‘I don’t want to hurt anymore…’ An appreciation for the life of Whitney Houston, dead at 48, February 11, 2012.

Linda Elze — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 18:24:26 +0000

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by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author’s program note. To understand this story you must have been in love, wildly, passionately, “have to have it, have to keep it, can’t live without it” love… what’s more you must have loved the Wrong Person… the person everyone and his brother said was calamitous for you, hurtful, damaging, completely baffling to the world…. but completely clear to you.

Have you loved this way? With abject submission, with a focus on the beloved so intense that even you cannot explain it? Have you experienced the heights of ecstasy, wondering how you had ever lived without this person… then plumbed the depths with this same person, the person who did to you what you never imagined… and you were grateful, yes grateful, for every indignation, humiliation, sordid revelation?

If you have never had such love, then you will never understand Whitney Houston… and must never presume to judge her.

And so today, for the incidental music for this article, I have selected “I Have Nothing”. Go now to any search engine and find it. Now make it a point to concentrate on the music, the lyrics, the inimitable soaring presentation that takes you into the inexplicable recesses of love in all its manifestations, to a place only known by real lovers, mindless of anything but the love that is consuming them minute by minute, hurtfully, painfully, known only to them… and joyfully.

If you have never had such love, then you will never understand Whitney Houston… and must never presume to judge her.

The girl next door, born August 9, 1963.

Whitney Houston arrived on this planet in Newark, New Jersey, the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston, the cousin of 1960s pop diva Dionne Warwick, the goddaughter of Aretha Franklin. She could hardly have had a better passport into the world of music. She started with the blessings of a revered sisterhood, with their belief in her and assistance… but all that would have been so much dross without The Voice, the voice that gave her the world and all its glittering prizes.

And right from the start The Voice was there, pristine, piercing, pure, thrilling, able to touch the hearts of others because it came straight from her heart. As such she had everything…. even when she sang about having nothing.

Her career was simply a matter of letting others hear The Voice, for once they had done so they instantly became adherents, supporters, believers. And so the girl with the perfect freshly scrubbed looks, the perfect name, and The Voice that was beyond perfection, started her almost effortless journey to the top of the world… for to hear her was to want her and the riches of her uplifting sound.

“Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah.”

Her ascent started at age 11, as a soloist in the junior gospel choir in the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, where she also learned how to play the piano. Her first solo performance in the church was “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah,” a song she should have kept with her and sung often in the turbulent days to come.

But Whitney’s destiny was not in gospel music, though she always insisted that she had never forsworn her gospel roots; some in the black community thought otherwise and were quick to say so and condemn.

The first song she released was “Someone For Me”. It foreshadowed every song that followed: it was an unchallenging combination of slow tempo, smooth sound, and vocals that didn’t take her to her limits… or make any demands whatsoever on her listeners. But it did the job… it launched her; it signalled the arrival of a new talent… and it sold reasonably well. Thus she sashayed through the door to success and the attention of a world glad to hear her…

Her two next releases, her two next hits “You Give Good Love” and “Saving All My Love For You”, took her — and each of us – higher… though we knew there was much higher to go… and so with each record, each hit we went up, up, always up; carried by The Voice which was always greater than the tunes she sang of love, longing, desire, and the promise of sublime eros and total fulfillment.

She knew what we wanted… knew what we needed… and she delivered it to us with a dance beat that took us beyond care and worry, to a divine moment with the one we cared for and in whose eyes we glimpsed forever. And so it should have gone on… until she met the quintessential bad boy, every mother’s nightmare, every good girl’s secret dream, the man who asked for everything, demanded everything… and with each thrilling step changed everything to the point of devastation, despair, degradation. And at last she understood what fulfillment meant… and its terrible costs.

Bobby Brown was his name.

