Let freedom ring! A great nation struggles in the streets to be born. Egypt, January, 2011.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
An event of world significance is playing out right this minute in Cairo and throughout the country. A great nation with a legendary, larger-than-life past is fighting to be born, fighting for the rights of oppressed millions, no longer content merely to yearn to be free. They want the real thing... and they want it now.
Feckless adolescents, young men and  women without even a prayer for the future, businessmen tired of being shaken down by a voracious regime, women enraged at permanent second-class status, the children of ignorance and irredeemable poverty and political servitude. These are the people who are carrying the revolution on their backs. They have been patient, gullible, long suffering. And now they want revenge... and a better life.
It is dangerous! It is perilous! It is magnificent... and the heart of every freedom loving being on this planet goes out to them. We are watching and applauding, transfixed, as the little people, the common people, so wanting  liberty that they risk even the little they have, are carried away by a thrill those accustomed to freedom can only imagine.
Luckily we have William Wordsworth's celebrated sentiments on the French Revolution to guide us. (The Prelude, published 1798).
Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!... Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!
And so these young must feel, for it is primarily  the young leading the day, exultantly so, in days of animal courage, boldness, high sentiments and -- so far -- every possibility of hitherto unimaginable success.
These are the heroes of the day... for they have, after some 30 years of ascending tyranny, screamed "basta!" and poured into the streets to demand long delayed personhood and the respect and well-being every person everywhere is entitled to.
These are the days of their lives... and we are proud, so deeply  proud, of such a people and of their valiant struggle that rivets our attention and compels our respect.
The facts
Egypt, a name that conjures the greatness of an ancient imperium, is in fact one of the newest nations of our planet. It acquired full sovereignty from the British in only 1952 when the republic was proclaimed.
The current regime of Hosni Mubarak dates from 1981 and the assassination of his Nobel Peace Prize winning predecessor, Anwar Sadat. His is a garden variety tyranny, redeemed from the pedestrian by geography and a long-standing deal with the United States. Mubarak and his regime, for certain gain (and for lack of the resources to wage war again), gave up their losing fight against Israel. Relieved, gratified the United States backed Mubarak for its Mideast strategy. Egypt was the golden lynch pin.
Unfortunately, Mubarak had severe built-in liabilities. Despite being egregious, such liabilities (for the highest reasons of state) had to be winked at.  Mubakak knew his worth and exacted far  more than his pound of flesh. We might have held our nose... but we remunerated this necessary excrescence, constantly, lavishly.
Instead of getting the reforms Washington wanted, successive presidents merely slapped him on the wrist now and again. This was laughably inadequate and totally ineffectual. His blatant human rights violations knew no end; neither did his abiding contempt for his own  people, an affliction to which dictators are prone. Sadly, these violations could, in time, not be argued away.
So long as his complacent American partner and our unceasing bribes were in place Mubarak was fearless and  unconcerned. In such a way did he become a standing insult to an aggrieved people from whom he demanded all... while giving them, the heart of the nation... as little as he could. He became a master of bloated exhortation, high-blown rhetoric. Controlling complainers (often in barbarous ways) became the policy of his regime. What did he care? He was Mubarak... and that was gift enough to the people.
But an important thing, a thing that could not be denied was occurring in the homes of Egyptians: more and more of them were being born, faster and faster. All with nothing to lose...  and so perfect candidates for a revolution. The revolution truly began in the bedrooms of Egypt and spilled over into the streets, an army of the dispossessed, patient no longer, their future in their own hands. And so they came to challenge the ramshackle regime and to bring it down with their own bare hands and a spirit that Mubarak had neglected to remember of his people. It was there... and it was no longer at his beck and call.
The police, of course, and above all, the army could have, at the start of these insurrectionary days, crushed even the most ardent and dedicated of these young nation makers, but so far -- and it is the crucial factor -- so far these pets of the regime have failed to fire on the people. For privileged though these supports of the regime are, they, too, can see the writing on the wall and the clear direction of events and History.
So far, the police and army have not fired... rather, they have begun the process that proved key in the signature revolutions of France and Russia: they have begun to fraternize with the revolutionaries. This means everything... and Mubarak is nothing if not a (lazy) student of history. His options? He can now call his army to kill legions of his countrymen, thereby bringing down the universal execration of the world and even of regimes less tolerated than his. Anyway, it may be too late for this.
Or, he can accept the fact that he must go... at which time a shout of joy will punctuate the day. Luckily for Mubarak the days of guillotines and assassination squads for governors as despised and hated as he is are gone. He will fly out of Egypt in style, his ill-got millions stashed away and intact, instead of exiting in a lonely tumbrel ride into eternity through the unbridled hatred of the people he treated so. In short, even in his inevitable end, Mubarak will be a lucky man. The United States will see to that., for he is and has long been our creature, and we will no doubt cherish this expensive souvenir as fitting reminder of our days on the Nile.
As for our brand-new revolutionaries? Today,  the y command our full and unqualified admiration. However they need to know that toppling a regime, no matter how entrenched, is the easiest activity of a revolution. Day I after the fall of the Mubarak regime, History will begin evaluating them on what they do next and how they do it and at what costs. It is good to remember this, even as the goal of your life is achieved by your inexperienced hands. Sadly, with the ultimate prize about to be yours, some hubris may enter with the glitter and bliss and the worldwide enthusiasm your deeds engender. Remember Mubarak had his days like this, too.
About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski      http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/

Interactivity is the key to blog success. Here's the exact language to use to get it. Yes, exact.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Hear ye, hear ye! Blogs are the hottest thing on the 'net. You know it... and you've done the necessary to set yours up and publish, right? Out it goes... then... nothing. Not a peep from any reader. That's bad, real bad.
That's why  I'm here -- to help you achieve maximum blog success.
As you're reading along with this article, think Cole Porter's peppy little number, "Friendship" (from "Was a lady," 1939) because that's what this article is, a friend helping a friend achieve maximum success online, this time with your blog.
Interactivity is the key.
Blogs work when they're interactive, that is when you get  your audience/readers to respond. And why do you want them to respond? Because blog readers who respond are the very best customer prospects there are, that's why. Moreover if you're smart, you want to monetize your blog just as quickly as possible, right from the get-go... so that every time you publish your blog your readers, your prospects -- with their money -- respond.
Here's how to make this happen day after golden day.
Announce your objective, so that people know that your blog is interactive... and you expect them to respond.
"Readers! You've arrived at the most interactive blog online... where we are in constant touch with our readers... and readers are encouraged, indeed expected, to respond. We like hearing from you!"
Make this goal pellucidly clear to your readers. And keep this exact language in all blog posts. It's your welcome mat for the world.
Words that get people to respond to your lead article.
"Folks, I'm delighted, pleased, ecstatic to bring you this article (add title here).  It's written by an expert (add name here)  who knows what she's  talking about. After you've read this piece, email me at once at (email address). Tell us what you think! We genuinely want to know!"
Put like this, such a plea is irresistible. Expect responses fast, always remembering that each response represents either the beginning of an ongoing relationship with that respondent...or the strengthening of an existing relationship. In short, it is the raw matter for success and nothing but success.
Ask your readers to respond to individual articles, not just the entire blog.
Remember, not only must your blog be perceived as interactive; each portion of the blog must be so configured. In other words, you want each and every article and/or blog section to generate leads. Here's how to do it.
"Friend, this article by (name of writer) is absolutely terrific, isn't it? The writing is incredible... the content superb. What's more , I can tell you how to get content of this amazing quality on your blog free. Email me your name, email address, and phone for the details. Yes, I mean FREE!"
Offer a freebie in every issue.
One particularly popular freebie, which I've used for years, is to write and make available a Free Report to your readers on a subject of interest to them, a subject like this:
"Boy, oh boy, have I ever got the terrific freebie for you today, you lucky blog readers, you. This report, absolutely free, is titled 'Just what you need to know and do to get (whatever benefit you sell)'. This special report is packed, just packed, with superb, hard-to-find details , and I'm lucky to be able to GIVE it to you. Email me now at (your email address) with your name, email address and phone number or just call me now at (your telephone number.) P.S. Be sure to tell me what you think after you've read it!"
Or, try this freebie. It's worked for me for years, and it's a pip of an example and model for you.
"Incredible, but true. Due to a special arrangement with some hot-shot traffic gurus, I'm able to give out 1,000,000 guaranteed visitors today, that is 50,000 each to the FIRST TWENTY READERS who respond today. Be one of them. Email me now at (email address) along with your name, address, and phone number or just pick up the phone and call me now. DON'T WAIT. This special offer can't last!"
Ask for comments. Use the comments.
Remember, your objective is to solicit and then receive comments from every reader. First, savour them; you have earned a little self-congratulation, because with each blog post and every reader response thereto, you are distancing yourself from the also-rans of blog publishers and firmly establishing yourself as a Smart Cookie. Now, press your advantage.
When responses arrive, be sure to publish them in  your blog, good, bad, or indifferent. Of course, you want every response to be positive. These are the most welcome and easy-to-use blog posts. Publish them at once... and use them to generate more responses. You want your readers to see and be clear on the fact that yours is one of the most exciting, worthwhile blogs in the land. Make it a point to publicize every positive response you get:
"Wow! Here's a great response from (name of reader responding). We sure do appreciate these responses, not just because they're complimentary (but what's wrong with that anyway?) But because they make it clear how you feel... and what  you like about what we're doing. That's Very  Important indeed! Always  include your name, address, phone, and email address."
What if the response is carping, critical, vituperative?
The world does not live on a diet of milk and honey. Gall and wormwood do make themselves known. Your job is to use negative comments to impress your readers and even turn your carping critic into a lap dog. Take a  look at how this magic occurs.
"Tom Jones from Pocatello, Idaho isn't too happy today. He has emailed this message: 'Folks, that last article you published on (name of article) was just plain wrong about a couple of points. Here's the low-down..."
All publishers, blog or otherwise, are inured to getting responses like this. The key is turning the criticism into gold, building a relationship with the (momentarily) irked or critical respondent.
"Tom, your points are sooooo well taken. Thanks for making them; we've glad to let our readers have  your point of view and hope to hear more from you. In the meantime, please accept a free copy of our newest report (title here)."
In short, turn lemons into lemonade and emerge wiser and better regarded than before.
Last words... there are no last words.
Blogging, as tried and true bloggers know, NEVER ends. Each issue, each part of each issue, constitutes a potential link to the future. Each thing, every section and each word, is a hook; grabbing, then pulling in your expectant audience, thereby generating leads, comments for future issues... and (how sweet it is) MONEY.
Blogs are the most personal of media. Run with that concept, and make your blog a place of constant interactivity and the satisfaction and profit that ensue to you as a result. Your readers will be happy, recognizing and applauding you, while you laugh all the way to the bank! How nice!
About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Attend Dr. Lant's live webcast TODAY and receive 50,000 free guaranteed visitors to the website of your choice! Dr. Lant is a well known marketer, consultant and the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/

