trade some of that competence for likability. And that may not be so dumb.
Mr. de Rond doesn't think any of the Cambridge rowers are incompetent. No matter how lovable you are, you can't get in this boat unless you're a top-notch rower.

But here the Cambridge rowers become a self-directed team. Something business managers talk about but seldom see,

When the tentative roster was chosen," says [de Rond], Dan wasn't originally on the list." The other men successfully lobbied the coaches to put him in the varsity boat, even though by the numbers he was a borderline choice. Now, he says, [Dan's] social skills -- he's the class clown, really -- have improved the psychology of the entire team.

Like the coaches, this is where managers work their magic. To assemble a team that maximizes strengths and minimizes weaknesses, as Peter Drucker said.

So the women's coach got a better boat for his team. Coaches and managers get paid to figure out the immeasurables; the intangibles that go into building a winning team.

This Freshman Women's coach has got it figured out.

If he reported to me, I'd get him a raise...

Yorktown Crew Boosters Thank you (foot)notes:

On April 7, 2007, in the 153rd match-up: Cambridge beat Oxford.

This is a cross post from Management Training of DC, LLC.

All for One by Scott Smallwood was published on May 4, 2007 in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

See video from the Stotesbury Regatta.

From The New York Times, From a World-Class Rower, Tips to Sharpen Technique. Watch the video on how to film a rower's movement and a slide show on training.

Mix It Up

“There’s this saying that ‘Miles make champions,’ ” Michelle Guerette said. So she spends up to five hours a day on the water, doing a variety of workouts. Mix these pieces into your own sculling training:

BUILDING BLOCKS A base training session “addresses fitness, feeling and rhythm,” Charley Butt said. As with a runner, he said, what matters is “how a rower gets in the miles.” He advised rowing for 25 minutes at 75 percent of full pressure at a stroke rate of 16 to 20. Then, he said, paddle for 5 to 10 minutes and repeat. Maintaining a low stroke rate allows you to concentrate on technique.

Stan Hudy will not be at the races. A loss for us all.

Posted at 12:26 PM | Permalink
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The Diva's root canal
credit: Dr. Eric Arbuckle Our family has endowed a chair -- not at the local university -- but at our dentist's office. You can use it if is not booked. We treat the chair like a fractional ownership of a Gulfstream G4.

The Penta-Posse has busted out more front teeth than an entire hockey team.

Your Business Blogger(R) is also minus a front tooth due to a basket ball mishap. Non-stop dental work is required to correct alterations caused by various bar-fights from decades past.

Dentistry, however modern, builds character...in parents.

I never really trust a man until he's had a child in a dental chair.

The Diva's tooth trials began with a base ball bat. One of The Dude's team mates was out of the dug out.

"Don't swing that bat in the stands...!"

When contact was made there was a mess: the crying, the wailing, the gnashing of teeth...

And that was just me. Not The Diva. She's got a high tolerance for pain. She's may have even more testosterone than me.

She also got smacked with a field hockey stick.

So. After a few years of patch work her tooth nerve has been removed, the canal filled, my wallet emptied.

And it still hurts. Me, not The Diva.

This is what passes for suffering in our soft times.

The Diva and Your Business Blogger(R)
on set at the Leadership InstituteThank you (foot)notes:

And this is why the country should vote for John McCain.

He knows real suffering.

Obama knows nothing.

The Diva at a piano recital circa 2004 Sports have been very good to our household. We are looking forward to the benefits of Title IX.

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Charmaine giving a lecture
on abortion at Princeton Rakes, Cads and leering Don Juans -- that is to say: all normal men -- have been attempting to seduce women for 4,000 years.

Our institutions of higher learning have noticed this and are helping out. No, not helping the parents, not the girls, not our culture.

Nope. Your local college administrator, acting in place of the parents, has now made it possible for the young women to undress in front of the young men in the privacy of their own (parental-paid) room.

This is not the No-Tell Motel. It is the college dorm room.

Higher Education has been working for decades to help separate not the women from men, but women from their clothes in front of men. And now the colleges and the men have succeeded.

The colleges, Your Business Blogger(R) would suggest, are acting less loco prarentis but just plain loco.