He entered her well-managed, richly endowed, picture-postcard-perfect life in 1989 at the Soul Train Music Awards. And all the known verities died….and if you believe in fate, then you must believe that it was Nemesis who threw them together, to the detriment — and profound fulfillment — of both, for there must have been such fulfillment, or else the costs can never be understood.

Six years younger than Houston, he was a man of unrivalled passion, insistence, rage, violence, selfishness, cruelty…… and it was this man, with a kit full of chaos — who changed Whitney Houston forever and took her down the dark alleys of love, for make no mistake that even with each declension this remained a love story…

And so from this moment she sang for him such songs of such fierce longing that we knew we were hearing the truths on which she now based her life:

“Don’t make me close one more door I don’t wanna hurt anymore Stay in my arms if you dare Don’t walk away from me Or must I imagine you there I have nothing, nothing, nothing If I don’t have you, you, you, you, you.”

“I never knew love like I’ve known it with you.”

And so the best years of her life were the worst years of her life. And she lived them in all their squalor, horrifying reality, disgust, addiction, abashment and confusion. Yet she stayed… Why? Because as she stated with adamance, “I can’t run from myself, there’s nowhere to hide.”

Others gave advice, an ocean of advice, to get up, get out, get ahold of yourself, girl; but they were not in love with Bobby Brown and never understood his primal magic.

And so they married… and divorced… fought in private and in public… and loved each other to the exhaustion of both, the end the disgrace of one, the death of the other.

Now her pain is over… but The Voice, her great gift from God, abides… leaving us the best of her, every soaring note a eulogy for the lady who loved not wisely, but too well.

About the Author

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‘Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life…’ Thoughts on turning65 February 16, 2012 and my most memorable birthday.

Linda Elze — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 23:31:03 +0000

Come see us live:

http://bigdogmoneymaker.com/3a0

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author’s program note. I have always liked Charles Dickens. Not only was he a writer able to make words do his bidding, but he roused multitudes of people, people who after reading this master could never see the world as before… but only through his eyes. That is power indeed.

When I was a student living in London in the late ’60s, Charles Dickens’ house was right around the corner on Doughty Street; I went often, my mission clear: to see how the master of words lived his messy, turbulent, always productive life. That didn’t help; I had to wait until I lived my own to find out how it’s done….

But I resolved that when it came time for me, as an older man, looking back on my young and tender self, that I should incorporate the great beginning to “David Copperfield” (published 1850)… and so today I shall do so:

“Chapter 1. I am born.

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.” And so, very similarly, it went for me… and, no doubt for you, too; for at that moment we are all similar… something we ought to remember later, when we cultivate and embrace divisiveness instead of diversity.

Seeking clues, finding clues.

There is no adventure so thrilling, so personally significant, so completely fulfilling as going on expedition to find yourself, for the discovery of you cannot help but be the most important journey you will take. For this epic journey — for your life must always be that — I have selected the lush 1969 score by Sir Malcolm Arnold to one of the several filmed versions of “David Copperfield”. You can find it in any search engine. Play it now before going on…

And so we begin…

I was born in Illinois February 16, 1947, making me a card-carrying Baby Boomer. It was the date of my parents’ first wedding anniversary; the date, too, when two of my paternal aunts gave birth to boys the same time. Family, fecundity, faith in the Great Republic and its devices were in the air.

It is fashionable, particularly in political circles, to minimize what one’s parents had, while enhancing the struggles they faced; the deprivations many and humiliating visited upon the hapless children… but this is not my story, even if I stretched the truth.

When I see my life in its whole, the words that come to mind are words of security, amplitude, family… words about the Great Republic, its especial place in the firmament… and of small town life and verities… where everyone knew you, almost from the first moment of conception. There my father built us a rambling ranch house graced by a sign that said “This is the house that Don built, 4906 Woodward Avenue”.

It was set in the midst of acres of violets whose very color I can never see without a lump in my throat….if in such circumstances we may have lacked this or that, we didn’t know and it never mattered… because we were blessed in so many ways… No one more so than I.