On black politics and politicians. Thoughts on the convictions of former Boston city councillor Chuck Turner and former Massachusetts state senator Dianne Wilkerson.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
January 25, 2011 ought to have been a red letter day in the black community of Boston, Massachusetts. That, after all, is the day former 6 term Boston city councillor Chuck Turner was sentenced to three years in prison for accepting a $1,000 bribe. He's joined in the pokey by another well- known black politician, Dianne Wilkerson, ex-state senator, representing roughly the same area in the state senate Turner represented in the city council.  Wilkerson's sentence, 3 1/2 years.
Sadly, the black community has not only not been grateful to have such blatant, shameless cons removed from positions of power and authority they occupied... there is strong, residual grumbling that "the man" has clipped the wings of two positively angelic spokespeople for the community. Sure they were guilty... but they were good people who worked for the community; thus all their numerous, documented infractions should and needed to be forgiven.
Let's see how this ironic development came about; what it tells us about leadership in the black community, and the need to put the race card to bed, as inimical to that community and its members.
Here are the facts:
June 2007. Wilkerson, one of the best known members of the Massachusetts State Senate, is videotaped accepting cash pay-offs, including  $1,000 that she stuffed into her bra, in exchange for help with a liquor license and assistance to a developer who wanted to build on state land.
August 3, 2007. Turner is videotaped by an FBI informant accepting a $1,000 bribe also for help getting a liquor license.
October 28, 2008. Wilkerson is arrested on FBI charges of public corruption and accused of eight counts of accepting bribes worth $23,500.
November 21, 2008. Turner is arrested on charges of taking a bribe and then lying to federal agents about it.
Thanks to the videotapes and other corroborating evidence, surely this, of all cases, was open and shut. Think again!
Both Wilkerson and even more so Turner were wise in the ways of provocateurs everywhere. Demagoguery? Distortions? Lies? They  were all in a day's work for this hyper-active duo. Too, they knew one of Adolph Hitler's most insightful observations: that if you say a thing often, over and over again, that thing, no matter how unsound, untrue, unlikely, becomes the truth.
And so, because the charges were serious, amply documented, and because the FBI was determined that such a culture of crime be rooted out... the matter escalated at once into a food fight that fascinated and repelled a great city.
In short order, both Turner and Wilkerson had turned the matter of their guilt or innocence into nothing less than an assault by every level of authority against their people, black people.... using tactics not unworthy of the Grand Old Army as it waved the bloody shirt in the days of reconstruction.
Was Chuck Turner, born with a sneer on his  lips, a torrent of vituperative hate language always at the ready, was Turner to blame? Certainly not.
George W. Bush and his Administration was to blame.
The FBI and law enforcement authorities were to blame.
Mr. and Mrs. White America and all the ships at sea were to blame... anyone and every one but the man actually videotaped taking the piddly amount of one thousand dollars.
Wilkerson went for cheap, too, though she went cheap more often than Turner, a thousand dollars here, a thousand dollars there.
That was fact... but these masters of distortion with graduate degrees  in race baiting... sought to manipulate public opinion by first, endlessly harping on all the "good" they had done for the minority neighborhoods which had elected them again and again to their public offices, and second turning the matter of their personal guilt into an episode in the great enduring struggle for civil rights.
Chuck Turner couldn't conceivably be guilty... because he was on the right side of "We shall overcome".
Both Turner and Wilkerson littered the landscape with their rallies, their statements, their media appearances... all to persuade the public, not merely gullible but mesmerized by these deft practitioners of mayhem and rage, that they were not merely innocent... they were the very heart and soul of the best of the black tradition. They were being cast down, they said and said again, because they had helped raise up the downtrodden.
It was magnificent, it was riveting, it was one lie after another. But good people of the neighborhoods bought the fiction, embraced the rhetoric, and saw conspiracies where there was in fact nothing more than law enforcements officials doing their job without the support of the people victimized by the accused and blatantly self serving Turner and Wilkerson.
Right up to and including their respective days in court neither Wilkerson nor (even more so) Turner seemed to have any idea that they were misleading, distorting, evading, much less that they had any responsibility for what they had done and which could readily be seen on the incriminating videotapes.
They told their supporters, who were legion, that it was all a misunderstanding, that it was all a conspiracy against them because of their important work. They had been sinned against, no question, but they had never, ever sinned.
These fiery arguments, all froth, no facts, did not work for Wilkerson. She missed the point until the very end, January 6, 2010, when she was well and truly sentenced.
Then came the shrieking, race baiting, responsibility evading Turner... who finally met his match, and more, in U.S. District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodlock.
In his remarks, Woodlock, with cool elegance, never raising his voice, unlike Turner, who always did,  hit the nail  on the head, saying Turner's blatant perjury was "surreal", "ludicrous." And,most pointedly, that if Turner hadn't continuously and outrageously lied to the federal authorities he would not have received the sentence of.... three years.
Within moments the egregious Turner was outside the courthouse doing what he does best: spewing poison and malice and, with a touch of his demented genius, making it clear that he expects to become the next civil rights martyr, certain to die (in glory) in the big house, snuffed by "the man". The gall of the man is unending.
However, in the final analysis, this is not a story about 2 cons from politics. It is, rather, about the people of the neighborhoods, the people who not only elected them again and again... but, more strange to us, continued to applaud the now convicted felons, who had had their day in court.... and lost.
Why had these good people allowed themselves to be so mislead, so abused, so used? Did the need to support the black face so trump all other considerations that any outrage would be tolerated and forgiven, any outrage at all?
So, it seems. Which is why in every black neighborhood in the land, the good people, the hard working people, the Church attending, law abiding people elect and re-elect one scoundrel after another -- until finally these fine folks realize the conundrum of their situation and elect good people, not just black people and never, ever black politicians  who harp on civil rights to excuse civic wrongs.

