The short life and appalling death of Raymond Zack, an avoidable American tragedy.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Crown Memorial State Beach, Alameda, California is the kind of place you come to breathe and shake off life's trials and tribulations.
The panorama is just what you think the Golden State should be...a place of possibilities, not inhibitions. Here the air is superior to any French vintage... the chill waters are bracing and playful....
Here the very birds fly higher because they are contented at such a place... and in the distance, clearly seen, is the great structure of one of mankind's signature triumphs the Golden Gate Bridge... which sends every spirit soaring...
It was here that Raymond Zack came to die... and where the people charged with protecting life assisted Raymond take his, to the astonishment, wonder and outrage of the world.
Raymond Zack, born July 23, 1959.
Raymond was, like so many millions of us, a son of America's great heartland; Ohio born and bred. His life moved to the rhythm that is so quintessentially ours...
He was a product of Columbus' Catholic schools...  where he learned good manners, the importance of being a good man and valuable citizen... and where he glimpsed, at the hands of his dedicated instructors, the reality of God Everlasting. At 6'3" tall, this giant of  a boy excelled at track and baseball... people saw him above the crowd and, with a wink and nudge, said the boy had talent.
He went, and went proudly, to Ohio State.... as American as any educational establishment in the land. It was here, upon graduation,  that he entered the community of educated men and women...  And where he decided to answer Horace Greeley's great exhortation "Go West, young man, Go West!" And he did, attracted by the dazzling sunshine and even more dazzling possibilities of California, the pot of gold at the end of America's rainbow.
But California life, for all that the sun was radiant, gave Raymond Zack more than his share of life's troubles. His family life was turbulent, confusing, never restful though he was the beneficiary of his foster mother's affectionate care and unceasing concern.
He weighed 300 pounds now and, like millions of his countrymen, was challenged by the complexities of food and the clear and present dangers of overindulgence. Chagrined by his bulk, Raymond, bit by bit, withdrew from the body politic and faced the secret sorrows of isolation and loneliness, the abiding reality for too many of his countrymen.
His mother died in November 2010... and though there had been confusions and disappointments there, still she was his mother... and her loss magnified his burdens.
Then, in the midst of a great recession, where California's profound promise was tarnished, Raymond lost his job at the St. Vincent de Paul Free Food Distribution Center where, along with Mrs. Dolores Berry, his foster mother, he had helped everyone who came. Now the man who had helped so many... was himself in need of help. This, too, was, quintessentially American for too many...
Raymond, with a "God helps those who help themselves" attitude, tried hard to do what he'd been taught to do; to keep his chin up and a stiff upper lip; to do what he could... to stay cheerful in the face of adversity.
But bit by bit, like so many, his resilience and hope were worn away. Raymond's dark days were nigh...
In the still of the night...
We shall never know where Raymond's anxious forebodings carried him, alone at the midnight hour. At such a time a man may turn to booze, women, any dissipation to dispel the gloom... but Raymond seems to have faced his great matter alone... and in profound despair. This, too, is reality for millions of the dispossessed and fearful.
At some irrevocable moment in his profound human misery Raymond decided the game was not worth the candle... and that it was time to move again, out of very life itself.
Thus, on May 30, 2011, while his countrymen were celebrating the sacrifices made by others to the benefit of all, Raymond Zack decided to make a sacrifice, too -- of himself, since living life was just too painful and without hope.
And so he waded into the chill waters at Crown Memorial State Beach, about to be the venue of muddle, confusion, bumbling... and death. A great American tragedy was about to commence... unnecessary, scandalous, an event that enhanced no one and left Raymond Zack, floating face down, his life's work at an end.
Seen by many.
Remember, Raymond Zack was a big man, 6'3", over 300 pounds. He moved slowly, deliberately in the shallow waters. He was clearly seen though his purpose, at first, was not. Still, as Raymond walked into deeper waters, residents were concerned; a 911 call was made... alerting police and firefighters that some kind of incident was underway.
In just 4 minutes help was at hand... and at hand help stayed... but without lifting a finger. And here is where an avoidable tragedy morphs into disbelief, reproach, scandal, and incomprehension.
Not one of the many lifesaving professionals on the beach, not a single one, did a single thing to forestall the tragedy that could so easily have been prevented.
Later these officials, pummelled by an incredulous world, worked overtime to manufacture excuses they hoped would appease, mollify and cover.
Fire officials said that because of budget cuts no one knew the necessary rescue procedures. But this excuse was quickly blasted... when it was shown the department had money, but no sense.  Other officials said rescue policies did not cover the case in point.
A police spokesman said officers stayed out of the water because Zack was suicidal and posed a possible threat.
A boat was requested to take officers to Zack... but those requesting it never indicated the matter was pressing.
In short, at every moment where judgement, help and assistance were required... the professionals at hand, our honored paladins, were without judgement, help and assistance.
And so, in full view of the world, in full view of his hysterical foster parent, 86 year old Dolores Berry, who unsuccessfully begged for celerity and assistance, Raymond Zack died...
In the way of these things, everything the system could have provided Raymond in life only emerged when he was dead... in such ways does America expiate its negligence.
Now there are flowers on the beach where he died, a crowd gathers daily to reflect and wonder; bishops make Raymond the subject of their learned lamentations. Municipal officials investigate and dismiss the inept. All this is good, right and proper.
But we must not forget the man at the center of it all, Raymond Zack, dead too soon at 50. He meant us well, each and every one of us. Now, prematurely, he rests in the bosom of the Lord; may he find the peace there he never had here. 
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc. , providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses.  Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski

Listen my children and you shall hear of Sarah Palin's version of the midnight ride of Paul Revere. So, who needs facts anyway?

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Sarah Palin came to Boston June 3, 2011 with her traveling circus of friends, children, grandchildren, and hangers on... On vacation, she wanted to show herself off to Boston while instructing her claque in the finer points of American revolution history, so much of which took place right here.
Frankly, we were glad to see her since our tourist business was hard hit by the recent recession and is only just recovering, glad that is...
... until she started lecturing us locals on what we know best: our own history, whose facts she so scrambled that she  managed to turn Paul Revere from our celebrated hero into a stooge for the British, a spy treacherously working for the very people we were fighting against, our 18th century owners and oppressors.
Here's what she said after a visit to Old North Church when she was asked about Paul Revere's historic ride, April 18, 1775. With the ringing certitude she's made all her own Professor Palin commenced her mangling.  Revere, she said, "warned the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms. By ringing those bells and making sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free."
Except for the  part where Palin says Revere got on his horse and rode... Professor Palin is wrong on every single point.
Revere was not on a mission to warn the British. (Where does the lady get these ideas anyway?).
He rode to warn the colonists to get up and defend themselves for the "British were coming", by sea.
He didn't work alone but as part of a team of brave people who each, once briefed, had to get up and get out fast, to warn the colonists along their appointed route so that they could defend themselves and the arms they had dangerously, laboriously assembled.
If Paul Revere had done what Palin said he did ("warn the British") he would have been snuffed out by the locals as a dangerous snitch, a traitor, not raised to the pinnacle of national respect and  admiration.
This entire imbroglio, this tempest in a tea cup, should never had taken place. Palin could have chosen to do what I did when I took my nephew Kyle out to the same historic sites.
First, get a guidebook and read it.
Second, visit the superb visitor centers along the way. They are packed with pertinent detail and good (air-conditioned) films, a real pleasure to see and get out of the humidity, too.
Three, pepper the well prepared park service employees and local volunteers in period costumes with all your questions. They've heard it all and, in my experience (for I've taken friends and family members thither many times) are well qualified, well versed, and always warm and welcoming in the New England fashion.
Sarah, of course, chose none of these sensible alternatives.
Sarah likes "going rogue" about this, as everything else. It means she does things, everything, her own way... and those who don't like it can lump it. She so liked the idea and the phrase that she titled her autobiography "Going Rogue: An American Life". (Simon and Schuster 2009). In Palin's "Alice in Wonderland" world whatever she says, no matter how wrong, is right and anyone criticizing her, however right, is always wrong.
Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, her Fox colleague, was the latest victim of Palin-think. Sunday June 5, he discovered why even suggesting that Palin could be mistaken ever about anything is like fighting with a skunk. And we all know what that means...
The daring but hapless Wallace suggested that Palin had erred in her Boston lecture on Revere. But Palin wasn't about to suffer that. What? Sarah! Make! A! Mistake! Not just impossible... but inconceivable. And what's more, that was just another instance of "gotcha" journalism, bad people out to get her. (In Sarah's conspiratorial world there are always such evildoers at hand  for Sarah's world is lined with paranoia.)
"You know what?" Palin spat at Wallace, "I didn't mess up about Paul Revere. Part of his ride was to warn the British that we're already there. That, hey, you're not going to succeed. You're not going to take American arms."
There was more, lots more, delivered with the usual ingredients of her verbal Molotov cocktails... surety, disdain, condescension and her usual "Look brother,don't tread on me. Get off my back" nastiness, which can in an  instant turn her smile into a sneer. Make no mistake about it, Sarah's a tough customer and any suggestion that she's not as good as the Virgin Mary directs her firepower at you, while her stiletto comes down hard on your foot, the better to make her point -- maggot, don't mess with me.
And this to Chris Wallace, a professional colleague at the Fox Network!
She went on, fire and brimstone at the ready, for Palin always comes armed with the arsenal of the street fighter:
"Here is what Paul Revere did. He warned the Americans that the British were coming.., and they were going to try take our arms and we got to make sure that we were protecting ourselves and shoring up all of ammunitions and our firearms so that they couldn't take it," Palin said June 5.
"But remember that the British had already been there, many soldiers for seven years in the area. And part of Paul Revere's ride --and it wasn't just one ride -- he was a courier, he was a messenger. Part of his ride was to warn the British that we're already there.... You are not going to beat our own well-armed persons, individual, private militia that we have. He did warn the British."
And that, she suggests, is that. But, most assuredly, that is not that... and not just because she misstated a few facts which are all easily available in libraries and online. Even Boston's own Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his famous poem "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" (published 1863) erred in focusing solely on what Revere did, to the detriment of his many other colleagues who also rode hard for freedom that April evening.
No, Palin's fault is the assumption of infallibility with which she  now approaches everything, great and small. That every word she mispronounces is faultless; every sentence she twists and destroys is perfect.... and every fact she gets wrong was in fact just previously misunderstood and is now clarified by her. This is not an American citizen and possible presidential candidate. This is the first, infallible American pope... and a woman too. And if you purists in the Vatican suggest that a non-Catholic and a woman will never be pope, Sarah will tell you different, thundering with words like schism and anti-pope at the ready.
For you see, Sarah aims for bigger fish than the White House with its tiresome term limits and insistent people always to propitiate. Sarah aims for the very seat of St. Peter and a lifetime audience commanded to listen and obey...
"A cry of defiance, and not of fear, A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, And a word that shall echo for evermore..."
The word of our Sarah urbi et orbi "In the hour of darkness and peril and need"... Amen! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also a historian and author of 18 best-selling business books.  Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski 