“You looked at me,” she said, “with interest and intelligence, as if you had come to tell me something and know me better.”

Life revealed one of my important traits right from the start. My mother was young and feared delivery and the burdens of maternity. She told me often in later years that she didn’t want children, didn’t like them… and was resentful when her early pregnancy was discovered. But then…then… a nurse placed me in her arms for the first time… and that changed everything.

She told me, always as if she had never told me before, I looked at her at that crucial moment of acknowledgement… not with fear, anxiety, trepidation or even uncertainty… but instead steadily, with empathy, as if I had come to cheer her and tell her all would be well.

Thus it came to be said that I had a special mission to humanity and the necessary skills and healing gifts. If so, I used them that day.

Prodigies

All mothers probably think their children prodigies, especially the first born… but my mother’s oft reiterated belief about what she saw on our first meeting put my feet upon the path I continue to tread this very day… a path that gave me what, age ten or so, I told them I wanted: to go to Harvard, to write books, to be a millionaire, all accomplished before thirty. This is how it happened…

Exemption, recognition

Boys in 1950′s Illinois needed to be good at sports, especially baseball, basketball or football, handy with cars, or at some practical subject like mathematics, a requirement for careers in engineering and the like. I was good at none of these… and yet it never mattered. I was, from the first day of school, the recognized school leader, master of words and thoughts which were always more adult than my schoolmates, who might so easily have derided… but never did, not least because I was always perceived as a friend, even confidante of my teachers, able to empathize and understand their situations; always, therefore a (young) colleague, never merely a pet. I used this influence for the good of my classmates, my instructors, the support staff… and myself. As such, I had the ear of all, for the benefit of all.

I learned what it took to assist authority and to achieve what I wanted… by helping such people get what they wanted. And this skill, once planted, has never deserted me… and as a result I have always been welcomed by the intelligent, the accomplished, the powerful, and all manner of people whose brains are fertile, whose visions are expansive, and for whom life is a grand thing, to be savored, improved, enhanced at every step and always shared, as I share mine with such people; now including you. In this way I lived a life enhanced by those good people and kind who have chosen to live it with me, as you perhaps will do, too.

My favorite birthday.

Have I then become the hero of my own life? Even now, it is too early to tell, though I remain resourceful and always hopeful. But I can resolutely tell you this: my favorite birthday is my actual birth day for from it everything else has come… and it all started with a look, two eyes just opened looking for the first time into two eyes anxious and frightened just a moment ago, now with a dawning realization that all will be well and with incipient happiness, too.

That is why, so equipped, I approach each new day as a pilgrim to this planet; ready to smile, to laugh, to use my talents, to enhance life… and above all else to love… for love explains all, enables all, enhances all, forgives all, understands all, embraces all… which is why, just 65, the best is yet to come… the last of life for which the first is made. So Browning enlightened my mother; so my mother enlightened me… and so I trust, on this special day, I have now enlightened you.

For this is the only acceptable kind of life… where, one by one, we reach out to each other… determined to engage… to touch… to venture upon the ocean of time with hope, humility, humanity. This is what I have learned in my first 65 years… and now it is my present to you… gratefully given… and I hope gratefully received and used for good… for this is the way if you, too, wish to become the hero of your own life, as I know you wish to do…

About the Author

‘Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow!’ The end of the Great Recession, success, more success, admonitions.

Linda Elze — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:28:40 +0000

Come see us live: http://bigdogmoneymaker.com/3a0

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author’s program note. A funny thing happened while you were at your office bemoaning the demise of America and its Great Republic: they didn’t die after all. Quite the reverse. See for yourself. Skim the business pages of your local newspaper today, and you’ll see one piece of cheery economic news after another. Admittedly, some of these pieces are like the first signs of the plucky springtime crocus… you see only the very tip… but even that’s a very good sign; where there’s a shoot, there’s a flower on the way… And that’s what we’re seeing now… one zestful harbinger after another.