About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Dr. Lant is also a recognized American and British historian and author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski
http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/

'I want muscles.' An Appreciation for the life of fitness pioneer Jack LaLanne, 1914-January 23, 2011.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
One of America's  enduring cultural icons is dead, at 96. Jack LaLanne, who preached the virtues and values of working out long before it was fashionable, has checked out, to the rhythm of Diana Ross' jump-up classic, "I want muscles!" (Released, 1983.)
Born the of son of poor French immigrants,LaLanne was noted, first of all, as a sickly sugar addict with a prodigious sweet tooth. He just couldn't get enough pop, cakes, candy, each one more destructive to his health and well-being than the last.
But for fate at the hands of pioneering nutritionist Paul Bragg, LaLanne's might have turned into the garden variety tragedy: diabetes, its complications, debility, death. However, fate -- and Bragg -- intervened.
Bragg, like all nutritionists, was a person on a mission. When overweight, pimply LaLanne showed up in Bragg's dressing room following the master's standard program on the necessity for a nutritional wake-up call, Bragg slammed Lalanne with the tough love approach:
"Jack," said his new guru, "you're a walking garbage can." So he was.... but LaLanne wanted more than sugar. Bragg , like all evangelists, knew that here was a man who was Ready to grasp his message -- and life itself.
Sugar babies were out, the benefits of brown rice, whole wheat, and a vegetarian diet were in. LaLanne got the old time religion and never looked back.
This diet, now almost universally regarded as beneficial, in those days immediately established LaLanne as a kook.
Right from the get-go LaLanne knew that people needed a supportive environment, fellow travelers to help you stay focused. LaLanne's first attempt to create this environment was a makeshift backyard gym and exercise "facility." In short order he had a bevy of fire and policemen pumping iron. It was a beginning, just. But it was what this quintessential "get going and do it." guy with the mega watt smile needed... a platform. Piddly though it was it was all his... and he ran with it.
He got what most zealots get... the back hand of the establishment. He was written off as a crackpot, a menace delivering hemorrhoids, male impotence, and women who looked like -- men. Things looked grim... but LaLanne was nothing if not focused. What's more he had the ultimate  support center, his wife of 51 years, Elaine.  In a statement she wrote, "I have not only lost my husband and a great American icon, but the best friend and most loving partner anyone could ever hope for." We should all be so lucky.
In 1936, in his native Oakland, California he made his move; he opened a health studio that included weight training for women and athletes. Now think for a minute. In those days of yore, there was not a fitness center on every corner; there was not a universal obsession with looking good and working out; there wasn't a president of these United States whose workout sessions were covered by the media... and who had a supportive First Lady, adamant in her work against couch potatoes and obesity. There was hardly anything of this kind at all... but there was Jack LaLanne.
It was enough.
And, with the tireless energy that defines all evangelists, he got up and boogied. He did it for himself, of course, but he also did it for America.
Over 50 years ago, LaLanne on his ground-breaking television program made it clear what he was doing, and why. His message was important, stern, even grim, the message of a man who had thought long and hard about a subject of the greatest importance.
He walked over to the American flag, proudly displayed, not merely a prop... and he spoke deeply, sincerely. He said it was the "tremendous thought, the sacrifice, the lives lost, the toil, the fitness that went into" that flag.
"But now," he continued, aroused, unstoppable, "that we have too much of everything in this great land of ours, too many things are being done for us, we have become soft mentally and physically."
LaLanne's solution... nutrition, diet, exercise... the tried and true formula of the ancient Greeks, though LaLanne may not have known it as such: mens sana in corpore sano, a sound mind in a sound body.
However, to leave this summary of LaLanne's achievements on this grave note would be wrong. For it would leave out insightful details on LaLanne the indefatigable showman and pitchman; the man, mischievous and laughter-loving, who would do Anything, go Anywhere to draw attention to the core beliefs of his life.
Remember, then, at age 43 in 1957, he performed more than 1000 push-ups on television on the "You Asked For it" television program. America watched... and lapped it up.
At 60, he swam from Alcatraz Island to Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. He was handcuffed, shackled, towing a boat.
Ten years later, a peppy 70, he  repeated this  feat in Long Beach harbor; the better because he was older -- and still fit.
It was all in a day's work for LaLanne, who by now got the deference and respect due to a Founding Father of America's now obsessive focus on the verities LaLanne had devoted his life to promoting.
Now gone, LaLanne's optimistic, empowering message lives on because we need it so very much, now more than ever. To LaLanne's irritation and alarm came horrifying statistics about obesity, the lack of proper nutrition in the schools, the lack, indeed, of even basic recess for children who are thereby condemned to disability and death by open mouth, insert poison. In 1985, there was no US state above 14 percent in obesity. Today, nine states are 30 percent obese, or more. Only Colorado and the District of Columbia are under 20 percent, but just barely.
It is a national disgrace, and no one knew it better than LaLanne who knew that God shed his grace on we... who needed too shed excess pounds and poor habits, too. Still, LaLanne was never a scold, though his soap box always traveled with him.
He had too much faith in America specifically and in people generally for that. And so, even unto the end, he could smile, he could laugh, as when he said "I can't afford to die. It would wreck my image."
The man had nothing to worry about.
But the rest of us, giving lip service but little more to nutrition, exercise, and diet, most assuredly do.

About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski
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'In short, there's simply not a more congenial spot....' The 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's inaugural address, January 20, 1961.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Washington, D.C. loves commemorations, not least because every one who is anyone expects to have one for herself.
Thus, it was inevitable that the 50th anniversary of the inauguration of America's 35th president should be celebrated with suitable doings and, of course, well honed and well considered words. And so they were.
In the grand rotunda of the Capitol, congressional officials, aides, and Kennedy family members listened in silence to the 14-minute, 1,355 word inaugural address which set the tone for the day and for the just installed administration, Camelot on the Potomac.
One of a handful of justifiably famous and influential presidential speeches.
Like all sentient Americans, I watched the original proceedings closely. I was just about to be 14, but the memories of this event are etched in my mind, whether because I truly recall them... or I have seen the various news clips played over and over again, images which now seem not so much historical, as legendary. Just as the Kennedys, as embodied in the wire-pulling patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy, who had long schemed for this day, wanted.
The speech itself was a gem... and can and should be ready carefully and recited frequently by all people in politics, government, non profit organizations, the military and for all wanting to know the secret to inciting words to move multitudes. Like it or not (and some did not), the world knew it was hearing a brand new voice.
Every word of this inaugural address reads as if it were written to be chiseled in stone, and so they are a few blocks from me where one of the famous lines after another is found in the most durable of stones, so that sun-bathing students and fatigued tourists (and perhaps others) can be well and truly reminded of this day, this man, these remarks... and of what America then was and can never be again.
But we must not assume, even in this most famous of speeches, that the multitudes and their text-messaging descendents remember these lines well and truly... so I shall take it upon myself to remind my fellow citizens of these; they are but a few of all the verbal diamonds revealed that day.
"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."
"So let us begin anew -- remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate."
"All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps on our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin."
"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for  you, ask what you can do for your country."
The words were few, simple, ample to arrest the attention of the world. It was so very different from the Eisenhower administration and its dowdy, word-challenged leader now departing.  That administration, whatever its achievements, suddenly seemed so very dated indeed.
Theodore Sorensen, the necessary craftsman, behind the scenes, his ideas and discretion front and center.
Sorensen (deceased 2010) was just the kind of helper every ambitious individual needs, for he was bright, a man who understood just how great speeches and their important messages must be done... and self-effacing to a degree. He was content to be an unsung part of History... and so he loved and served, never revealing the many shattering confidences he knew... and which went to the grave with him.
Thus, Sorensen proved his allegiance to the Kennedys and their images was always more important than mere historical accuracy. His speech was designed to be Important, Memorable, the stuff of great dreams and greater glories. How pleased Sorensen must have been as he sat and listened, invisible, as his words seized the nation and the world. He was where history was made... for he composed it.
That night another legendary event took  place, the new President's inaugural ball... but the cynosure of every eye was the new, dazzling, alluring 31-year old First Lady, Jacqueline.
She knew a thing or two about style and presentation; so much so that she designed her ball ensemble herself with the help of Bergdorf Goodman's Ethan Frankau. It was the beginning of the "Jackie Look".... and it took hold like wild-fire,  demanding of women (and their men) glamor, high style, sophistication, everything the Eisenhowers and their worn out officials conspicuously lacked.
And so, as Jack and Jackie made their rounds, ball by ball, as the worst winter in Washington in memory snarled traffic and tempers,  the high spirited, triumphant Kennedys came;   Camelot on the Potomac was born... and it stuck.
Camelot, of course, was the Broadway musical by Alan Jay Lerner (book and lyrics) and Frederick Loewe (music). It was based on one of the loveliest and most compelling of books, "The Once and Future King" by Theodore H. White, who seemed expressly invented for his role in legend making. In 1960 the much lauded musical hit Broadway; January 20, 1961 it  hit the world, as this regal figure set up shop in the White House, with her exquisite taste and frosty hauteur.
Now it was 50 years later. Most of the great figures of this day and age are dead; brother-in-law Sargent Shriver leaving the stage aged 95, January 18, 2011, for perhaps the first time gaining a march on his famous relation.
The rest now look aged, infirm, burdened perhaps by their connection to events now fading and imperfectly remembered which have long held them hostage.
These are the Kennedys and perhaps it is significant that on the date of this 50th anniversary there was, for the first time in over 60 years, no Kennedy in the Congress. Boasts were made about how long that unnatural condition for them and for America would last... but it was harsh reality for now, as the New Frontier recedes and the dynasty shows the ravishments of time, which they once assaulted and shaped.