'Where the Iris grows... That is where I want to be....' The flower at the end of the rainbow.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's  program note. To put yourself in the right mood for this article, go to any search engine and find one of Tennessee's four Official State Songs, "When It's Iris Time In Tennessee," words and music by Willa Mae Waid. It's a lovely, lilting tune, wistful as all songs are which are sung by those far away from home... remembering.
It is early June, and the irises are now to be found in profusion around the City of Cambridge in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I  saw the first one the other day in front of my favorite Chinese restaurant Chang Sho. And though I was busy with one of the necessary errands which constitute too great a part of human life... I stopped.  The beauty of this ecstasy in the mud insisted.
There before me was a dazzling thing dressed in cloth of gold, the exact shade of the cream soda I drank too often as a boy fifty summers ago on the humid prairies of Illinois; the cream soda you craved, you gulped, which gave you sticky fingers, but never quenched your thirst; (so clever were its makers).
In an instant omnipotent memory was present, the way unstoppable memory will do. This time it reminded me of something I had read in the memoirs of Sir Henry Channon, the man who had deserted his Chicago roots to find his proper perch in life in London as a Member of Parliament... and collector of royalties.  He was a  boulevardier, a word for which we have no good English equivalent... a thing which tells us much about the French who do.... and the English.... who don't.
Sir Henry, universally known as "Chips", was a boulevardier, man about town, about London town.  As such he attended the first Garden Party at Buckingham Palace after World War II. He happened to be gossiping with one of Queen Mary's relations when this very symbol of "They'll always be an England" arrived, blinding in cloth of gold. "Cousin May," he said, "is rather overdressed", to Chips' scandalized amusement.
And so was the golden iris in front of me, as if some careless maharajah, rushing, had dropped this most expensive of materials in the mud, later to fulminate against the loss, blaming his chauffeur.
But just as Queen Mary had calculated her breathtaking appearance to touch drab lives with grandeur... so did the flower in front of me, largesse for a drab world, overburdened, as I was myself, with the littlest and most nagging things.
The flower's unexpected appearance was lavish, excessive, a sharp pronunciamento, "Good people," it boldly proclaimed. "I have come amongst you to cheer you, to uplift your spirits, to give you the gift of exuberance and excess... of profusion and prodigality. Seize them now... for they are yours for just a moment."
Here was the true work of the iris, the flower that takes its name from the Greek word for a rainbow... and not just any rainbow either... but the rainbow which at its end delivers the treasure you seek at such a place... a treasure of unceasing magnificence without end.
At  rainbow's end, you find irises of every color... a gift of superabundance, without limits, where too much and even more is your birth right. This is the place you have sought your entire life... and which the open sesame of the iris delivers with only one command, "Find bliss here."
Facts about iris.
Iris is a genus of 260 species of flowering plants  with showy flowers. As well as being the scientific name, iris is also very widely used as a common name for all Iris species.
The genus is widely distributed throughout the north temperate zone. Their habitats are considerably varied, ranging from cold and montane regions to the grassy slopes, meadowlands and riverbanks of Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa, Asia and across North America.
Irises are perennial herbs, growing from creeping rhizomes, or, in drier climates, from bulbs (bulbous irises). They have long, erect flowering stems, which may be simple or branched, solid or hollow, and flattened or have a circular cross-section. The rhizomatous species usually have 3-10 basal, sword-shaped leaves growing in dense clumps. The bulbous species have cylindrical, basal leaves.
Iris is for show.
Other flowering plants have many uses culinary, medical, as balms, salves, to clear the mind and the heart.
Not the iris.
Iris is designed for show... not merely to brighten space... but to change the entire orientation of a place, from mundane to brilliant. This is no trivial thing when you think of the unending multitudes striving to find both meaning and escape from their burdensome, colorless lives. For these people, and they are everywhere on earth, the iris is a plant of resolute optimism. Where there is a single iris, there is hope. And where any iris has once lived... there hope lingers, insistent that things can be better, beauty can be achieved and circumstances entirely altered for the better, one militant iris flower at a time. The revolutionary iris shouts, "Beauty here, beauty now, beauty forever!" It is insistent that you, if you but take the time to stop and perceive, shall derive full measure of this beauty, for a life without such beauty is no life at all.
Poets and iris
All poets have not understood the imperial function of the iris, with its life-changing mission... but poet Chris Lane does. In his poem "Purple Irises with hues of gold and fragility," he writes
"Oh, this beauty with for my eyes to see I cannot keep them for only me with friends true I shall share and next year bring to them the joy I find in a purple world with hues of gold and fragile love."
Lane knows that the iris turns him and every one perceiving it into a devoted zealot, one who must proselytize with so much beauty, earnest in spreading its unbounded joy to friends and total strangers, too. Iris has a mission and when it seizes your attention, you will have that mission, too.
The role of the adamant iris is clear: it beautifies now and finds dedicated adherents to beautify later. Iris exist in a realm of beauty, beauty today, more beauty tomorrow, cycle after cycle of beauty for all who see it, the task to enlighten those who suffer because they have not.
As such the iris reject literary renderings which turn them from their great mission into mere flowers.
They reject Georgia Gudykunst who writes "May your blooms be floriferous and in good form."
They reject Edith Buckner Edwards "Iris, most beautiful flower, Symbol of life, love and light."
They reject the celebrated D.H. Lawrence,  in his poem "Scent of Irises."
"A faint, sickening scent of irises Persists all morning...."
These poems do not have and therefore cannot convey and assist the unending work of iris and its significance for improving the lot of people worldwide and enriching their lives. This needs constancy,  consistently and profound belief.  And it requires the unceasing ability to touch wounded lives and make them bold advocates of universal beauty.
There is a hint of this in Willa Mae Waid's heartfelt song "When It's Iris Time in Tennessee."  For she senses the deep power of  iris... its ability to revive us... and uplift our spirits. This is the magic of iris.... and it was all present, every bit of it, in the iris dressed in cloth of gold which had my full attention just the other day as it kept steady watch for people like me who required its succor and were the better for it.