This is a moment for the kind of jubilation that sent the God-selected Pilgrims to their knees, penitential arms upward and wide spread, head down, fervent hallelujahs on their prayerful lips.

You are still here…. older, wiser, nicked a bit, but a survivor.

You were, we all were, sore tested in recent years. So you learned to hunker down…. you mastered the art of making do with less… you kept business, hearth and home together… and, most of all, you did it with faith, fortitude, and a smile that never wavered despite great provocations.

You said you’d live to fight another day… and now you have.

This is that day!

This is the very dawn of that epochal date when unhappy past gives way to all the bounty of tomorrow… “now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer…”

And because that day has dawned, you face the promise of the future with joy in your heart and a bounce in your step. It is good to be alive!

Sales up! Confidence up!

This kind of budding jubilation is occurring now; it’s happening across America as the Great Republic recalls that it is eternal… whilst the bad times that assail us are mere interruptions, no matter how bad. We all knew this, of course, but we were made distracted by the unceasing jeremiads of the nay-sayers. The pity parties they sponsored for the nation are over, de trop… and the Chicken Littles are roosting now until their next inevitable appearance. As we lock these wet hens away for the duration our motto is this,

Laissez les bon temps rouler.

And as we pined for them, scanned the horizon for them, hoped and prayed for them, never ceasing to believe in them, so shall we enjoy with adolescent zest and gratitude every such day that follows.

Our song for such high glee is none other than Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 release… a defiant anthem, not merely a tune but a guillotine for the bad times, a declaration of our grit and where we are going; “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow”, a tune about perseverance, a soaring statement about who we are… and why we are here today triumphant, grateful, the stronger for having surmounted every imp in Pandora’s box, for this is what we live for…..success, pure, simple, thrilling, sweeter than any posy ever grown.

There’s only one thing worse than losing… and that’s winning.

This is also, of course, the most perilous place for you to be, for it is undoubtedly true that there is only one thing worse than the arduous vicissitudes of failure… and that is high-flying success. And so, dear friend, with the incipience and advent of the next bout of Good New Days we must well and truly take note and prepare for the best… for it can distract, deter, discombobulate, and after so much patience and endurance that would never do.

Success does not dribble, it surges… and this is the problem.

There is nothing like turbulent times, the times that test our resolve, to draw us together, one for all, all for one. It is one of our most admirable human characteristics, that we work together, to stand or fall together. Talk to any British person of World War II vintage and they will, without an instant’s delay, tell you about, and proudly too, what life was like during the great Blitz of London… and words pour out — of unity, community, togetherness, of teamwork and selflessness. They treasure such moments, as you should, for they show us what we are capable of when the going gets rough, demanding, anxious and daunting.

But when the bad times lift and morph from present unease and concern to mere history, no more alarming, this is when the Bitch-Goddess Success delights in turning the tables upon our grand expectations. For the unity, coherence, and grit of bad days begins to give way to chaos, confusion, and selfishness, and so you must be careful, thoughtful, prepared to skillfully negotiate the hot potato of success. Here are some recommendations for doing so:

1) Your success did not come about just by you alone. Many people helped you. Now is the time to recognize their contribution and to thank them. You got through the bad times, ready to tend and fructify the good times relying on many others; now is the time to show your decency and integrity by saying so and showing your gratitude in ways meaningful to those who eased your way.

2) Launch a debt reduction project. After your daring, electrifying escape from the bad times, the natural inclination will be to let ‘er rip, plunking down coin of the realm to acquire long- deferred luxuries. In a word, DON’T.

The first thing to do is take a long, cool, dispassionate look at your financial position with particular reference to the debt you are carrying. While the tendency once the yoke is off is to spend, spend, spend your reality must be focused on aggressive debt reduction, not more debt “justified” by the newly minted good times.