About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Dr. Lant is a noted US historian and the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski
http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/

'With your shield, or on it.' Why America won't get and doesn't really want civic comity and civility.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Imagine, if you will, that you are a candidate for the United States Senate, the most exclusive club on earth.
You have wanted to be a member, you have dreamed of it for your entire life.
You have sacrificed over and over again to get this office of the people's trust. You have neglected  your spouse... your children... because there are only 24 hours a day and something's got to give. But your dream cannot be compromised... for that is the sine qua non of your entire existence.
You have spent long hours of every day raising the millions of dollars you must have to be competitive.
Now it is just 8 days before the election... and you, the golden boy or girl that you are, you are down by just 4 points in the latest poll.
Your financial backers are telling you they didn't invest their hard-earned money to cheer an also-ran. They make it clear what they think of such people. You know they are right, for you know America's Success Mantra.
Respected senior members of your party, some direct from Washington, D.C., have told you that the party's agenda (by which, of course, they mean, America's agenda) is on the line. They need your vote, and they need it now. They make it plain that high posts of honor and deference await if you win... but nothing except scorn and execration if you do not.
Good earnest supporters, the people of Main Street, are telling you, like Princess Leia to Obi-wan Kenobi, that "you're our only hope." You cannot let these folks down... they would despise you if you did. And they'd be right.
The financial backers demand victory!
The party big-wigs insist on victory!
The people on Main Street tell you their storm-tossed lives depend on victory  -- on you!
And your handlers, the people you hired at great, almost unimaginable cost (they did, after all, manage to defeat three sitting senators, one thought impregnable in the last election), these handlers are saying... and their reasons are crystal clear... that your opponent's strongest suit is the integrity with which the voters regard him. Even you, the white hope of the opposition, have a sneaking regard for his old-time morality and squeaky clean service.
But the handlers, your brains trust, is also telling you that after all your opponent is vulnerable. Yes, after all, you are only 4 points behind.  They are also telling you with insistence how to eradicate this trifling deficit, grab the seat, and move up to your rightful destiny in the Senate of these United State and in the History of America.
All you have to do is ratchet up the attacks, just another notch or two.... just ratchet up the attack. Insinuate... besmirch.... belittle...  distort... demean... degrade...
Then, in the final three days, blanket the airwaves with total, complete, shock and awe belligerence, nothing, absolutely nothing held back, everything on the line, do or die, take no prisoners.
Yes, it will cost millions... yes it will shred the reputation of an opponent whose virtues and service even you can see... but it is what all elements of your campaign want, indeed absolutely insist upon.
"Victory," Vince Lombardi wrote, "isn't everything. It's the only thing."
And so you win your Senate seat... and it is sweet. As sweet as you always knew it would be.
Whereupon the Leader of your party in the Senate comes to visit and remarks, almost as an afterthought, that there's a certain important vote coming up, next Thursday he thinks it is... and that he is hoping for the favor of your support.
From such a man on such a subject at such a time, such words, almost gentle, are the sternest of commands.You have really not had a chance to read the bill... you know precious little about it, but you have heard whispers that your biggest financial backer is..... opposed to it.
From such a man on such a subject at such a time, such words, not so gentle, are, too, the sternest of commands.
And so, while understanding that no man can serve two masters, you attempt to do just that. Your maiden speech on the issue falls flat. The Leader is not happy. Your financial backer is not happy. Your constituents, too, let you know they are not happy.
And you are the least happy of all. However, you learn and next time you are ready.
You make a calculated decision based on public policy and private gain. You make a deal with the Devil and the Devil tells you to demonize your opponent before your opponent demonizes you.
So you do, with no qualms whatsoever because your opponents on this issue gained a march by demonizing -- you.
You learn two sets of words: the words for defending your side. and the ones for stigmatizing opponents. On the one hand is patriotism, what is good for America, lowering taxes, transparency in government, protecting the Middle Class.
On the other are words like disloyal, perfidious, selfish, short- sighted, special interests.
All you have to do is throw these words, and dozens like them, into a hat and pull them out one at a  time, and, voila, instant speech.
A quick study, you see early on that the more moderate the speech, the more reasonable the views, the less attention you get... and attention in Washington is how you play the game, increase your visibility, and win the glittering prizes. You get this message Loud and Clear.
And so you up the ante, seeing your opponents no longer as good men and women like you (perhaps blighted by party affiliation) but as minions of an Evil Empire and the darkest of views and aspirations. Moderation doesn't work and, moreover, it isn't justified. Your opponents represent Everything Wrong With America. You learn it is your sacred duty to say so, to expose the culprits and Save The Nation and its beseeching members.
And so you do... and as you deliver the red meat, the media delivers you.... to the attention of other media, movers and shakers nationwide, and to the unlimited financial resources of this great nation, a nation yearning for Leadership; now knowing that leader can be -- you.
You are ready to answer this clarion call. Thus at last you understand, deep in your soul, the unanswerable validity of ancient Greek historian Plutarch's telling tale of the Spartan mothers. They said, they meant "Come home with your shield, or on it." You have heard.... and you are ready. You know just what to do. 31 bullets, 6 tragic deaths in Tucson, Arizona, , innumerable jeremiads and the most profound lamentations right up to the White House won't change things a whit. We're all sure of that, right? 

About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Dr. Lant is also a noted US historican and author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski <a href="http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/">

This is a story of an aging couple as told by their son who was President of NBC News

This is a wonderful piece by Michael Gartner, editor of newspapers large and small and president of NBC News. In 1997, he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. It is well worth reading, and a few good chuckles are guaranteed. Here goes...

My father never drove a car. Well, that's not quite right. I should say I never saw him drive a car.

   He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.

   "In those days," he told me when he was in his 90s, "to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it."

   At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in:
"Oh, bull shit!" she said. "He hit a horse."

   "Well," my father said, "there was that, too."

   So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car. The neighbors all had cars -- the Kollingses next door had a green 1941 Dodge, the VanLaninghams across the street a gray 1936 Plymouth, the Hopsons two doors down a black 1941 Ford -- but we had none.

   My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines , would take the streetcar to work and, often as not, walk the 3 miles home. If he took the streetcar home, my mother and brother and I would walk the three blocks to the streetcar stop, meet him and walk home together.

   My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born in 1938, and sometimes, at dinner, we'd ask how come all the neighbors had cars but we had none. "No one in the family drives," my mother would explain, and that was that.

   But, sometimes, my father would say, "But as soon as one of you boys turns 16, we'll get one." It was as if he wasn't sure which one of us would turn 16 first.

   But, sure enough , my brother turned 16 before I did, so in 1951 my parents bought a used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts department at a Chevy dealership downtown.

   It was a four-door, white model, stick shift, fender skirts, loaded with everything, and, since my parents didn't drive, it more or less became my brother's car.

   Having a car but not being able to drive didn't bother my father, but it didn't make sense to my mother.

   So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach her to drive. She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I learned to drive the following year and where, a generation later, I took my two sons to practice driving. The cemetery probably was my father's idea. "Who can your mother hurt in the cemetery?" I remember him saying more than once.

   For the next 45 years or so, until she was 90, my mother was the driver in the family. Neither she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he loaded up on maps -- though they seldom left the city limits -- and appointed himself navigator. It seemed to work.

   Still, they both continued to walk a lot. My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn't seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage.

   (Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.)

   He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin's Church.
She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish's two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home.

   If it was the assistant pastor, he'd take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church. He called the priests "Father Fast" and "Father Slow."

   After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother whenever she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If she were going to the beauty parlor, he'd sit in the car and read, or go take a stroll or, if it was summer, have her keep the engine running so he could listen to the Cubs game on the radio. In the evening, then, when I'd stop by, he'd explain: "The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on second base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the multimillionaire on third base scored."

   If she were going to the grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags out -- and to make sure she loaded up on ice cream. As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he said to me, "Do you want to know the secret of a long life?"

   "I guess so," I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre.

   "No left turns," he said.

   "What?" I asked.

   "No left turns," he repeated. "Several years ago, your mother and I read an article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they turn left in front of oncoming traffic.

   As you get older, your eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and I decided never again to make a left turn."

   "What?" I said again.

   "No left turns," he said. "Think about it... Three rights are the same as a left, and that's a lot safer.  So we always make three rights."

   "You're kidding!" I said, and I turned to my mother for support.
   "No," she said, "your father is right. We make three rights. It works."
   But then she added: "Except when your father loses count."

   I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started laughing.

   "Loses count?" I asked.

   "Yes," my father admitted, "that sometimes happens. But it's not a problem. You just make seven rights, and you're okay again."

   I couldn't resist. "Do you ever go for 11?" I asked.

   "No," he said " If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad day.  Besides, nothing in life is so important it can't be put off another day or another week."
   My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999, when she was 90.

   She lived four more years, until 2003. My father died the next year, at 102.

   They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty years later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny bathroom -- the house had never had one. My father would have died then and there if he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for the house.)

   He continued to walk daily -- he had me get him a treadmill when he was 101 because he was afraid he'd fall on the icy sidewalks but wanted to keep exercising -- and he was of sound mind and sound body until the moment he died.

   One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide-ranging conversation about politics and newspapers and things in the news.