About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski 

Reflections on Harvard's 360th Commencement, May 26, 2011.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Today, for the 360th time in its exalted history, a history far older than the republic itself, Harvard will, with all the colorful paraphernalia of the Academy, send a goodly percentage of the brightest young people on earth on their way to kismet.
Some of these people will become heads of state, women too; that is why the address of Her Excellency Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the President of the Republic of Liberia is so important.  It proves that even in territories inclement towards women, women may rise high indeed.
Some of these people will head corporations and reap billions, some of which will undoubtedly be given to Harvard in the form of very public generosities.
Some of these people will buck the capitalist trend and found worthy causes of every kind. The world has need for every one of them and the people who give up much, the better able to give more.
Others will rise high in the military, in governments of every nation on earth, in education, science, medicine, the arts... there will even be a movie star or two but, perhaps, no rap musician. Not, however, because Harvard would not welcome one; it would. Rappers, however, may demur; it's a matter of image.... and no people on earth are as stringent about image as they are.
One more category may well appear: terrorist, revolutionary. Harvard does not go out seeking such people, but Harvard has helped shape many such. Red John Reed, Bolshevik, (class of 1910 ) is buried in the Kremlin wall... a signal honor for a gentleman of Crimson. Like so many Harvard graduates he rose high, though this time for a cause most every other Harvard graduate loathed and disdained. John Reed wouldn't have cared about that; Harvard graduates are above such trivia. They know that what they do is important, even if no one else on this planet agrees. This profound conviction is part of what the graduates take away today... you can be sure of it. It is one of the best reasons for the very existence of Harvard.
Many of today's graduates will write about their Harvard experiences; I am one of them. Most will cherish happy memories and say so, fudging the truth on which Harvard prides itself and pruning things not quite happy enough. In truth, their classmates were probably never as bright as they will remember, as bright or as dedicated. The faculty never as welcoming and helpful as they will recall. And the university overall not as profoundly influential. But embroidering your Harvard past is winked at since happy memories beget handsome legacies. And there is no need to remind so many, and in print, too, that their time here was not as sun-kissed as they ardently desire it to be. You were young, vibrant, surrounded by possibilities, and you'd been marked with the most winning brand of all. Under the circumstances, the utmost joy and contentment are understandable; indeed mandatory.
There will be some of course, but just a handful who will write otherwise, telling, years from now, of painful isolation, alienation and the persistent thought that they never were, not for a moment, good enough to have gone to Harvard in the first place, that they were a fluke, a sport of nature. Perhaps. But they will write such sentiments in a ringing style, lyric, too, that shows in its careful refinement and clarity another benefit of a Harvard education.
This day, the most important day in the life of virtually every graduate, save only the day on which they were born, will start early; the ceremony commences in Harvard Yard at 9:45 a.m., but Harvard Square is awash with the camera-totting hours before, even from first light. A sign of  the times: persons unable to be present can see it all, and clearer, on the Web. There is not a one who so watches that does not wish to be in Cambridge instead... for all that they see more and better than the audience shaded by the great trees in Tercentenary Theater.
Graduates, at once shy and proud,  will move today surrounded by their personal claques, the lucky ones invited to see and venerate. Proud parents, who often dipped deep to make this happen, have been admonished, several times, to be prompt and organized. Graduates have conflicting feelings about these folks. They are grateful, of course, though never as grateful perhaps as they should be. It would not do to slight them, but, this is the last day, the very last day, they can see their classmates and friends, similarly burdened,  as they will never be again: present, accounted for, resoundingly young; friends, colleagues, lovers, too. This recognition, this sadness is palpable. The pull of the golden past, slipping away forever, against the dawning future, ardently desired... but not this day. This is why the tears fall today for this must be a bittersweet moment for all. In these precincts the past and future truly collide today, to roil emotions.  Parting is indeed such sweet sorrow... and now they truly know it.
It is now just 5 a.m., the dawn of this day of days is nigh. It is a day of memories, memories retrieved, memories born. Parents will recall memories unbeckoned of their beloved graduates and their brief lives. They will have, for themselves alone, moments poignant and keenly felt, the more so if they had, once upon a time, a Harvard Commencement of their own. Then Cambridge becomes the best it can be: an ever- renewing place of reverie and remembrance, a place where you are always welcome, for you are part of what has shaped this special place.
The trickle of early comers, seeking parking spaces more valued than gold, will soon grow into serious traffic. Ladies in hats otherwise known only at weddings and gentlemen in ties they will later shake off as gladly as a noose begin to appear as do the marked men of the day... the sheriff of the county who will ride in on white horse to declare the proceedings open; officials in their always ill-fitting cuttaways and top hats... and of course and always the brightly garbed graduates in mortar boards they never wear quite right. With their gowns a Rosetta Stone clearly indicating just where the graduates have been and where they are going, these players gather together, together to march into the ceremonies where they shall become, so the University's president will pronounce, members of the company of educated men and women.
This is what every graduate has earned... and everyone has come to hear.  And it is a marvelous thing, not just for those present but for the entire world, soon to benefit from the skills, dedications,and hard work of this renewed company, the company we all rely upon so much.
Think of these new members of this company today. They have much to accomplish and many lives to touch and improve. We must all be glad they have such a day as this to start them on their way, for they go forward for us all.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski 

Harold Camping said the world would end 6 p.m. Saturday, May 21, 2011. It didn't. It wasn't the first time, he was a false prophet. And it won't be the last!

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's note. To get into the right mood for this article, search any search engine and find the well-known gospel tune "I'm on my way (to Canaan land)". (Written by William M. Golden, 1914) . My favorite is the version by the great Mahalia Jackson.
Chances are over the last few days you've heard of a zealot named Harold Camping. He's the originator of Oakland, California based Family Radio... and he's got a bee in his bonnet for sure.
He's a man so fervently longing for the world to end, so that righteous rewards and punishments can be meted out, that he's willing to risk (over and over again) the public ridicule and mockery that inevitably follow when his specific world-ending predictions fail to occur.
Today he'll be especially busy explaining to his discombobulated flock just why he goofed on this occasion and why his absolutely precise prediction for the end of terra firma -- 6 p.m. May 21, 2011 -- was erroneous... but not, he'll aver, wrong,really.... in fact perfectly reasonable once you understand the minute horological calculations and Biblical truths he will be, today, explicating a mile a minute, without apology, embarrassment or any excuse whatsoever.
For you see, divinely appointed prophets like the egregious Camping are never, ever wrong. In Camping's case when he seems to be in error, it is rather that he, for an instant, misunderstood God and His purpose. But shortly and with prayer, God corrects his misapprehension and gives him yet again, total clarity, complete understanding, and a vision which cannot be doubted of how and when rapture will occur -- this (next) time for sure. Eternal damnation and total perdition will come to those who doubt... never mind the muddle that just occurred and the complete chaos and disruption to the lives of the disappointed True Believers who were certain today they would awake to eternal bliss in the bosom of the Lord... but instead heard nothing but the insistent assurances and renewed certainties of the prophet they trusted... the prophet who mislead them, again.
Camping's legacy: lives high jacked, disrupted, shattered without compunction or remorse.
When one is a prophet, with a speed dial to God, one has better things to think about and deal with than the tiresome, annoying but essential realities of life. Those are beneath the notice of the Elect of God. The job of such is to seize your body and soul; to prepare you for revelation, exaltation, rapture, for total immersion in eternal God. These prophets, with the stern message and visage of their ancient prototypes, are masters of agitation, fulmination, damnation and submission.
They -- and Camping is very definitely one of them -- tell a parent whose children are not believers that they shall not be together in the infinity of Paradise, because the children are on Satan's path. Prophets want total submission.... and so, obsessed by their mission, they are happy to spread fears, terrible fears, and profound anxieties, the better to achieve their objective. Believers in a household have an obligation to cause pain to those still at risk... if by so doing they can capture the soul and shepherd it to Heaven and bliss. They are under a moral obligation to do this... and they must act promptly since their leader and prophet has revealed God's specific date when personal choice ends...
And so, with the complete support of Harold Camping believing wives tell still disbelieving and unsaved husbands that they shall be separate through eternity if the husband will not submit. Day and night this argument is made, made again, insistently made, made with sincerity and profound belief, disrupting everything until it is resolved and the soul garnered....
Believing children turn the tables on non-believing parents and, speaking of eternal love and togetherness, work their will on them... and so, worn down, these parents announce, for love of child, their born-again belief. Hallelujah!
And so it goes as each family member using the potent threat of eternal loneliness and isolation, of alienation, despair, profound miseries and the unspeakable pain of Hell fire work tirelessly to capture the souls of the people they most care about. For so important are these people, that the pain Camping encourages you to give must be the greatest pain of all; you love them so and must, therefore, do everything, anything to harvest their souls. And the date, the date when you will be irrevocably placed throughout eternity is coming, coming... a God-given certainty, Prophet Camping says so... and he is a goodly man.
About Harold Camping
Harold Egbert Camping, born July 19, 1921, is a Christian radio broadcaster and president of Family Radio, a California-based religious broadcasting network that spans more than 150 outlets in the  United States as well as website. Educated at the University of California, Berkeley, he earned a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering in 1942.
Camping early saw the potential of using media to establish a ministry without walls. His first acquisition was station KEAR in San Francisco; his mission to broadcast traditional Christian Gospel to conservative Protestants. During the 1960s, Family Radio acquired six additional FM stations and seven other AM stations under guidelines established by the Federal Communications Commission (FTC).
Camping went on the air at once and made an impression with his deep, sonorous voice coupled with a slow, emphatic cadence. Right from the start he was fascinated by and often broadcast about Bible-based numerology to predict dates for the end of the world.
Central to Camping's teaching is the belief that the Bible alone and in its entirety is the Word of God, absolutely trustworthy. However, he emphasizes, this does not mean that each sentence of the Bible is to be understood only literally. Rather the meaning of individual Bible passages also need to be interpreted in the light of two factors. The first is the context of the Bible as a whole. The second is its spiritual meaning.
With these guidelines, Camping has moved step by step towards ever more radical beliefs, including his oft broadcast assertion that the date of Christ's second coming can be worked out to a precise moment of time.
He regards three factors as essential to this precise determination:
1) Jewish feast days in the Hebrew calendar, as described in the Old Testament, 2) the lunar month calendar (1 synodic month = 29.53059  days), and 3) a close approximation of the Gregorian calendar tropical year (365.24219 days, rounded to 365.2422.)
He projects these into modern times and combines the results with other information in the Bible. His predictions, based as they are on the infallible Word of God, follow as a matter of course, including both his original prediction that the Lord's return would be in 1994; then when that failed, he lay low for a while, before announcing the amended prediction that this return would be May 21, 2011 with the entire world destroyed in a fiery inferno, October 21, 2011.
Nothing that Harold Camping has predicted with such absolute assurance and ringing certainty has come to pass. But hundreds of people revere him anyway and still pay credence to what he says, no doubt his reassuring voice assisting.  But I say this unto these poor souls. Is what you are being asked to do truly what a loving God would ordain? Thus I admonish you:
"Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves". (Matthew 7:15).
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling  business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski <a href="http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/

'For misery, oh, oh, Cherchez la femme'. That's what Dominique Strauss-Kahn,France's prospective next president, did. See what happened next... ou la la!