Charmaine recently appeared on CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck Show Monday, May 5, 2008 to discuss the emergence of co-ed dorm rooms on college campuses.

Watch the clip here at the Family Research Council. Sorry for the extra clicking.

"Professor" Diana York Blaine
Womyn's Studies

Normal people think co-ed dorm rooms are lunacy.

But the "professor" on the left is a typical Leftie that passes for normalcy on the local college campus.

Womyn's Studies Professor and lunar worshipper Diana York Blaine offers Alert Readers Full Disclosure on helping college men in learning all about the modern womyn. The nutty professor Blaine teaches at USC. It is not known if clothing is optional.

Higher Education at its best.

Research Institutions pride themselves on 'advancing scholarship.'

These days, Higher Ed is advancing an agenda.

And it is not a pretty site.

Thank you (foot)notes:

But sure to catch Charmaine's recent appearance on FOX News March 1, 2008 where she debated the prevalence of shock-style -- nasty -- advertising in the media. Click here to view the video -- please forgive the extra click on thru on the FRC site. Now that's a Pretty Woman.

Full Disclosure: Charmaine has taught Politics and the Family at the University of Virginia; Your Business Blogger(R) teaches Business at the Northern Virginia Community College.

Blaine tells us on her site that,

Dr. Diana Blaine is a PhD philosopher, writer, adventurer, bon vivant and buttkicker. She's read and studied how gender dynamics function in our culture...

Emphasis mine. Some lady. Email us your comments.

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This is a guest post by The Diva. The script was written by The Diva. Really.

Talent on screen, The Diva ; Camera-Direction, The Dude;
Grip #1, T-shirt, clapper, The Dancer;
Grip #2 ALL paper, Baby-Boo
My name is Helena Yoest, and I was harassed by the principal of my school because of a shirt.

Ok, so I went to class, just like a regular school day, I had the shirt on, no one was offended or anything by it.

Then my teacher- Mr. Young- says “Mrs. Schaffner wants to see you”

I walk over to her in the hall, she was talking to some other teachers with one or two students flocking around her.

She stops talking when she sees me, pulls me over to a corner, and says plainly

“you can’t wear the shirt”

Wow. 5 minutes into the day and I’ve been caught in this t-shirt. (say sarcastically) Shoot.

I say very politely “may I go get something from my locker?”

Mrs.Shaffner says, “eh, yes”

So I go down to my locker to get a piece of paper, it’s a magical piece of paper that gets me out of trouble.

National Pro-Life T-Shirt Day From the American Life League.

Actually, it states my civil rights and how I CAN wear the shirt, no harassment.

I hand over the letter and she hands me a t-shirt with the school name on it. Oh joy.

So I head to the bathroom to change and I hear her say, “were going to have to visit the principal about this.”

So there I am, in the principal’s office. Mrs. Annan (the principal) reads the letter Mrs. Shaffner is babbling about how they’ve never had this happen before, while Mrs. Annan is reading.

Mrs. Shaffner gets called away to do vice principal stuff and

Mrs. Annan pulls up a chair to sit beside me. “How do you know about this political issue?” she asks. “My mom” I say.

“What would you think if a kindergartner went up to you and asked you what it is?” she says pointing at my shirt.

“I would say ‘it’s where doctors and hospitals kill babies’”

You should’ve seen her face when I said that. “I just don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

She leads me to a bathroom “you can turn it inside out, or you can change, whichever you want” so I change into this ew yucky t-shirt with the school name on it, so they would be happy and quit bothering me.

This is how it was in the classroom:

“Whydya change your t-shirt?” my classmates ask.

“She made me” I say, which isn’t stretching the truth.

I went to art, and my teacher came in the middle of it and said

“walk with me” so I walk with him and he says “you can change into your shirt now, or after art, what do you want?”

I changed after lunch.

Can you believe that?

The principal of an elementary school, pressured and manipulated a 5th grade student to do her wills.

The principal, of all people! Wow.

Growing, Growing...Gone Pro-Lifers are the new Progressives.

Thank you (foot)notes:

Please send us your comments!

The Penta-Posse L to R: Baby-Boo, The Dancer,
The Diva, The Dude, The Dreamer
The Roe Effect
The American Life League sponsors the annual trouble-making event. The Dude was also spoken to by school officials. But no action was taken against him.