   A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, "You know, Mike, the first hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred." At one point in our drive that Saturday, he said, "You know, I'm probably not going to live much longer."

   "You're probably right," I said.

   "Why would you say that?" He countered, somewhat irritated.

   "Because you're 102 years old," I said..

   "Yes," he said, "you're right." He stayed in bed all the next day.

   That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him through the night.

   He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, apparently seeing us look gloomy, he said:
   "I would like to make an announcement. No one in this room is dead yet"

   An hour or so later, he spoke his last words:

   "I want you to know," he said, clearly and lucidly, "that I am in no pain. I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth could ever have."

   A short time later, he died.

   I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot. I've wondered now and then how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived so long.

   I can't figure out if it was because he walked through life,
   Or because he quit taking left turns. "

Life is too short to wake up with regrets.

So love the people who treat you right.  
Forget about the one's who don't.  
Believe everything happens for a reason.  
If you get a chance,take it & if it changes your life, let it.
Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would most likely be worth it."
ENJOY LIFE NOW - IT HAS AN EXPIRATION DATE!

GOP dumps egregious chairman Michael Steele. An open letter to his successor, Reince Priebus.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Dear Sir:
I do not have the honor of knowing you personally, but that won't stop me from issuing the most candid advice on how to succeed in your brand new job -- Chairman of the Republican National Committee, to make your sojourn both pleasant and productive and avoid the pratfalls and gaffes of your predecessor, the bumptious and unlamented Michael Steele.
You were, it seems, a good friend of Mr. Steele but somewhere along the line you decided that his complete misunderstanding of his role at the RNC necessitated his removal. And you decided that no one was better qualified to lead the putsch than -- you. No problem. Ambition in Washington, D.C., especially when it involves changing your alliance, is not a sin. Quite the reverse. That you knew when to strike and how is a sign that you are already better qualified for the job than Steele ever was.
Good.
Now for the things you must know and do to succeed.
1) Realize that you have the 4th or 5th grandest title in Washington... and are absolutely a person of no significance or public stature whatsoever.
Can you name, say, 6 out of 10 of your predecessors? If you can, no one else is able. Why is that? Because the office is designed to function at the beck and call of the president of the ruling party (Obama)... and with the advice and consent of the last (defeated) presidential candidate (McCain), until such time as the next presidential candidate is well and duly nominated, whereupon he (or she) makes his (or her) choice.
In other words, you are there for a very short time, to keep the office going and to Make No Embarrassing Mistakes.
2) You are a low level bureaucrat without the one essential thing every truly significant person in Washington has: elected office. That is what distinguishes the men... from the chairmen.
Given this fact, no one wants or will even tolerate you taking positions on public issues. You do not have any standing for that. Instead, refer folks to Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner for he is (just now) the highest ranking official in the Republican Party and, as such, is admirably situated for position taking. Indeed, clearing important statements with him seems sensible, CYA.
3) Avoid the media like the plague.
Your predecessor never met a media person or program that he didn't like. As a result, the number and seriousness of his errors grew calamitous, thereby diminishing the (never great) respect in which he was held and the embarrassments of his colleagues.
You, mild mannered man that you are (as must be the case for one from Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin), should have a plaque made for your desk reading "Chairman Priebus did not return frequent calls from  our paper (radio, television, etc.)" It will constantly remind you to shut up and stay out of public view.
4) Bill Clinton, garrulous and diffuse to a degree, was elected President of the United States because his entirely focused staff concocted a very simple way of keeping their candidate on track. When he digressed (often), one held up a sign reading "It's the economy, stupid!"; the stupid in question being Mr. Clinton. It helped him remember.
A similar sign for you, sir, is in order. Yours should read "it's about fund raising, stupid!"
As I write, the Republican National Committee is $21 million in debt. State  GOP committees are also deep in red ink. This is not an auspicious situation for a party bidding to retake the White House they think of as their own real estate.
Every day, in every way, yes in every waking moment and in your dreams, too, you must have just two words in mind: fund raising.
This, dear sir, is the reason you were elected and what will determine whether you leave office with the blessings and congratulations of your colleagues... or their ample and unyielding execration. It will also determine whether you get a respectable job in the next Republican administration which, I suspect is often on your mind.
5) Keep  your expense account to the bare minimum.
Mr. Steele was seduced by the high life of Washington and took to it like a duck to water. Inevitably he was seen dining at the "best restaurants", where he ate prodigiously and knew his wines well. Nothing but the best for Mr. Steele as his (notably incomplete) expense accounts testify. He reckoned that he, as a Person of Consequence, was entitled.
My advice, sir, is simply this: find a good delicatessen in your neighborhood and learn what an (inexpensive and thoroughly justifiable) gourmet treat tuna on rye (with kosher pickles) can be. And never forget to turn in complete expense accounts, with nothing missing. You are a midwesterner; frugality becomes you.
6) Return all phone calls, except those from the media. (See above.)
Washington is a  town perpetually engaged in the most exciting and intricate of games: who is up, who is down, and why.
Avoid this game... for it is all-consuming and insidious.
Players of this game start shedding their civility and good manners as soon as possible. Calls from certain people get returned at once; calls from others, the lesser folk, are never returned.
Dear sir, playing this game is ill-advised and in the poorest of judgements.  Treat all with the general courtesy which has always distinguished the citizens of Wisconsin, your home state. All that is except presidential candidates and  their staffs, for they must always and forever have their calls returned and wishes granted at once, if not sooner. After all, you need friends in the next GOP administration... and this is a superb way to get them.
Last admonition (for now).
Next year, at a place and time to be announced, your party will engage in the ancient and honorable rite of nominating the person they think most likely to defeat the president and reclaim the glories of the Executive Mansion.
A word in your ear about your role. Even before your candidate is nominated, you will be informed that he (or she) has a new chairman in mind. Be prepared.
And be prepared, too, for the stark reality that a few days later, perhaps a week, no one, absolutely no one, will remember your name, and all the good you're sure to do in your brand- new office upon which I congratulate you.

About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski
http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/
Afford you say? Look at this...... 
 http://www.brainthingy.com/?r=Netmark1

Of me I sing. 4 things you really wanted to know about the Baby Boomers.... but were too polite to ask!

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Peggy Lee sang an insinuating song in Disney's "Lady and the tramp" that pretty much summarizes how we Baby Boomers feel about ourselves  -- and those who are not ourselves. (Released in June, 1955, the film was one  of the first that cashed in on my always media driven generation.)
"We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please."
Face it, we (and I must include myself, riding hard towards 65) are the Most Important Generation in the History of the World. Of this there is not nor will there ever be a whiff of disagreement, capiche?
Today, as we  massively approach 65 (at the rate of 8000 per day), one truth about the Baby Boomers remains consistent: everything we touch is transformed forever and stamped with our irresistible brand.
That's why you must know about us... and why we don't need to know nearly as much about -- you! Let us begin...
Baby Boomers are smarter than you are.
We are the first generation that transformed collegiate instruction from the preserve of the well-to-do and privileged into a de rigueur Rite of Passage, mandatory for anyone with pretensions to professional standing and deference. As a result, higher education is now ineffably part of the American Experience, something that we mortar boarded Boomers have now bequeathed to future generations.
They should be grateful.
Without us , they would have found it more difficult to party hardy at Alma Mater, at inexhaustible 18. You owe us.... and we shall surely collect from you... as we draw our senior serenity from your Social Security fund.
Thanks.
We are not organization people.
If the prototype of our parents' famously regimented generation was "The man in the gray flannel suit" by  Sloan Wilson (published 1955), we want it to be clear: we own no flannel, gray or otherwise... and wouldn't be caught dead wearing this mantel of corporate thraldom.
Jimmy Buffet and margarita soaked parrot heads are more our style; we have set the pace for casual apparel, worldwide travel and insipid ditties like Buffet's, the anthem of a generation that wishes to get wasted more often with better company.
Let me be very, very clear: we hate regimentation. We don't take orders well. We cannot abide and will not do the mundane, prosaic tasks that keep organizations ticking along. Whereas my mother worked hard (for free) doing things like writing and printing (with a hard-to- jiggle gelatin press) "The Percolator" newsletter for Puffer School, Downers Grove, Illinois, my generation has No Time for such lowly (much needed) tasks. We have Better Things To Do. 
As a result, organizations of every kind, in these Boomer dominated times, are hard hit by a degree of indifference, apathy, disdain that would have horrified community-spirited mum and her "he's a good provider" hubby, your dad.
We do have better sex, and oftener.
Okay, you're wondering, whether ye be of pre- or post-Boomer vintage, you're wondering, I say, whether all the scuttlebutt and (sometimes) scurrilous tales of lubricity and  pagan Woodstock love-in-the-mud stories could possibly be true.
They are.
And even more so.
We discovered, early on, that we liked our bodies tremendously... and that others, gay and straight, liked them, too. It was all "if it feels good, do it." And it still is. The fact that our parents Strongly Disapproved of such glorious,  indiscriminate minglings made it inevitable that we should have and enjoy them the more.
After all, for the first time in human history, we, the bona fide possessors,  owned our bodies, not the state, the church, or even our "forsaking all others" spouse. "Till death do us part," indeed; quaint, antediluvian idea that.
Divorces skyrocketed, so did couples counseling... but  sex gave us something other  than Scrabble to pass away a few hours, as pleasantly (and freely) as possible. We took to it with avidity, enthusiasm, and (too often) boredom and bruised feelings. Perfection, in anything, is difficult to find... but we keep the search going.
So there.
We aim to live forever, and remain forever young.
Now to the crux of the matter, the focus of fervid Boomer interest and actions. Since we as a generation either already own or will own shortly own (at the demise of our careful Great Depression touched parents), every single thing on earth worth having... we are now engaged in the hot pursuit of eternal youth, being the first generation to secure forever for itself.
Oh, yes, make no mistake about it. Having gathered the lot, we want to keep it "forever and ever, hallelujah."
This means obsessive focus on the foods we ingest (and avoid), the pounds we put on(or take off), gym bodies and sweat inducing exercises. It's all part of our massive assault on Eternity; for let's be clear: whatever we have wanted, we have secured. With only this, the biggest, the Big Prize to go.
We regard eternity not as a miracle, but as a problem, greater perhaps than any other problem we have assayed and solved... but still nothing that we can't handle in the hard-headed, inexorable fashion we have made our own and which has affronted, aggravated, and threatened other, lesser folk. We care nothing for that. After all the stakes are enormous this time. So far, we have challenged and rebuilt ideas, cultures, even an entire civilization, now we want more, the whole enchilada.
Now, indeed, is our past our prologue, for we are determined not to go gentle into that good night. (Dylan Thomas, 1951) Absolutely not.
We know what we want.
We are at work on its achievement.
And in due course, if not sooner, we shall seize Eternity and savour it. This is our destiny., and yours. Truly it's better than any science fiction book ever written.
In all previous generations, for every person in them, eternity was unimaginable, stuff for philosophers and theologians. Now, each us of us, in the most pivotal of generations, can not merely dream, but (soon?) own this, too. After all, millions of us are now at work on thousands of pathways to eternity. One of us Boomers will find the way, you betcha. With consequences to fall out later... when we, massively, have gone on to Something Else. 
About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Dr. Lant is also a syndicated writer and the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski
http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/
Afford you say? Look at this...... 
 http://www.brainthingy.com/?r=Netmark1