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's note: Back  in 1977 a group lavishly named Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band, recorded a peppy little number called "Cherchez la femme". Its lilt and lyrics are perfect accompaniment to this article. You can find it in any search engine. Then sit back and enjoy a story you'll find yourself shaking your head about... as you tap your toes to the music, ready to jump up and dance...
Dans la nuit...
As a acute student of French history and politics, no doubt Dominique Strauss- Kahn (universally known in France as "DSK" for his initials  knows the anecdote about Philippe,  Duc d'Orleans, Regent of France (1715-1723). His mother, the dowager duchess, exasperated by his mind-blowing promiscuity (prodigious even by ancien regime standards) asked him why.... His shoulder-shrugging response? "Dans la nuit touts les chats son gris." ("In the night, all cats are gray").
Now DSK has given the French such a rollicking sexual scandal it's outraged even the most insouciant Parisian boulevadier... affronted by the crudity of the alleged event and the charges, appalling to the most style-conscious people on earth. After all, as Professor Henry Higgins noted in "My Fair Lady" "The French don't care what you do, as long as you pronounce it correctly." It seems, judging from the outrage throughout France this week, that in fact there are limits and enough is enough even in the land of ou la la.  Here are the facts...
May 14, 2011 Dominique Strauss-Kahn, leader of the International Monetary Fund, was just inches away from becoming president of France, with every public opinion poll showing him trouncing little loved incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy and taking up residence in the Elysee Palace.  What happened that night has changed everything -- for himself, for France, and for Europe.
Since the event in question took place in Manhattan (doesn't everything?) it seems appropriate to quote some lyrics from local lad Stephen Sondheim written for "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum" .(1966).
"Everybody ought to have a maid. Everybody ought to have a working girl. Everybody ought to have a lurking girl... Everybody ought to have a  menial consistently congenial."
DSK took the suggestion literally...  though Sondheim no doubt meant "a" maid, not "the" maid, a nuance perhaps lost in translation. And Sondheim most assuredly did not mean the 32 year-old chamber maid (from Senegal) who was fluffing DSK's pillows in the luxury Sofitel hotel. Close to Times Square (always the epicenter of sexual squalor and never-tell-your-wife adventures), the cost of this eye-popping suite was either $1300 per night or $3000 per night, both figures reported by Associated Press. What matter? It had more amenities than Hotel 6 and perhaps the pampered and deferred to DSK thought the maid merely one of them... Moreover, when she declined his advances, he may have thought that was part of the service for stimulating a tired 62-year-old to improved performance. He lunged... she resisted... he lunged again. Kinky.
What happened in that luxury suite is (for the moment) only surely known to just the 2 people who were there. However, the maid (who had worked to the hotel's satisfaction for three years), immediately went to the management to report the incident. She may have told DSK as much... and there was perhaps something in her eyes and manner that suggested she would do so indeed.
In any event, DSK decamped (without even stuffing his travel bag with either the high class toilette amenities beloved of hotel guests or his cell phone, which helped track him down)  ... racing to the airport for a flight to Paris... and the usual limelight and deference. The doors were being closed when...
...  New York law enforcement officials entered the plane, arresting DSK, and charging him (just 4 hours after the incident was reported) with a criminal sex act, attempted rape, and unlawful imprisonment. Then they returned him to the city where, in the police lineup (so unchic) the maid selected him as her attacker, the man from whom she had to break free and escape. It was sordid... it was outrageous... and it broke the code of "do it if you must, but never, ever get caught", something every successful politician with a roving eye needs to remember.... particularly Dominique Strauss-Kahn, whose relations with women were frequent, flagrant, and always feckless.
In 2007, for instance, Tristane Banon, a French journalist and writer, accused DSK of attempting to rape her in 2002, but she did not press charges. In 2008, an independent investigator was appointed following allegations he had had an affair with a married subordinate, Piroska Nagy. She was later made redundant and DSK helped her get another job. DSK issued a public apology for the affair. Le Journal du Dimanche dubbed him "le grand seducteur" (the Great Seducer). It was a sobriquet of distinction, not obloquy, perhaps more useful  with voters than his Legion d'Honneur.
Perhaps more importantly, DSK's employer, the International Monetary Fund's board found that his relationship with Nagy was "consensual", doing nothing more than calling his actions "regrettable" and saying they "reflected a serious error of judgement." DSK (this mere hand slapping suggested) was too intelligent, too well connected, too valuable to lose for mere sexual peccadillos.
However, when the current allegations surfaced, the IMF acted at once and decisively, appointing an acting leader, distancing themselves from their man-of-the-hour only hours before. They knew the charges were serious... and high speed exoneration wasn't going to happen. After all, DSK stood accused of jumping out of the bathroom, naked, jarring but hugely appreciated (I'm told) from an aging lothario. The alleged victim, unimpressed, had tried to fight him off as he dragged her into the salle de bain and humiliation.
All this, and the rest, outraged his IMF colleagues... as it outraged the French nation, used to sexual scandals in the highest places, but drawing the line at such behavior with servants.
As the news reached Paris, the talk was wild, often bawdy, and, given the national character, conspiratorial. What's more, given the fact he's Jewish, there were echoes of the nation's most corrosive scandal, the 19th century Dreyfus Affair when the right-wing went out of its way to cover themselves for incompetence by destroying an innocent (Jewish) army officer. Why had two right-wing media sources been the first to release the news; how had they known so fast? DSK, his loyal adherents asserted, was framed. Maybe so. It will all come out in the wash in what promises to be one of the most lurid of trials, one every exultant conservative and every disgruntled,chagrined French socialist will scrutinize with care, the nation having lost a president but gained a steamy reality show.
Whilst he's being held at Rikers Island prison in protective custody (being deemed a flight risk), DSK has time to work on his very expensive defence and connive at his release. Maybe the music and words of "Cherchez La Femme" will cheer him.... but I doubt it:
"This man has learned his lesson, oh hey Now he's alone He's got no woman and no home. For misery, oh, oh Cherchez la femme." 
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. He is also a historian and author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski <a href="http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/

New England's cottontail rabbits face extinction... if you love them, help save them.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
I had the most extraordinary experience recently when I took my nephew Kyle out to see the Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts. Built in 1770 for patriot minister William Emerson, the residents of this handsome clapboard  house literally heard the shot heard round the world on April 19, 1775.
Later, that revolution won, residents welcomed one celebrated guest after another... Bronson Alcott, Henry David Thoreau and Margaret Fuller.  Two of the most celebrated of all -- Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne both lived there for a time and both were fertile with the seminal ideas that shaped the new nation.
Emerson wrote his famous essay "Nature" in a stuffy upstairs bedroom. Hawthorne wrote a tribute to the house itself, "Mosses from an Old Manse." Both he and his wife Sophia chiseled poems for each other on the window glass using a diamond that surely symbolized a love so great it could take in its stride the massive discomfort of their chamber on the second floor, frigid in winter, insufferable in summer.
One more guest came, or rather a stream of them... and it is these guests who so startled us the other day. The Old Manse was closing for the day and the sun was dipping in the western sky.
I was walking away from the house when I turned for a last look and saw an overpowering luminescence... a spectrum of colors bathed in a light that could only be called celestial. It was a benediction... overwhelming... perplexing...
... until I realized that the epicenter of this luminescence was the heirloom vegetable garden originally planted by Thoreau in honor of the Hawthornes' wedding.  Kyle and I were being ushered off the property in high style, grandly so... by the rabbits who entered the garden as its visitors left; their ears catching the light to produce this astonishing effect... It was unexpected but no less welcome for that. It was good to see  so many of them.... and so well, though I can imagine the gardeners felt quite differently. Sadly, this brave show may well have been a swan song... especially if these rabbits were of the New England cottontail variety.
New England cottontails and their plight.
The New England cottontail (Sylvilagus transitionalis) is a species of cottontail rabbit represented by fragmented populations in areas of New England, specifically from southern Maine to southern New York. This species bears a close resemblance (so close you must analyze their fecal droppings to tell the difference) to the Eastern cottontail. It is important to know that the Eastern cottontail has done the better job of adapting to its often harsh environment; the New England cottontail, for instance, retains its brown color during the winter, the better to be seen and enjoyed by hungry coyotes and owls. This is but one of the several pressing reasons which together may presage the end of these uniquely New England residents. Here is the full litany of the woes which assail them...
Item:  Its population is in sharp decline. As recently as 1960, New England cottontails were found east of the Hudson River in New York, across all of  Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, north to southern Vermont and New Hampshire, and into southern Maine.
Today, this rabbit's range has shrunk by more than 75  percent. Its numbers are so greatly diminished that it cannot be found in Vermont and has been reduced, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, to only five smaller populations throughout its historic range.
Item: Drastically reduced habitat. The New England cottontail prefers early successional forests, often called thickets, with thick and tangled vegetation. These young forests are generally less than 25 years old. Once large trees grow in a stand, the shrub layer tends to shrink, creating habitat that the cottontails no longer find suitable.
New England cottontails need a certain amount of territory to flourish. They do best on patches of habitat larger than 12 acres. Rabbits on smaller patches of  habitat deplete their food supply sooner and have to eat lower quality food, or may need to search for food in areas where there is more risk (especially in winter) of being killed by a predator.
Item: The introduction of exotic invasive species, such as multiflora rose, honeysuckle bush and autumn olive, in the last century has changed the type of habitat available to New England cottontails. These plants form the major component of many patches where cottontails can be found, and the rabbits don't like them at all.
Item: Today white-tailed deer are found in extremely high densities throughout the range of New England cottontails. Deer not only eat many of the same plants but may affect the density of many understory plants that provide thicket habitat for New England cottontails.
And so the woes pile up, one on top of the other until catastrophe looms... and swiftly so. Even their well-known prolific breeding habits, known to all, cannot save them... without our immediate assistance. Thankfully a measure of that assistance is now at hand...
Under an agreement announced in April, 2011, the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department will work with private landowners in Cheshire, Hillsborough, Merrimack, Rockingham and Strafford counties to help restore the thickets during the next 50 years. The goal is to enroll 3,000 to 5,000 acres to be managed as cottontail habitat.
The agreement in New Hampshire allows the Fish and Game Department to provide assurance to volunteering landowners that their conservation work "won't jeopardize the future use or value of the land if the species is eventually federally listed," said Steve Weber, chief of the department's wildlife division. Such federal listing as an endangered species is probable since the cottontail was listed in 2006 as a candidate under the Endangered Species Act.
Now the good people of New  Hampshire can make a start at preserving the cottontails by cutting vegetation to promote shrub development, planting seeds, controlling invasive plants, and transferring some rabbits to the newly created habitats. It is good... but is it enough... and in time?
A candid conclusion.
For thousands of years, New England cottontails were self-sufficient, thank you very much. Then we, homo sapiens, descended, spreading dislocation, disaster, death. Now the future of these silky creatures is in our hands. Surely a great nation that can put members of our species on the moon can make a few bucks available to save them and give them the little they need to survive. But will we? That is the open question that demands the right answer, for really what do a few rabbits matter in the scheme of things?
Here is the righteous answer: if we will not protect the small and meek like the cottontails, how can we be expected to do what's necessary to protect ourselves and the planet? We are all, you see, endangered together. When will we finally come to understand?
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc. , providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski <a href="http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/