The "magical piece of paper" from the American Life League.

See The Roe Effect

The Diva protesting at the Afghan Embassy, 2006
She is no stranger to controversy

The Diva making phone calls for Mike
at the Huckabee for President headquarters in Des Moines, Iowa
Video Credit: The Dreamer See The Dude's post on the Abortion T-shirt at Panzer Commander.

Posted at 7:01 PM | Permalink
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Charmaine, right at her Little Rock office
The Face That Launched Me A 1,000 miles.
Chip Saltsman's office is next door on right. Saturday nite Huckabee came in three points down in South Carolina. So close -- a mere field goal. But still a loss.

Charmaine's leave of absence had come to an end. This meant one thing to Your Business Blogger's household:

Road Trip.

We started packing up the Penta-Posse after Huckabee's Saturday evening concession speech and set the alarm for 0:darn-thirty, military time and left Virginia for Little Rock on Sunday morning. We arrived at Charmaine's office some 16 hours later late last night.

Nobody got hurt. (This trip anyway.) (We've got the best kids on the planet.)

We knew that the campaign would fly Charmaine home, but we thought we could drive home and visit kin along the way. A little delayed Christmas and New Year's -- Charmaine worked through both this year. We would also be implementing a lesson from World War II and Vietnam:

To Decompress.

After WWII the returning troops returned via slow ship transport with their buddies and slowly adjusted from combat to the idea of civilian life and regular sleep, regular food. And adjust to the idea that nobody was gunning for you.

Much like a presidential campaign...

Vietnam vets had no such decompression. They went from battlefield to seat 3B to USA tarmac in 24 hours. No wonder a few had such difficulty with re-entry. There was no time to cry.

We wanted to drive some 2,000 miles to learn from the wars. And learn from the war.

While I was a-driving cross country with the Hucka-Truck full of MacDonald's wrappers, Charmaine was eating steak with Ed Rollins, Chairman; Jim Pinkerton, Senior Adviser and David Polyansky the Chief Operating Officer. They were saying goodbye.

Ed picked up the check. He's a class act.

Thank you (foot)notes:

Ed bought the steaks instead of watching some football game. Where the NY Giants beat the Packers 23 to 20 in overtime. Ed has his office in New York. He gave up watching the playoff game to huddle-adieu. Ed knows how to coach a team...

Mike Huckabee is preparing for the next debate on Thursday in Florida. We will continue to cheer him on in any way possible.

We look forward to rejoining our Cherrydale Baptist bible study!

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The Dude's broken wrist
on the campaign (ski) trail Your Business Blogger has the rambunctious Penta-Posse on the road supporting Huckabee for President. Alert Readers ask,

"How do you do it?"

The one word answer,

"Noise-canceling-headphones."

And I would follow-up: "Nobody gets hurt."

I can't say that any more.

On the way home from New Hampshire I steered the Hucka-Truck with the Penta-Posse for a day of night skiing at Pat's Peak.

Charmaine suggested that taking five children out on the slopes is a formula for trouble.

Skisbootsglovesgoggleshelmetspolescoats X 5 + Your Business Blogger = Charmaine is right again.

So. Under close parental supervision -- meaning within cell phone range -- The Dude and The Diva were doing a Double Black Diamond double time.

Their first run down the Diamond was slow, deliberate and measured in keeping with our family motto of Safety First.

Their second run was faster. The Dude took a jump, grabbed some air, ate some snow.

That was the only thing he ate that night. He took the pain like a trooper. Better than me.

I wonder about the coming physical therapy though...

Thank you (foot)notes:

Jeffrey Lovallo, MD, installed the cast. The Dude got the cast in black. In memory of the diamonds. No complications and the cast should be off in six weeks.
Dr. Lovallo,

is currently an upper extremity consultant to the Washington Redskins and the DC United professional soccer team. He is a consultant for DePuy Medical, the leading total shoulder joint replacement company in the US. As a total shoulder arthroplasty consultant for DePuy, he has produced a state of the art video on total shoulder replacement.

Posted at 4:40 PM | Permalink
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Boo, The Diva and The Dancer
with Your Business Blogger's
Mao Man Bag (for diapers) I asked the woman why she wanted to work for us.