'Everybody must get stoned.' Public employees now Public Enemy Number 1 as strapped taxpayers erupt!

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Marie Corfield, a New Jersey based art teacher, had her moment with destiny. She had the opportunity to take New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to task... and she took it.
Marie, slowly at first, told Governor Chris about teaching conditions.... about the importance of art classes... and, gathering speed and righteous indignation as she went... let him Have It about teacher salaries and how the State of New Jersey should be helping struggling teachers.
Marie felt good about what she said and awaited compliments from the inevitable YouTube video she made.Yep, there would be compliments, lots of compliments, for sure.
"They'll stone you when you're trying to be so good."
But Marie had forgotten her Bob Dylan. "Everybody Must Get Stoned" (released 1966)... even art teachers with a seemingly unanswerable argument.
Says, Marie: "People I don't even know are calling me horrible names. The mantra is that the problem is the unions, the unions, the unions." And Marie is a union gal.
Marie, all innocent and unaware, had kicked a bee-hive.... There would be no compliments of any kind, just an opportunity for enraged taxpayers to vent... at her, beneficiary of the Evil Empire!
"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
In the face of a couple of wars, an historic recession and a punk, anaemic recovery, it seems Americans  are spending more time emulating Peter Finch's character in the 1976 film classic "Network", opening up the sash and screaming to a world entirely ready to hear and attend to this challenging message: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
"They'll stone you when  you're trying to make a buck."
The amazing thing is not that Americans are venting; (we're good at that). These outbursts, after all, go back to the Boston Tea Party of 1773 and, a little later, Shay's Rebellion of 1787.  The amazing thing is who we're attacking this time: police, fire fighters, teachers -- and their unions -- the pillars and essential elements of all our communities. These are now The Culprits....as Marie Corfield found out.
Strong union states like California, New York, Michigan, and New Jersey are in the vanguard of crisis, flirting with bankruptcies that would devastate local citizens and imperil the economic recovery.
Why? Because the still very fragile economy cannot sustain the demands of voracious state, city and town budgets; budgets designed for more ample times and for the unions who waxed fat and happy in those good old days and want to keep this ball rolling, even in our leaner times.
Something's got to give.
Here are the various (union) factions:
There are the stand patters. These are the folks, call them the Ultras, who say: "I earned what I got fair and square.  I'm not giving up a dime, no how, no way." They remember every minute of all the work they ever did and insist, with absolute moral certainty, on getting Everything They're Entitled To.
Then there are the moderate reformers. They say, "OK, I'll give up some future goodie, like a cost of living adjustment. In return for this gift of great magnanimity, I want Everything I've got now to be confirmed and sacrosanct. Got that, bub? Have a nice day."
Next come the folks, call them "go-goos" (good government types, liberal to a person). They are ready -- even happy -- to "give back" salary and benefit packages now clearly unwarranted and unsustainable. They accuse the Ultras of ostrich-like behavior and the most selfish of "apres moi le deluge" attitudes. These folks are Responsible, High Minded, Chablis-drinking, insufferable.
With such factions, each driven by the best of intentions and by high blown rhetorical flourishes that just won't quit, this promises to be the epic food fight of all times. "They'll stone you and then say they're all brave." Of course.
The stakes couldn't be higher. The players all want to be considered responsible and civic minded. They all know the value of a good rep.
Equally, all except the  go-goos (who are above such petty considerations and wear their give-backs like the Red Badge of Courage) are determined to emerge not only with what they've got but what they can finagle, this being the time-honored American way.
Meanwhile the doomsday clock is ticking as the states, their unions, and all the police, fire fighters, and teachers therein move towards MAD, mutually assured destruction, city and town edition.
How did we get to this point anyway? And how do we get out of it, relatively unscathed?
Fred Siegel, a historian at the conservative-leaning Manhattan Institute, has written "New Tammany  Hall", a provocative book on the subject. Here he describes the "incestuous alliance" between public officials and labor.
Says Siegel, "Public unions have had no natural adversary; they give politicians political support and get good contracts back." Exactly. Prosperity cloaked a jury-rigged system whose inadequacies became glaringly apparent as the economy tanked. Now in the stark wake of the new realities, these inadequacies are blatant.
Taxpayers, more aggrieving than aggrieved, demanded Fast Action, or else. And so, in 2010 alone, 212,000 local government jobs were cut as the public put the unions for police, fire fighters and teachers squarely in their rifle sights. But it wasn't enough, not nearly enough.
"Everybody must get stoned."
Benefits are the big issue. For years politicians gave them away lavishly, to garner the votes of these always dependable voters.  Now, however, the dependable voters are the taxpayers who are screaming for blood. Since no man, and hardly any woman, can serve two masters, what a revolting development this is!
In due course, taxpayer anger, always undependable and inconstant, will wane. The economy, anaemic now, will  improve. The jury-rigged benefit and pension system with many tweaks, some painful, others long overdue, will muddle through. Unions will demand that heads be lopped off those too giddy for give backs. And some will fall,  but not many.
As for the rest of us?
"Everybody must get stoned."
About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Dr. Lant is alos the author of 18 best-selling business books and numerous syndicated articles. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski

http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/
Afford you say? Look at this...... 
 http://www.brainthingy.com/?r=Netmark1