'.... it's raining violets.'

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's note. Before you read this article, give yourself the right musical accompaniment, "April Showers" sung by Al Jolson. Jolson made many recordings of this famous song. The music was written by Louis Silvers, the lyrics by B. G. De Sylva; it was first sung by Jolson in the 1921 Broadway musical "Bombo".
A quick search of any search engine should yield this pip of a song with the inimitable Jolson touch that soon made him a household name. "April Showers" spurred him on his way; it will help us on ours, too.
Acres of violets... nestled amongst the trees... quiet... serene... so abundant, unforgettable by sunlight... irresistible by moonlight... attired in transient glory for the midnight visit of Titania and all her court... you fell asleep too early to see...
These are the violets of my youth... and I cannot see a single blossom without being seized by the memory of their beauty. That is why, when the spring comes and the May violets with it, I prefer to walk alone through Cambridge streets, so that when I find the patches of violets I know so well, I can allow myself the bittersweet sensation of remembrance.
A companion on these walks, so desirable so often, is de trop in violet season. Such a one would try to be congenial, amiable, a real friend. But that is not what you want when the violets come.... you want what only you can recall... the memory of youth, beauty, of endless time for squandering and of the springtime of your life, when your life was just for living, and all life's miseries and injunctions were yet to come, not present realities. The violets saw it all and smiled... for no one knew better than they how brief that season was. But they didn't share that insight with you... they knew it would come soon enough on its own. And so it did, thus closing this time in all but memory. Each violet seen is a bridgeway to that memory... and precious so.
The violets of Woodward Avenue.
Winters in the heartland of America which is Illinois, are hard, interminable, testing the fortitude of every living thing, all longing for release and the clemency of spring. By February you are desperate for relief... and while the snow may stop for an instant, the mud does not. It is everywhere, not least in the places you are sternly admonished never to track it. But the mud is more insistent upon going in with you, than you are in heeding the insistent admonition.
Out of this rich mud, the mud that feeds America and the world, come the violets in rampancy and profusion. Their job is to obliterate the despondent memories of winter... and create the moment when you, turning a corner, see  them in all their glory, catching your breath and (without even knowing) breathing a paean of pure thanks for this flicker of time, forever magnificent; now ineffably part of your soul.
Some facts about violets.
Viola is a genus of flowering plants in the violet family Violaceae, with around 400-500 species distributed around the world. Most species are found in the temperate Northern Hemisphere; however, viola species (commonly called violets, pansies, or heartsease) are also found in widely divergent areas such as Hawaii, Australasia, and the Andes in South America.
Flower colors vary in the genus, ranging from violet, as their common name suggests, through various shades of blue, yellow, white, and cream, whilst some types are bicolored, often blue and yellow. Many cultivars and hybrids have been bred in a greater spectrum of colors. Flowering is often profuse, and may last for much of the spring and summer.
Edible violets.
Violets are not only wonderful to look at; they titillate the palate in surprising ways. Violets have a delicate, sweet and sometimes peppery flavor. Before including them in your next salad, however, reaping the advantages of their abundant antioxidants, have a care. Violets are good for you; some flowers that resemble violets are not. These include spring larkspur and monkshood, which are in fact poisonous. This suggests the plot for a murder mystery suitable for "Masterpiece Theatre". Miss Honeycroft, though no longer young, was appreciated by hostesses for her wit and lively humor of a literary kind; her well-tended violets were much admired... it came as a great shock to the community when her body was found amongst them, jarring in bright red riding boots and nothing more... Kinky. Who would water the violets now?
Special warning: Be extra careful not to add African violets to that salad, even just a few. African violets, beloved of grandmothers worldwide (including mine) are so named because of their resemblance to violets, although they are not true violets and are absolutely not edible; neither are the rhizome or roots of any violets. They are poisonous to humans.
More ways to eat violets.
Violets may be sauteed like spinach and added to stir-fry vegetables. Wild violets also have a somewhat viscous texture when cooked which is used in traditional cooking as a thickener for soups and stews. But while I am sure you like a good stew so prepared... I am surer you crave the sweeter uses of violets....
Violets are a symbol of everlasting love and the enduring passion which their purple color suggests. Remember, this color, in Ancient Rome and  Byzantium, was reserved for emperors... the highest placed mortals on earth. Now swept away, you can enjoy some of their rarefied delights.
To make candied violet flowers, pick a large number of flowers and let them dry on a paper towel for a couple of hours. Beat an egg white to a froth, and color it with food coloring, if desired. Using a fine brush, carefully coat each flower with the egg white, then pour fine sugar over each. Blend the sugar in your blender to make it a finer consistency. Lay each flower on wax paper to dry, then use as a decoration for your confections when the flowers are stiff enough to move. This will impress the special one in your life. But you want more than to impress, don't you? You want to ensnare this person forever and forever passionately. Admit it. Here violets are essential.
Offer your beloved "Parma violets", a select British tablet confectionery manufactured by the Derbyshire-based company Swizzels Matlow.  For maximum effect, offer, too, a glass of Creme Yvette, made from Parma violets, the most luxurious and lush violets of all. Rarer than rare, this liqueur has not been made for decades... giving it will therefore make the desired impression... and ensure the total submission of the one you crave to distraction. Such is the enduring power of the violet, in the wild or distilled.
"So if it's raining, have no regrets, Because it it isn't raining rain you know, It's raining violets..."
Run outside now and seize them... and this moment... before they and it pass away forever, to your certain regret.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski <a href="http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/

Canada's Liberal Party crushed as Michael Ignatieff takes them to historic defeat May 2, 2011. The real question is why they let him try....

