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A productive week, with two major projects completed on schedule and two blog posts–including a return of the mysterious Rhetoric Referee.

The Rhetoric Referee is an occasional mystery guest who takes apart the verbal tricks that politicians and debaters use to divert their opponents and deceive their audiences. He attempts to remain neutral, which in these days of political entertainment is probably not exactly click bait. But the 2022 midterm elections have only begun to ramp up. We’re likely to see more of him between now and November.

Observations: Deadlines helped move things forward this week. The draft of the fundraising brochure went to our graphic artist, who created preliminary “scribblings.” And I completed the speech, which I will present next weekend. I’ll have more details, and perhaps a video, next week.

Interaction: “The No True Scotsman Fallacy” brought the most reaction and comments this week, this time from friends on Facebook, where I shared it. One pointed out a typo: One True Scotsman. And fellow blogger J.M. Gifford observed that when referring to the Democratic Party, the adjective should be Democratic rather than Democrat, which is considered a pejorative. Rewriting those sentences also allowed me to include more context and eliminate a redundancy.

Professional development: In the spirit of civilized debate, I’m reading/listening to two books on having difficult discussions. More on those in a future post.

Next week: Deliver the speech, finish the reviews, and get back to work on my book. Oh, and I plan to write my first political letter to the editor. I stayed above the fray when I was a working journalist. If only more would do that …

In case you missed it …