Of champions, with particular reference to Theodore Roosevelt's great speech

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
I had been expecting this call for some time. I knew that she was working hard, too hard. She was distressed, distraught, unhappy.... wondering if her extraordinary efforts were appreciated, wondering in fact whether they were regarded and  understood by anyone, much less everyone. It is a call every winner makes at one time or another, for every winner knows dark moments.
I listened to the onrush of heated, passionate language until it was spent. I am a good listener, and I know how to bide my time until the crucial moment of response is reached.
It had now arrived.
And I simply said, you are a champion.
You are a person condemned to dream more, to do more, to be more. The world will often admire you... but it will never understand you.
For champions are often cheered and emulated but the engine that drives them is something, at the last, that only another champion can truly know.
No one knew this better than Theodore Roosevelt, the celebrated "Teddy."
Theodore Roosevelt began life (born October 27, 1858)  as the pampered and sickly son of well-known, socially prominent New York parents. Coddled, indulged, he came to despise his life because it gave him so much and demanded so little. He didn't like the person he was, much less the drone he was  en route to becoming.
And so Teddy Roosevelt discovered the West... and himself.
Roosevelt selected as his venue of choice the Badlands of the Dakotas, rough, wild, dangerous... the perfect finishing school for Roosevelt as important as Harvard College, from which he graduated too easily in 1880.
Here, the country of real men, Roosevelt with his sissified ways, affected speech and seigneurial manners gave universal offense to democratic frontiersmen. They regularly walloped Roosevelt as an apt symbol of the American nobility they would never be and he so obviously was.
Teddy got knocked down.
Often. Painfully. And, so the crowd thought, hilariously.
But there was that something in the man that made him keep getting up... and getting up again, actually smiling  his high octane grin.
It was a thing that champions know that lesser folk do not: it was the knowledge that he could persist... and even smile... indeed especially smile... when down.
Ahhhhhhhh.
Having been knocked down enough to know better... he took his new found knowledge and self esteem... and the all important insight that he could manage and inspire men... he took all this and returned to New  York. There he did what all champions do: he began, determined that each step should help him ascend higher still.
Pushing  himself, inspiring others, determined to see how far he could rise, he went from the State Assembly (1882),  then Secretary of the Navy (1897) and in due course (after that famous romp up San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War), Governor of New York (1899). 
An unabashed progressive determined to root out  the prevailing graft and cynical cronyism of both parties,  Roosevelt rattled cages. Thus the staid, appalled Republican establishment decided to serve the Empire State they loved by... getting rid of the most effective governor in years. And so the wire pullers arranged, as wire pullers do, to bury him; this time in the Vice Presidency of the United States, a better, more secure place  for oblivion than any penal institution.
Or so they thought.
One bullet on December 14, 1901 into the body of President William McKinley liberated Roosevelt and launched him, like a missile into destiny. He was ready.  Sure of himself, esteemed by the nation, he invented and applied nearly every aspect of the modern presidency.
Including the media gaffe.
Just after he  had been reelected president in 1904, Roosevelt was casually asked by a reporter whether he would run again. The President, young, at the height of his powers, a marvelous engine for change in the land, made the biggest mistake of his life. When asked if he would run for re-election in 1908 (as he might have) he said no... and as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he rued them; as he rued them for the rest of his life. That's why he was in Paris in 1910, discussing civic involvement and champions... rather than breakfasting in the White House, at work to mold a better America.
The speech that day was entitled "Citizenship in a Republic", but it came to be known as "The man in the arena" speech, because of these words, inspirational, insightful, a clarion call for every man and woman alive, words no champion must ever forget:
"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
He knew what he was talking about.
And so I passed his words, etched deeply in my mind, to my dear friend and colleague, who for an instant thought her many good works, her stamina, her empathy, her care and consideration had gone unnoticed. But she was wrong... for we had all noticed, and admired; every day seeing what a true hero does: setting the objective; working daily to achieve the objective; shucking off failures and disappointments as an inevitable element of success.
But the most important element of success and of all true champions is to share heart and spirit, not just tactics and techniques, with a world so desperately in need of them.
Here this woman, a champion among champions, truly excels. She understands that from champions who are given much, much is expected. And here,  with a generous nature,  she never stints, as so many can attest and so many more will come to know.
This is why we honor her today
January 13, 2011.
Linda Elze, we admire you so.

About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski

http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/
Afford you say? Look at this...... 
 http://www.brainthingy.com/?r=Netmark1

January 12. The first nor'easter of 2011. Thoughts from within nature's wallop.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
I am writing to you today from inside one of nature's bona fide wonders: a good old New England nor'easter. I hadn't planned to comment on this blizzard; I tend to ignore them whenever possible. New Englanders are used to them. But I was awakened this morning by the snow insistently thumping my window, demanding my attention, insisting, lordly in its sway that I gaze out and make my obeisance to awe and wonder.
And so I shall.
First, the facts.
What is snow anyway?
Millions of people, their lives intertwined with this seasonal commodity which ebbs and flows, would, when asked... hem and haw, embarrassed by their ignorance of something so powerful, so regularly omnipresent, so, well, obvious. "I'm not really sure," they'd say -- myself among 'em -- "I just know it when I see it."
The Farmer's Almanac to the rescue.
My dictionary says snow is ice crystal flakes: water vapor in the atmosphere that has frozen into ice crystals and falls to the ground in the form of flakes. This is, well, adequate, good enough; it's better to seek out the experts at the Farmer's Almanac (published first by Benjamin Franklin in 1732. ) Snow, somehow, seems more real in the country, its sinews more apparent, its destructive power the more on view and genuinely regarded, with picturesque Currier and Ives panoramas at every glance. No wonder America loves these images of its earliest and most enchanting self, first published in 1813, when a view was verily a fine prospect indeed.
Here's what the Farmer's Almanac says,
"Snow is formed from water vapors in the cold clouds that have condensed into ice crystals. Ice crystals fasten onto a dust speck. One crystal attaches to another forming a snowflake. Once the snowflake is heavy enough, it falls from the cloud. A snowflake is either a single ice crystal or many crystals.The size of a snowflake is determined by how many ice crystals join together.The tops of clouds must be below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, or 0 degrees Celsius in order for snowfall to occur.Snow can fall from any layered cloud that is cold enough."
"Snow’s effect on the ground."
" Snow accumulated on the ground helps keep bulbs and plant roots  (beneath the ground) from freezing in frigid weather.As soft snowflakes  pile on top of one another, pockets of air are left between them. This air helps protect seeds, bulbs and roots from freezing beneath the soil in winter.In spring when the snow  begins to melt, some snow soaks into the earth to water the soil, while other melted snow replenishes streams, lakes and rivers."
Now, that's a definition to be proud of. And I bet you, like me, hardly knew a whit of this. Still, it is good to know the brave little crocuses already peeping shoots above the ground will not be harmed. They are the vanguard of spring, and they cheer us every time they ascend to the sun and their brief tenure as bits of joy in the mud.
5:55 am Eastern
It is not quite six a.m. now and the hegemony of snow is absolute. Or almost so. The snow plows are already at their work; their promise of relief and liberty at hand. Their noise must be fearsome for, snug and warm,  I hear them as they go about their work. They bear names like Ariens, Toro, Craftsman, Husqvarna, Troy-Bilt,  MTD Yard Machines, and Honda. You can tell as well as I that many of these are foreign names, and so with every flake, American money leaks to foreign shores.
The snow plows are manned by happy crews of determined folk who relish their work. Soon, they will be found in taverns citywide sharing brews and tales of the Big One which will lose nothing in the telling. They are proud of the work which pulls them from snug beds into the Big Machines whose power, growing now, will soon efface that of snow itself. Commuters who come later, grumbling, will complain about where the fruit of these machines has been left.
New England's poets knew their snow
John Greenleaf Whittier (born 1807) wrote a best-seller in 1866 entitled Snowbound: A Winter Idyl. Easy to understand, its simple imagery and paean to nature do not satisfy our jaded tastes and so, sadly, this idyllic pastoral goes unread today.
Sadder still is the fate of "The Cross of Snow" (1879) by my near neighbor on Brattle Street, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  His poem, gut wrenching, is not so much about the snow itself as about the snow covering the grave of his long-dead, fervently adored wife. I have been in the room she died, where there is love and pain, producing reflections almost too poignant to be written:
"In the long, sleepless watches of the night ,A gentle face--the face of one long dead-- Looks at me from the wall, where round its head The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light. Here in this room she died, and soul more white Never through martyrdom of fire was led To its repose; nor can in books be read The legend of a life more benedight. There is a mountain in the distant West That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines Displays a cross of snow upon its side. Such is the cross I wear upon my breast These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes And seasons, changeless since the day she died."
But this report must not end on such a note of mourning, no matter how haunting and elegiac. Thus we end instead with the sage of Concord, Massachusetts, Ralph Waldo Emerson who in "The Snow Storm" (published 1841) said this:
"Announced  by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden's end. The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of Storm." *** I am now in that tumultuous privacy of Storm, where outside the elements contend, heavy,  portentous, disruptive ephemeral, though they do not know it. Soon this will pass."

About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Attend Dr. Lant's live webcast TODAY and receive 50,000 free guaranteed visitors to the website of your choice! Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski 

http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/
Afford you say? Look at this...... 
 http://www.brainthingy.com/?r=Netmark1

Fifty years ago January 9, 1961 John F. Kennedy gave his celebrated 'A City Upon a Hill' speech.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

It is fitting and proper that we recall the great events of our Republic, events that remind us of where we have been and exhort us to where we are going.

Such an event was President-Elect John Fitzgerald Kennedy's celebrated speech known as "A City Upon a Hill."

Kennedy made this speech just days before he assumed his "high and lonely" office in the capital. And, as so often in one of his speeches, there were many elements present, some celestial, others less serious, even puckish, all quintessential Kennedy.

Who was there?

First of all, every politician in politician-filled Massachusetts was present for this speech, which was given in the Victorian ornateness of the House of Representatives in a joint session with the state Senate.