"The Terrorists are trying to kill me."

I knew this was not to be an ordinary job interview.

Charmaine and I were hiring a housekeeper in the early 90's, and Mrs. C was referred to us, because she was well qualified. She used to own a day-care business.

In Peru.

And her husband was a manager for a manufacturer for a US based company. The rebel communists, the Sendero Luminoso -- or Shining Path -- had picked up the local company organization chart and began picking off the managers in quick order.

A well executed plan.

Like a good org chart shaped like a pyramid, the terrorists started at the bottom and were working their way up the corporate ladder fast.

The hierarchy of the career path was easy to follow for the Shining Path. The communists are nothing if not consistent. Just as they were in Stalin's day, the communist's were executing the managers, killing their way up the org chart.

Mr. C thoughtfully decided to leave the company, wanting to spend more time with the family...in another country.

So Mrs. C packed up her two girls and hubby and moved to America and was given earned asylum. I admired her resilience. Her ingenuity. Her gumption.

Her green card.

Filled with compassion, as is my nature, I hired her and her valid status.

We learned a bit about Peru and the kind of terrorism that kills immediately and immediate family. The terrorists, with the accent on the last syllable. We learned that the people of Peru loved freedom, hated communism.

Cameron Diaz
with Mao bag in PeruSo we were surprised that the well-briefed commie babe Cameron Diaz would go to Machu Picchu, Peru with her trendy, yet practical, Mao Bag with bold Red Star and well-placed slogan Serve the People in the ever- popular military drab olive green.

Peruvians did not appreciate her "style."

The nation of Peru is still healing from the almost 70,000 murdered by the Shining Path. Not quite the head count of Stalin or Mao, but still a not-too-shabby benchmark in the Commie Accounting.

Cameron Diaz did apologize for her thoughtlessness.

But it is not just the thoughtless commies in Hollywood who are insulting the people of Peru. Our very own (elected) commies Democrats in Congress are insulting Peru.

Democrats are insulting the government of Peru by modifying trade deals. Not content with attempting to run our lives here in the States, the Dems are micro-managing in Peru. And are screwing up a good trade deal.

But Your Business Blogger wants to assure our friends in Peru that the American People are not represented (so to say) by the Democrats in our Congress. That our government really wants free trade and free people to do business.

So we put The Dreamer, our first born, on Copa Airlines this morning out of Dulles Airport with a suitcase full of new shoes for children in Lima.

The Peruvians fought communism and are now fighting Democrats, the least we can do is support these freedom fighters.

The Dreamer, being brighter than Cameron Diaz, did not take her Mao bag to Peru. She is taking our good will and a big heart and a suitcase full of shoes.

To make a difference one child to one child.

The Penta-Posse minus The Dreamer
at a Potomac Nationals minor league game in
Northern Virginia. We won beating the Salem Avalanche,
farm team for the Houston Astros.

Thank you (foot)notes:

The Dreamer blogs at A Different Kind of Drama. Visit for another shot of the Mao bag.

Last year, when our church went to share Jesus with the people of Peru, they found many children arriving to Bible studies in bare feet. . . this year, our group from McLean Bible Church will arrive with over 500 pairs of shoes so that they can practice "Feet-First" evangelism.

Your Business Blogger bought the Mao bag on a trip to China. It was, I believe the only item in the entire country that was not violating American intellectual property.

Continue Reading »

Posted at 1:18 PM | Permalink
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Northern Virginia
Unlimited Youth
Football Association Alert Readers know that we've moved around a bit.

Which means new schools, piano teachers, friends, coaches.

The Penta Posse has taken each uprooting and replanting as normal.

As we constantly remind them: We are not normal...

Anyway, The Dude has always been lucky to find the best coaches in sports.

The Hurricanes Maryland state champions Our luck continues in our move back to Virginia from Maryland. After some checking around, we learned that there is no local Pop Warner football league in Northern Virginia.

But we may have found something better for our boy.

The Northern Virginia Unlimited Youth Football Association is just what The Dude was looking for. The league's motto is,

"Let the Big Guys Play!"

The program is designed for 6th-8th Graders Only (11-14 Years of Age), and most important:

No Weight Limit, No Experience Needed

The NOVA UYFA tag line continues,

"Pr