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's note: Michael Ignatieff and I were classmates at Harvard University. We were in the same "track" together, Modern European History. Each week for a year (1969-1970) we gathered for the colloquium which enabled H. Stuart Hughes, chairman of the History Department, to scrutinize us and decide who would advance to the Ph.D. program and who would be given the terminal Master's Degree. Our class consisted of just a dozen students, or less. We came to know each other very well... He smoked gold tipped Sobranie, the Russian word for "'sovereign" (current price $55 for 200)... his cigarette always a prop in his presentation.
Count Michael.
If there were any justice in the world, Michael Georgevitch Ignatieff would be waking up this morning on his wide acres near Smolensk as Count Michael, his paternal grandfather Count Pavel Ignatieff, the Russian Minister of Education during the First World War, grandson of Princess Natasha Mestchersky.  But in 1917, the acres, the grand estates and country houses, the privileges and baubles from the Tsar, even the Tsar himself were all swept away...  still, you will never understand Michael Ignatieff if you do not understand that he is a Russian aristocrat to his very fingers.... and that he longs for a world that was once his... a world long ago and far away from Canada. It's all there in his 1987 book "The Russian Album", which that year won the Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction.
Born May 12, 1947
Ignatieff was born in Toronto, elder son of Russian-born Canadian diplomat (Count) George Ignatieff and his Canadian-born wife, Jessie Alison (nee Grant). His childhood was peripatetic as his father moved up the diplomatic ranks, ultimately becoming chief of staff to Prime Minister Lester Pearson. Michael Ignatieff got used to being around important people and their privileged lives. He became adept at the great game of moving up, by pleasing the influential, being in the right place at the right time, and always considering which move to make and when to make it. Every glittering prize in the world was available if you knew how to get it... and Michael Ignatieff was eager to learn...
He studied history at the University of Toronto's Trinity College (B.A., 1969) where Bob Rae was his debating partner and fourth-year roommate. (Rae went on to become Ontario's 21st premier 1990-1995 and one of the few Liberals to survive the debacle under Ignatieff.)
Restless, always in motion.
Ignatieff moved on again.... this time to Oxford University where he studied with celebrated liberal philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin about whom he would later write. Then Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he earned his PhD in 1976.  Then the University of British Columbia (assistant professor from 1976 to 1978).... then senior research fellow at King's College, Cambridge until 1984. He then moved to London where he began to focus on his career as writer and journalist.
It was impressive, it was distinguished, it was rootless... and it was certainly not the standard career path of a politician who needed to understand and connect with real people and their everyday concerns.  Michael Ignatieff's career was becoming as recherche as his cigarettes... rare, exquisite, far-fetched. This would have been fine... except he hankered after political office and political power... and the plaudits and esteem which only come when one is the demonstrated "People's Choice". But could he get there by writing himself into power... without submitting  himself to the messy business of politics? Could he reach the top of the greasy pole (as British statesman Benjamin Disraeli called it) by being wafted there and without a drop of grease on his refined, fastidious person?
That was Michael Ignatieff's most astonishing idea of all...
Was there a precedent in the politics of Canada, Britain, or the United States of a man who went for the highest of offices without learning the craft of politics and the messy business of working with people from the grassroots up? In due course, perhaps Ignatief arrived at Woodrow Wilson, as prolific a writer and academic as Ignatieff himself, professor and then President of Princeton University.
But even Woodrow Wilson had served as elected Governor of New Jersey (1911-1913). Though Wilson's was a troubled presidency, still it was the closest precedent  to hand. Michael Ignatieff meant to improve upon it... becoming Prime Minister of Canada without administrative, executive or foreign policy experience, having been elected just twice as a Member of Parliament... and without the most important thing of all: the proven ability to arouse, enthuse, lead the people.
That he should believe it is perfectly understandable; (people can after all persuade themselves about anything). That he got the leaders of the greatest of Canadian political parties  to believe it is... remarkable, incredible, mad.
Yet that is precisely what happened when in 2004 three Liberal organizers, former Liberal candidate Alfred Apps, Ian Davey (son of Senator Keith Davey) and lawyer Daniel Brock traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts (where Ignatieff held a professorship at Harvard) and persuaded him to move back to Canada and consider a bid for the Liberal leadership (should Paul Martin retire) and then Prime Minister. The  tailors had done their work and now the Emperor with no clothes was ready for his unique, historic journey. Paul Martin did iretire the Liberal Party leadership after the Liberal government was defeated in the January 2006 federal election... and the poobahs of the defeated party were persuaded that no experience was the best experience... that no leadership skills were the best skills to lead... and that a man who so loved and venerated Canada that he sought every opportunity to leave her... that this was the best man in the nation to be Prime Minister of a great people.
Oh!  Ignatieff!
But if the leaders of the Liberal Party (who ultimately anointed Ignatieff as their unproven paladin) believed Count Michael's mythology, the people of Canada did not. They called it as they saw it, and they knew, like the unnamed boy in the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, the emperor had no clothes, or anything else except the desire to start at the top, accepting obeisance. It was one of the most fatuous of political ideas ever perpetrated. And handed unprecedented victory to Conservative Stephen Harper. And unprecedented, abject defeat to the Liberals who forgot, with Ignatieff,  the very heart of their principles: that governments are of the people, by the people, for the people... and of leaders who work a lifetime to understand those people and serve them.
As for Michael Ignatieff, who presided over the Liberal's greatest, unprecedented defeat? He hinted he could be persuaded, if properly asked, to stay on as leader. No takers, there. And then he went before the nation and petulantly lambasted his opponents for questioning his attachment to Canada and his patriotism, still not understanding the rambunctious game of politics, a blood sport, not the coronation he expected.  It was "their" fault Canadians were deprived of such a man as he.  No doubt Count Michael will make his exhaustive case in his next book, which will be written anywhere else than the Canada he loves so much...

About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski <a href="http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/

Osama bin Laden has been killed and we say Hallelujah!

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
I am not a violent man but I have waited, with all Americans, for the violent end to one man of consummate evil, Osama bin Laden... and now -- at long last --  his end  has come and my heart beats quicker and in gratitude to the people who have done this worthy deed and rid the world of the man whose face was the face of death.
The facts.
For years, the CIA had been monitoring an al-Qaida courier. They knew he was important because detainees told investigators he was profoundly trusted by bin Laden and might very well be living with bin Laden. Last August, as a result of monitoring this courier, intelligence officials got a break. The courier arrived at a highly fortified compound nestled in an affluent neighborhood of an affluent Pakistani town two hours outside Islamabad.
Everything about this compound suggested some nefarious purpose. It was surrounded by walls as high as 18 feet, topped with barbed wire. Two security posts were the only way in. A third-floor terrace was shielded by a seven-foot privacy wall. No phone lines or Internet cables ran to the property. The residents burned their garbage rather than put it out for collection.  Intelligence officials came to believe that this highly distinctive compound was built about 5 years ago at a cost of about one million dollars for a person of consequence in al-Qaida.. The question now was who that person of consequence might be.
Increasingly, after innumerable reviews of the compound and everything known about it, intelligence officials came to believe that the compound was bin Laden's... but for this most important of covert operations there could not be any error of any kind. Americans, they knew, had to have success, total success from this mission... and that's precisely what these officials aimed to give an aggrieved, long-suffering, and patient nation.
And so they did their important work, their painstaking work, their essential work so that when they did what they must do they would be completely successful, and Osama bin Laden would not escape yet again.
Absolute certainty required.
By mid-February, intelligence from multiple sources was clear enough to enable President Obama to "pursue an aggressive course of action." During the next two and a half months, Obama led five meetings of the National Security Council focused solely on whether bin Laden was in that compound and, if so, how to get him.
Everyone was agreed from the President on down: this time there must be complete success...
And so, first of all, just who had access to this growing body of intelligence was drastically limited. Our closest allies -- Britain, Canada, Australia, etc. -- are ordinarily in the loop... but not this time.  Too, the United States does not normally carry out ground operations inside Pakistan without collaboration from Pakistani intelligence. But this was the ultimate covert operation and what was "normal" in such matters was not good enough.
There had to be total success; everything had to be done right... the first time.
April 29, 2011. The President approved the operation to kill Osama bin Laden and the countdown to vengeance began.
For this most important of missions, Obama went with real people instead of our sophisticated Predator drones. President Obama entrusted the honor of America to some of America's finest, the elite Navy SEAL Team Six under the command of CIA Director Leon Panetta. The names of team members have not (so far) been released... but they have well and truly earned the gratitude of the nation.
A fiery end, a bullet to the head.
In the dead of night, helicopters descended out of darkness to deliver Armageddon. One can imagine the event.
The inhabitants of the compound would have awakened, drowsy and disoriented, to their worst nightmare. Coming for them, every one of them, were the deliverers of promised retribution... the representatives of a great nation delivering at last what every citizen of that nation wanted: Revenge!  Retaliation! Justice! 
Unimaginable horror scarred the night skies as, one by one, the representatives of al-Qaida fell... the courier who lead the CIA to this place... bin Laden's brother... his son... and the man of practised and unfathomable evil Osama bin Laden  himself... one blessed bullet into the brain that brought so much undeserved pain to so many.
This was the man whose hatred created, on the fateful day of September 11,  profound misery; a man who turned happy children from happy homes into orphans... a wicked man who tore wives from husbands and husbands from wives... a man who turned doting grandparents into crazed people mad with despair... asking a single question over and over again: "Why?" What had so many innocent people done to deserve so much....
And so, even as the Twin Towers fell, even as a great nation reeled and wept... the sentiment took root that the perpetrator of this great evil must be found and punished.
And that day of righteous punishment came -- May 1, 2011.
Buried according to Islamic practice and tradition.
The bodies of Osama's victims were buried in the burning debris of the once majestic towers, the very symbols of our greatest city. The bravest of the brave found these bodies and gave them the most reverential burials. We gave the remains of bin Laden the same high respect... burying him with decency and full honors, so that no one could say we treated him with the deep contempt with which he treated us. Here, as so often, we rose above... to behave with the deep decency which is the core of who we are.
An incident, not the end.
I am not, as I said, a violent man; I often wonder why we humans seem to need, even crave, so much of it. But of this I am sure: the total eradication of this man was needed, warranted, and beneficial. His misguided followers, now disoriented and dismayed, will turn the man into a martyr, but they will be wrong to do so. His twisted perspective hurts them, too, and can deliver nothing more than more infernos and more pain.
That is why we must continue to be vigilant. One bullet is not the end...  but that bullet surely marks the end of the chapter which began September 11, 2001.
It is a beautiful day here in Cambridge, Massachusetts... the kind of day that makes one glad to be alive. I intend to go, in a minute, into the sparkling air and the brilliant sunshine... to say a little prayer for the victims, our honored dead... and hope their spirits may now rest more easily, abiding forever in the Peace of God they came to know too soon.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski <a href="http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/