Each and every one of these politicos, each one in his best bib and tucker, came to learn, came to scrutinize, came to imitate, came to see what made this oh-so-favored son of Boston tick. So they could do it, too. This speech, this whole shebang, was an opportunity to learn from the very best, and all were determined to make the most of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Who wasn't there?

Conspicuously absent was the man who, more than anyone other than Kennedy himself, made it all possible. Joseph P. Kennedy it seems did not attend. Already, the Kennedy's knew, no one more than Joe himself, that he was to be, had to be, the power behind the throne if the new regime was to flourish. His reputation as wire-puller, boot legger, with a whiff of Nazi sympathy made it necessary for him to remain firmly behind the scenes. Joe was ok with this. It was the devil's deal he made for his son and the glory of Kennedy.

Who wrote the speech?

It seems, though absolute certainty may stay elusive, that Kennedy's speech writer Theodore Sorensen wrote this speech. If so, it would hardly be surprising. Sorensen had a gift for simple, graceful prose as he had proved in the writing of "Profiles in Courage". Sorensen was coy throughout his life (he died in 2010) about whether or not he wrote this Pulitzer Prize winning book; (he was constantly, annoyingly asked). He always said no... but the cognoscenti doubted.

Sorensen was the ultimate loyalist;  he was accustomed to giving his all... and he wrote prose the President-Elect liked and could deliver with ease, elegance, and persuasion.

Why John Winthrop?

Governnor John Winthrop was a man of parts, a thoughtful man, a man of guts and grace, a man in communion with God who needed all his wits not just for getting his people to the new world of Massachusetts... but making sure they knew what to do when they arrived. It was a matter of urgency and the deepest possible significance.

Towards this end he wrote in 1630 a document which he called "A Model of Christian Charity." It was in fact a series of admonitions about how citizens of this clean, unblemished new world should behave. And John Winthrop minced no words.

One can picture the scene as Governor Winthrop assembled his flock on the main deck of that little ship of fate and read the portentous words that defined who they were, what they were doing, and why it mattered so. It was a scene of importance and they all knew it; they gave their leader their full attention as he moved to the ringing conclusion he gave them and to the ages to come:

"For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal  falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world."

Governor John Winthrop was determined this should not happen... and John Fitzgerald Kennedy was determined, too, as he plucked this phrase and launched it as a missile into a future as murky,difficult, and grave as Winthrops's.

And so the President-Elect walked purposefully to the podium, his every move and action the subject of scrutiny and comment.

He was, much of America thought, too young (43), too inexperienced, with a religious affiliation that troubled many and appalled some. He had much to prove... but John F. Kennedy was an historian. He understood History, and on this day he knew he would make it. Thus he began, revealing his vision for the politicians in attendance, the whole of Massachusetts, and for every citizen in the nation he was about to govern.

There were words of pride as when he cited Pericles' resounding boast to the Athenians: "We do not imitate -- for we are  a model to others."

There were his words of inspiration and hope that the "enduring qualities of Massachusetts" as embodied in "the common threads woven by the Pilgrim and the Puritan, the fisherman and the farmer, the Yankee and the immigrant" would truly merge and renew the rich heritage of the Commonwealth, now atrophied and in danger.

There was the famous charge to all the legislators and statesmen before him... and all those who were watching from afar, reminding them all that "For of those to  whom much is given, much is required."

And then, finally, there were the 4 famous questions:

"First were we truly men of courage...

Secondly, were we truly men of judgement....

Third, were we truly men of integrity....

Finally, were we truly men of dedication -- with an honor mortgaged to no single individual or group....?"

Humbly,  he then asked for God's help in this undertaking "but aware that on earth His will is worked by men."  Yes, he asked for the help of all "as I embark on this new and solemn journey."

Then,  his words hanging in the air, the applause of his audience rising, he descended from the podium and moved on,  setting out upon his voyage; a man aware of the nation's great trust and his great responsibility.

About The Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Attend Dr. Lant's live webcast TODAY and receive 50,000 free guaranteed visitors to the website of your choice! Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books and numerous syndicated articles on a variety of topics. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski

http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/
Afford you say? Look at this...... 
 http://www.brainthingy.com/?r=Netmark1

How many times can a man turn his head...? Tucson, Arizona and the murderous events of January 8, 2011

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
It was just an ordinary day at the La Toscana Village Safeway store on West Ina Road except that U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona) with  her mega-watt smile had dropped by to do a "Congress on Your Corner" meet and greet, answer some questions, pose for a few pictures. Maybe she was running for the U.S. Senate, or not. She was keeping her options open, and this was a good place to meet the folks and make a good impression.
While Giffords was doing her job, Jared Loughner was preparing to do his. He was in the parking lot, in a taxi, loaded down with a Glock 19 semiautomatic pistol. The magazine was full. He had another full magazine, too, that had about 30 bullets and two more that each held about 15 bullets. Just in case, Jared was also carrying a knife. But Jared had a problem. On his way to destiny he found he didn't have enough change to pay his taxi fare. He and the driver stepped inside the store, sorting it out... Jared then walked back inside.
In just an instant, in a moment of unspeakable horror death descended, at the hand of the man now known as alleged gunman Jared Loughner, aged 22.
Murdered! 9 year old Christina Green, student council representative and A student.
Murdered! Judge John Roll, 63, his life dedicated to the law and due process.
Murdered! Dorwin Stoddard, 76, who gave his life shielding his wife.
Murdered! Gabriel Zimmerman, 30,  an expert on constituent affairs in Gabby Gifford's office.
Murdered! Phyllis Schneck, 79, affable church volunteer.
Murdered! Dorothy Morris, 76 good neighbor, enjoying a well-earned retirement.
Dead, all dead, with 12 more wounded, bleeding, writhing. But Jared, who delivered death, lived on, condemned to life, protected by the Constitution and the hBill of Rights he sneered at.
Why had this happened when so many knew so much for so long about the troubled mind and insistent presence of Jared Loughner?
The U.S. Army had clues. Jared had applied and been rejected for reasons officials would not disclose. What did they know, when did they know it, what did they do?
Officials at Tucson's Pima Community College, where Jared was a disruptive, unsettling presence, had clues.
Campus police  were called at least 5 times to deal with Jared and his out-of-control classroom antics.  September 29, 2010 they had enough when Jared posted the latest of a string of vituperative, rambling, sense challenged videos, this one claiming the college was illegal, according to the U.S. Constitution, which doubtless he had never read and could not understand.
So frequently forced to deal with Jared, what did these officials know, when did they know it, what did they do, beyond having two uniformed police officers hand-deliver his suspension to his home? They knew enough for that.
Readers of Jared's Facebook and YouTube rants had clues. Incoherent, violent, accusatory, Jared's poorly written posts reeked of the pains he felt and the greater pains he aimed to inflict on someone, anyone.
There was one video titled "America: Your last memory in a terrorist country!". There a figure in the dark clothing Jared habitually wore burned the American flag while wearing a smiley-face mask. Desecration of the flag is de rigueur for the unbalanced and country hating and Jared juiced up this evil sacrament with the soundtrack of a 2001 song by the band "Drowning Pool."
"Let the bodies hit the floor!"
What did his readers know, when did they know it, what did they do? Or did they even notice Jared, who so desperately wanted to be noticed and understood.
Then Jared got serious.
He wrote the obligatory self-justifications. There were 3 of them, all found in a safe in Loughner's home: "I planned ahead", "my assassination," and, tellingly, "Giffords." There was even a flyer from one of Giffords' 2007 "Congress on Your Corner" events. He had, we now know, attended this event, perhaps brainstorming the options that would deliver universal notice, even unto the President of these United States, the land he so reviled.
He purchased his weapon of choice at Sportsman's Warehouse on November 30, 2010. Then he bought his portable arsenal of bullets, lots of bullets.
No one at the store noticed anything particular about this boy, already bursting with purpose and arrogant determination. Boys with odd ticks and rumpled clothes are a daily occurrence in the temple of weapons and the priesthood of the Second Amendment. No one cared. The sale, after all, went through. And that's the important thing, isn't it? What did that obligatory pre-purchase background check show about Loughner, who by now had left so very many clues? Or was it given the most cursory of notice? No one has yet said, but one may suppose.
Which brings us to the spruced up Jared, dressed for mayhem and eternity. He called the taxi and rode off, his driver apparently seeing nothing of the bulky paraphernalia of death toted by the alleged culprit and gunman. We all wonder how that could be.
Just as we wonder how so many could have seen so much and done so little, leaving Jared the initiative, always free to act while others watched and waited.... until the bodies hit the floor.
Fortunately, there are heroes here, two people who tackled Jared gun of death in hand, bringing him down. These (so far unnamed) people of courage did not hold back. They saw, they acted, saving many lives, even at the risk of their own.
As for the rest and all the soul baffling questions, the answer is blowing in the wind.

About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Attend Dr. Lant's live webcast TODAY and receive 50,000 free guaranteed visitors to the website of your choice! Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski       http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/