3) Review your life and circumstances. What of your infrastructure needs to be reviewed, restored, replaced to ensure that your personal and business environments are safe, secure, in tiptop shape? Remember, those roofing repairs you put off until “better times”‘? They should now at the top of your list. This is what is important… not to binge or make up for lost time.

4) Use cheap money. As I write, the cost of borrowing money is just about 3 percent. By historical standards this is dirt cheap. Take advantage of this situation; it is mutable, short- lived and tailor-made for the upwardly mobile. Use such money to dramatically improve your asset position, for as every Yuppie knows, he who has the most toys, wins; with this caveat: the toys you acquire must have the likelihood of increasing your wealth, not siphoning much needed capital to sustain your too expensive, too indulgent personal foibles.

5) Buy equities. For the last several years, Wall Street and all the other great exchanges of the world have been on sale, offering often mind boggling price discounts. This sale is now in the early stages of winding up. Wait no longer to benefit. If you buy quality at discount prices, you quite simply cannot lose, for all that the markets are very various, as always.

6) Start a meaningful investment program at once. Each person, all families need a challenging investment program. Why? Because you’re growing older and will not relish being old without the comfort and security of revenue from your investments. Of course you should have started earlier; of course you shouldn’t have liquidated such investments during the Great Recession. But all that is water under the bridge. Make it a point to start investing now; investing at least 10% of your gross salary. Tomorrow will come; only by such means will it be the tomorrow you desire and have always dreamed of.

“Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.”

Now it’s time for my final piece of advice for today: dance! You’ve been a wall flower at the ball long enough. Now it’s time to dust off your iconic moves and dazzle. To begin, go to any search engine and capture the Fleetwood Mac song. Then move that body and sing along to a recipe for success that never fails:

“Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow Don’t stop, it’ll soon be here It’ll be better than before Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone.”

Amen.

About the Author

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First snow comes to Cambridge, February 12, 2012, a story of life’s unpredictable savor and joys.

Linda Elze — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:51:18 +0000

Come see us live: http://bigdogmoneymaker.com/3a0

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author’s program note. The sound was unmistakable. It was, quite literally, that harsh, grating noise made when steel of the most tenacious kind scrapes against unyielding concrete; that immutable thing that insists (to the outrage of your ears) it is here today, here tomorrow, here forever.

And I cringed, snug abed as I was… for though the drivers of these inexorable machines would like the shower of municipal largesse that snow rains upon them every single day; these (usually) high school drop-outs and bumptious get such benefaction only when the snow flies. Miserable for the rest of us, this is their happiest time, for inclemency and beautiful large flakes by the million line their capacious pockets and always open palms. Thus are they always johnny on the spot to see this snow, consider the profits in this snow, remove this snow… as loudly as possible and, whenever possible, especially at the moment you grasped slumber.

So does snow, the most silent thing on Earth, make its presence known by one of the most loud, stentorian and coarse manifestations… and that should have been your first indication that this was no simple story… quite the reverse… for life’s first lesson (and hard learned by most, too) is that things are not always what they seem… something too many romantic young things have learned to their peril too late…

“Let it snow…” some idiot’s fancy.

For this tale of our times, a tale you like me might have often experienced in life without a moment’s thoughtful consideration, I have selected an insinuating 1945 tune entitled “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow,” lyrics by Sammy Cahn, composed by Jule Steyne and sung by one of the most unctuous men ever conceived, Dean Martin. It is a tune that no sensible person likes and which proves yet again (if necessary) that misinformation set to a bouncy tune gets an award… not its just come-uppance. (Go to any search engine, find it, and let its lilt uplift you.)

My Intention.