'It's May! It's May... That darling month when everyone throws self-control away.' May 2, 2011.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
I had quite a different thought in mind for my article today... but at about 4 a.m. a light breeze caressed me and I was overwhelmed by an astonishing chorus of birdsong, as one determined winged group answered another, each and every one of them demanding con brio that I wake up and celebrate this day... and make sure you celebrate it, too, for the true end of winter (not just some date on the calendar) is a most important thing.
So, I threw up the sash on the window and quaffed the air. There wasn't a touch of winter in it,  not a scintilla, not a particle. It was well and truly May... and, in an instant, I was back over 50 years ago where, in the breeze way, my mother was engaged in directing her young charges in the finer points of May baskets. But first...
On December 3, 1960 Lerner and Loewe's "Camelot" opened in New York with Julie Andrews and Richard Burton as  Guinevere and King Arthur. Andrews belted out a pip of a song on May... and it's utterly appropriate you let it enliven your day today. Go now to any search engine and find it, and let it be 1960 for you all over again...
"It's May! It's May! The lusty month of May! That lovely month when ev'ryone goes Blissfully astray."
The truth is, my days of going "blissfully astray" have long passed. This is not a good thing... we all need a day now and then when "wicked thoughts Merrily appear."
May 1 is tailor-made to be that day: "That gorgeous holiday When ev'ry maiden prays that her lad Will be a cad!"
For many years politics, particularly Red politics as directed by dour Russian communists whose dissipations were leaden and plodding, obscured the real purpose of May 1 and, indeed, the entire month of May. Lenin and company decreed that May's license for merriment be replaced by International Workers' Day (also known as International Labour Day).
Per usual, this determination came in a ukase from the sweat-drenched apparatchiki of Moscow... personally, I have always maintained that if the workers had been asked for their opinion on the matter they would have chosen...
""It's May, it's May, the month of  'Yes, you may' The time for every frivolous whim, proper or im-"
But that was the thing about those revolutionary Russkies: they were always telling you something, demanding something, insisting on something... the very things we throw off on May 1st... the better to let our genetic code do its thing and direct us in uninhibited may-hem.
In short,the vital sap of May has proven its prodigious strength... there will not be in Moscow today -- or perhaps anywhere -- a tedious parade featuring tractors and heroes of the falsely named republics. These parades and the grim visaged crew who invented and directed them have been toppled... and we all have regained the undisputed right to a day "depraved in every way"... and a good thing, too. It's what the workers would have chosen for themselves... if anyone had bothered to ask them. Which brings us back to the true meaning of May Day and the May days which follow....
Sacred to the feast of Beltane, Celtic start of summer.
May Day calls for a sloughing off of sober responsibilities and of the proper, serious, VIP you have become. For this day, this single day, you dance, not march, to a different drummer, this time played by the (rather sheepish) pagans who celebrate the festival of Beltane. Sadly these latter-day neo-pagans are in desperate need of experienced help. I have rarely seen a more tatterdemalion crew or folks more in need of assistance in the art of dissipation. Their current antics are not inspiring and irritate, I aver, the high panoply of Celtic deities who wince every time a foul-smelling, foul-attired Beltaniain happens by. In short, the neo-pagans are an embarrassment in need of a make-over, the better to serve the cause of excess and pleasure.
No doubt they are adversely afflicted by the shear lack of accurate information about how the good pagans of yore did dissipate. What's known about Beltane, for instance, is quite frankly not very attractive. For instance, a highlight of the event was the ever-festive bonfire created by rubbing sticks together. Related rituals included driving cattle between two fires, dancing around the fires, and burning witches in effigy, no doubt an acquired taste.
Another tradition was Beltane cakes, which would be broken into several pieces, one of which was blackened. These pieces would then be drawn by celebrants at random, the person getting the unlucky piece would face a mock execution. Perhaps it was more alluring and pleasurable if you were actually there...
Walpurgisnacht.
St. Walburga (or Walpurgis), the abbess of the monastery of Heidenheim, helped St. Boniface bring Christianity to 8th century Germany. The date of May 1 became, over time, sacred to this well-loved Christian lady, the better to obliterate a pre-existing pagan festival, again including rites to protect oneself from witchcraft. This lead, in the muddled way with such matters, to a hybrid festival in which witches were said to meet with the Devil on the eve of May 1. The night of April 30th became known as "Walpurgisnacht"... and the day following was, perhaps, given over to gratitude for having survived it.
Things were better in England...
In medieval England, folks would celebrate the start of spring by going out to the country or woods "going a-maying" by gathering greenery and flowers, the first description of this occurring in "The Court of Love" (1561). Thereafter the maypole went up... the music began... morris dancers at the ready... and a May Queen to crown with persiflage, good humor, debauchery and the certainty of a headache tomorrow. Yes, as always, the Brits know how to party...
From this tradition came my mother's May Day version. Like everywhere else in the great heartland, May 1st in Illinois meant the harsh winter was gone, gone forever. Everyone and everything breathed easier as a result; there was the promise of clemency and of sultry slower moving days. The advent to these days lay through the rich flora of midwestern America. Our home, beside a rambling creek, was incomparably beautiful at springtime, carpeted as it was with violets on every side. In the late light of day, you could believe it was God's own greenhouse.
From this incomparable soil came its harvest of beauty... tulips, lilacs, the last remaining daffodils and always the violets in unimaginable beauty and abundance...
From these my mother chose the best and directed us in how to make the May baskets... and make them just so, festooned as always by a ribbon of the brightest hue. Then, without a card, she dispatched us on the task of delivery; to be put in front of entry doors, the doorbell rung, then running fast away, never to be seen.
I asked her once why we didn't add a card, like florists do. She only smiled. I know why now... we who delivered, laughing so, were the card... and our message was unmistakable, an image of youth and laughter, running through a panorama of flowers whose very fragrance I can smell to this pristine May day.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski <a href="http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/

'I am so happy...' Some thoughts on Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the next incarnation of Wills and his Kate.

Please make comments if you enjoy these articles.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's Note. To get into the right and proper mood for this article, search any search engine for Sir William Walton's resounding "Crown Imperial." This was the music Their Royal Highnesses heard as they walked the Westminster Abbey red carpet to their future subjects, the cynosure of every eye. Walton was the perfect choice... you'll see.
The State Landau, smart and polished had just driven up to the gate where the newly minted, newly married Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were waiting. The woman who started the day as Kate Middleton, turned to her new husband and said the magic words, so telling because we all felt the sentiment before she even uttered it. "I am so happy," she whispered to her prince, truly charming and a bit abashed by his position this day and perhaps thinking, "Waiting was worth it. I am truly marrying the woman I adore... and everyone is so glad about it. And I do believe she loves me for myself."
The pageantry and ceremony in general.
In the 19th century, the British and their monarchy were a byword for sloppy, disorganized, and often dangerous royal ceremonies. The person who was most instrumental in changing matters was Queen Victoria's "beautiful" (her word) hunk the German princeling Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. From his time at Court in the mid-1800s things got better, slowly but surely, as I detail in my book "Insubstantial Pageant: Ceremony and Confusion at Queen Victoria's Court (1979). By the early 20th century the overall reality of ceremonial muddle had been replaced by a professional approach to showcasing the monarch to his people. The British are now justly renowned worldwide for the flawless pageants that punctuate each sovereign's reign and present him to his subjects and the world just the way he wishes.
The now traditional and punctilious pageantry we expect was very much on display on Friday, April 29, 2011.  It was a joy to watch the  aspects emerge... particularly given the fact that this event operated under peculiar circumstances... the inevitable, could-never-be-avoided comparisons to the pageantry and circumstances of the marriage 30 years before between Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer. The marriage and ceremonial arrangements of Diana, Princess of Wales' elder son and his beautiful Kate had to be considered carefully so that all of the inevitable comparisons tilted in favor of the soon-to-be Cambridges... as they most surely did.
Princess Diana's marriage to the heir to "this throne of kings, this England", Prince Charles was an affair of the highest state; after all the groom was the heir to the imperium. In retrospect, what seemed so beguiling at the time appears as more an event than a marriage. Splendor (and perfect coordination) was there... love and affection were not. It was an omen for the tragedy which followed, besmirching the reputation of Prince Charles and ending in Princess Diana's sad demise.
Both of Princess Diana's sons, groom Prince William and justly concerned younger son Prince Harry were clear on what they wanted... a real marriage, a real wedding, true and heartfelt feelings all round.
There is no question but that they got what they wanted... which was a decided relief to the British nation and its Commonwealth... and its Queen, Elizabeth II, who arrived back at Buckingham Palace after the marriage ceremony and proclaimed the day's events "amazing." And so they were...
The Married Couple.
After the cynical, loveless marriage of the groom's mother Princess Diana, the nation and body language experts were on the qui vive for "the truth" about this couple, their wedding, and whether it confirmed (or challenged) the good feelings they had about Wills and Kate, and their pivotal role in establishing just the right reality (not merely image) that will allow the monarchy to flourish after the many crises of the current Royal Family, particularly the much married, much divorced children of Queen Elizabeth, a tawdry, shopworn crew.
April 29th delivered what everyone wanted:  a grounded, affectionate, sincerely attached couple, people who are what they seemed to be, not a scandal waiting to happen.
Kate's gown was the first clue. Lady Diana's overdone gown made her look like a confectioner's bride. Who's idea was the taffeta anyway? But Kate, chic Kate, delivered exactly what one would have wanted for one's own family wedding: a form-fitting dress that breathed classic good taste, undeniable (though understated) elegance. It is the dress of a lady of taste, breeding, good judgement, and, so very visible, care, every one a desirable trait for her future job as one-who-may-be Queen Consort.
The little clues so beloved of commentators and would-be cognoscenti began to stack up:
* The interaction between Princes William and  Harry indicated just how close they are; they needed to be given the scandal and tragedy of their parents' relations. Harry, for all that he's a known wise-acre, will be lonely now; Wills has other things to do which, even with the best will on earth, will limit time with Harry.
* The way he looked at his bride for the first time in her riveting marriage attire... and said, quite simply, "You look so beautiful." And so she did... and what every bride longs to hear, the compliment based on affection, awe, and a dawning awareness that he is really getting married, and to the person he has always wanted.
* The body language. As all the world knows, these two people took some eight years to get acquainted, know each other, argue and make up with each other, and love each other. The time they wisely took enabled them to become and be a couple, then yesterday, a married couple. They move together well; I was interested to see how they left the Abbey, hand in hand, the new Duke of Cambridge putting down the heel of one shoe on the toe of the other, so as not to hurry his duchess in her gown and (not too long) train.
Mad for Kate.
I have long been a Kate Middleton admirer; I thought she had just the right traits of heart and mind to be a truly helpful, loving partner to her prince, the better enabling him to do the important work he must do to transform and improve the monarchy in a world of relentless change. After yesterday, my already substantial admiration has substantially increased. She played her part faultlessly and, more than that, with her new husband's complete concurrence they turned their marriage from an event of monarchy and nation into a true wedding, dedicated to each other and their friends and family, including their great nation.
Everything was done well, thus delivering just what everyone wanted: two deeply devoted people with a great task, historic task before them, ready now together ready to do the best we well know them capable of.
And so the newest Royal Duke is now His Royal Highness of Cambridge, the old shire, not the University and Kate gets what the Duchess of Windsor could only long for, the coveted letters HRH. True, of the many new Royal Dukes of Cambridge since the 17th century, not one has been notable for anything other than his capacity for strong drink and wrong women and oodles of FitzCambridge children, royal byblows. Queen Victoria always had trouble with the Cambridges of her day, but from these self-same Cambridges came a pillar of the dynasty. That pillar was Queen Mary, Elizabeth II's dutiful, God fearing, monarchy reverencing grandmother... may our new duchess find such traits in herself. God Save the Queen (to be) and may she remain happy and glorious!
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also a recognized royal expert and historian having penned 18 best-selling business books. Watch for his online televised interviews about the Royal Wedding of William and Kate. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski <a href="http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/

Those magnificent men in their flying machines to fly no more.... as NASA's shuttle program ends and an era with it.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's program note. To get into the right  frame of mind for this article, search any search engine for the music and lyrics to "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines" (released 1965, music by Ron Goodwin). Prepare to be aroused as one of the great stories of our lives soars...
For most of us the  space age has a quite specific commencement -- October 4, 1957. That was the launch date of the world's first artificial satellite Sputnik I. I was there. Like every single American, my concerned, curious parents herded my brother and me into the backyard of our suburban Illinois home... as we saw our sense of security destroyed by a 184.3 pound device called a Sputnik. In my mind's eye, I remember the event with complete clarity; I seem to remember, too, that it made a beeping sound... but that may not be so.
What was so was that all the verities of the heartland ended for a generation right then and there.
"Better Red than dead," people said. Was that our new reality? We started to look for Russkies under the bed...
Eisenhower blinked.
Sputnik spooked us at the moment of our greatest power; we thought we were the only game in town... Sputnik was a jolting wake-up call which President Eisenhower, old and full of  honors, missed. A restless Senator John F. Kennedy did not. It was Kennedy who read the thoroughly aroused and anxious public mood better... and in due course made him President of the United States, an office Ike, who established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (October 1, 1958), felt Kennedy unqualified to hold. Maybe so... but Kennedy is rightly seen as the man who galvanized America's fears and turned them into the fuel for conquering space -- and giving us back our lost security.
We had to conquer space... and that meant having a space station and the means to get back and forth to them. From the moment Sputnik flew, 1440 orbits of Earth in only 3 months, the shuttle program was a given. And we put all the king's horses and all the king's men to work on it. The result was the launch of Explorer I (officially Satellite 1958), January 31, 1958. It was the U.S.'s first earth satellite. It was rushed to launch so fast that its tape data recorder was not modified in time to make it onto the satellite. Nonetheless, the nation breathed a sigh of relief... we were back in the game.
Project Mercury followed and the grand era of magnificent men in their flying machines....men whose names the nation knew and whose pictures could be found in every schoolroom of a grateful America... astronaut Alan Shepard (first American in space May 5, 1961)... astronaut John Glenn (first American to orbit the Earth, February 20, 1961)... and all the others... culminating in that never-to-be-forgotten day of American pride,  July 20, 1969 when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked the lunar landscape while Michael Collins orbited above.
These were truly the up, up and away days! We were late to the space game, but having started we approached the matter with characteristic energy, imagination and determination, a great people committed to a great goal.
The first shuttle launch, February 15, 1977.
The shuttle program was our way of saying that our connection with space was a permanent one, that we'd be going back and forth as part of our preparation for ever grander explorations. And so...
2/15/77, OV-101, Enterprise (yes, it was named after the television series), performed its first (taxi) test flight as part of the shuttle program. It never flew in space and was cannibalized for parts.
Then April 12, 1981, OV-102, Columbia, blasted into orbit, becoming the first successful space flight in the space shuttle program. (STS-1, Space Transportation System.) It returned on April 14, 1981, after orbiting Earth 36 times. Columbia carried just two crew members: Apollo veteran John W. Young and rookie pilot Robert L. Crippen.
August 30, 1984, OV-103, Discovery, was first flown on mission STS-41-D, launching two communications satellites and becoming the third operational NASA orbital shuttle following Columbia and Challenger.
But tragedy lay dead ahead.
We must never forget that at the core of the shuttle program was danger. Good men and women, dedicated, our nation's finest, always understood that death was always a possibility. That no matter how often the system was tested; no matter how many experts signed off on the matter, catastrophe was always a real possibility.  They all accepted that as part of the adventure, the great game, the cost of doing business.
January 28, 1986, STS-51-L Challenger, a nation shocked, a nation mourns.
This was supposed to be another day of American triumph; instead,  with the disintegration of the Challenger over the Atlantic Ocean it became a signature day of national mourning.
These 7 crew members gave their lives:
Francis (Dick) Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Judith A. Resnik, Ronald E. McNair,  Ellison S. Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe; the plucky teacher who meant to teach the world's school children about space and instead taught them all about the shortness of life and the costs of commitment. That day the nation was reminded of the terrible costs that may come when frontiers are challenged. That day, too, the nation was fortunate in its president; Ronald Reagan's decency and empathy were notable. We were all grateful for that.
975 days later, September 29, 1988, STS-26 Discovery launched with five crew members into space, always beckoning, always challenging, with so very much more to discover, study and know.
On February 1, 2003, tragedy struck again and again it was brought home to the nation that the costs of "conquering" space included periodic tragedy as it did this day when STS-107 came to an abrupt and tragic conclusion. Seven crew members died...
Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, Michael P. Anderson, Ilan Ramon, Kalpana Chawla, David M. Brown, Laurel Clark.
And again the shuttle flew. It was the American way.
Now, however, changing budget priorities have done what no great tragedies succeeded in doing. Thus the shuttle, after just a few more flights, will end, thirty years and 133 missions later. Is this the last word on the matter? For the shuttle, probably; but for space? As long as one child looks up and wonders what there is in the great beyond, determined to find out, this story will never end...
Readers: for a thorough bibliography on the history of the space shuttle, search for "Toward a History of the Space Shuttle: An Annotated Bibliography " compiled by Roger D. Launius and Aaron G. Gillette.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski <a href="http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/

Review of Extreme Niche Empires

Let me ask you a question. Are you fed up with all the lies and garbage put out by a lot of so-called “GURUS” recently? I know I am.
It is getting crazy out there, paid actors (that are really not that good), fake screenshots of trillion dollar incomes, outrageous claims that are just so far out there they are in ORBIT!
Then we have the “Push Button Millionaire” overhype with magic software that will have $1000s flying out of your computer every time you press that button! Really? Are you serious?
Well, even though I have become the ultimate skeptic as I am sure you are now, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Someone has finally stepped up and is setting the record straight… that person is Sean Donahoe.
Unless you have been hiding under a rock, you should have heard of Sean Donahoe. He was the guy behind the bestselling Video Marketing Goldmine course earlier this year. He is known for “Telling it like it is!”. I really love his no-BS message and REAL solutions for marketing and what actually works.
There are several things you need to know about Sean. First, his products are top-notch and very high-quality and he consistently over delivers. Second, his stuff just works!
No pie-in-the-sky claims, he will tell you straight “Getting wealthy online is possible but it takes work”. Now, that being said, he does show you how to do things the right way to avoid any pitfalls and hassles to really streamline things dramatically.
That is why I am really excited and writing this today. Sean is doing something AMAZING on April 28th. He is finally releasing his Extreme Niche Empires course. This course has been under wraps for almost a year as he honed, optimized and streamlined one of the most powerful money making strategies I have ever seen (and we have seen 100s of these over the years)
What Sean has done is nothing short of INCREDIBLE. He is going to share how he created an EMPIRE of high-authority autopilot income sites targeting niches that scare almost everyone else off… and he is making a FORTUNE doing it.
Now it’s your turn. This incredible course outline exactly how to do this yourself and do it the EASY WAY. This is not some crazy site building software that will get Google slapped (like many of them did after the recent Google Panda update). No, Sean is very unique, he shows you how to create laser-targeted, high authority sites that the search engines LOVE and rank like crazy.
He has packed this course with a ton of his INSIDER SECRETS that I have never seen anywhere else. This stuff is so powerful that it would blow your mind and has made me even rethink how I do things.
So, go check it out. If you are reading this before April 28th he has some very powerful videos that he is releasing too that will AMAZE you and give you a great idea about what is going on and even share some powerful tactics that you can start using right now.
I encourage you to go watch these videos and learn from one of the true masters of Internet Marketing and someone you should listen to!
 Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski <a href="http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/