When I heard the first unmistakable sounds of the snow removal equipment and the loud commands, imprecations and expletives most assuredly not deleted, I knew my fate… for all that it was dark outside and my penthouse walls were gelid to the touch and its windows emblazoned with the rich munificence of frost expertly etched ….. a clear command I needed to bundle up and go out. You see, it’s my self-imposed and onerous duty to report on my neighborhood and its denizens whenever something of note is occurring. And there can be no doubt that the first snow of the new year is such an event… despite the fact it causes me personal misery of the most acute kind to venture out, the better to tell you what is happening and why it is significant. But as the recognized and much heralded Sage of Cambridge, I know my duty and not even the tundra of Siberia will keep me from it… though I am paid out in nothing more than chilblain and catarrh.

It was melting, melting, melting.

I selected this heading for one reason and one reason only: to brag that I was once kissed by The Wicked Witch of the West, the character much better known than the actress who played her in the iconic American film released in 1939, “The Wizard of Oz.” Her name was Margaret Hamilton, and when I was a student at Harvard I gave a tea-party for her one day and, of course, gave myself the best seat on the couch thereby enabling me to rub elbows with a legend.

She, Miss Hamilton I called her, was a sweetie-pie, my highest compliment. I bought her, from my own money too, an exuberant, grand, frilly box of Valentine’s Day chocolates, of the Russell Stover general store variety. She cooed the expected words “For me?” and graced me with a demure, enchanting smile. Then she kissed me and since I was a boy who had been kissed often enough to know, I conceived it was a Real Kiss, earnestly meant. But she was a great actress, mistress of every role; thus I shall never know… but wonder what would have happened had I been as ardent as she… But I digress…

… I simply wanted you to know that the kiss (and the look, mind) she gave me was sufficiently heated to cause the situation which made her famous, the situation where (doused with common water) she melted at the feet of ruby-slippered Dorothy. Perhaps had I melted as well and thoroughly when Miss Hamilton kissed me life might have taken a very different turn…

But, again, I digress, for what I should be telling you pertains to melting snow, not paths not taken or unrecognized (for all they were clear and apparent, had you the wit to see).

The snow outside my door, the snow for which I was well and truly bundled up, the snow that had caused such high jubilation and exuberance amongst Cambridge’s well-heeled proletariat was already melting away, the storm passed on, a wimpish thing to be disdained and dismissed, of no account or significance whatsoever. But here, precipitate in my too swift deductions and conclusions, I was most assuredly wrong… for this storm, puny though it may have been, had the power, ample, too, to change my life… and so it did….

Two incidents, one hard upon the heels of another.

I returned home not as cold as I thought I would be, not as impressed at Nature and Nature’s wallop as I expected to be and thought my due for my preparations before going out… a trifle irked at the littleness I had encountered where I wanted sturm und drang, grandeur, the unspeakable eloquence… you get the picture. But then the phone rang…. and a voice I hadn’t heard for ages… was there on the line, in need, happy to overlook the harsh words which had once, I cannot quite remember when, caused estrangement.

He had gotten off the train at Harvard Square, climbing the steps towards the Church Street exit and had fallen hard down several of them. No, he didn’t think anything broken, but could he come for some coffee and solace… could he come, he really meant, for forgiveness and peace-making?

So the snow, melted into icy peril on steps trod by thousands, had delivered… an unexpected opportunity to mend a fence, a fence that never should have been broken in the first place, much less broken for so long.

And this should have been incident enough for one day, one storm, one sage. But it wasn’t… for puny storms aim to prove a puissance and cool connivance mere bulk cannot deliver.

Thus, moments after my now resurrected friend was absolved de facto and with gladness, a car skidded upon the picayune ice and crashed into an unconsidered telephone pole of great significance, removing my telephone service for one day and still unresolved into two. The message that now appears when you call my number says the call cannot be put through, that I am in fact marooned inside my world, the sinews of my life so reduced. Thus this thought:

Suppose my regained friend had taken a later subway to Harvard… and suppose his hard fall had occurred an hour or two later, after my phones went silent; that he had called, but received no answer. What then? Do you think he, hobbling off, would have tried his impulse later, or simply said “Que sera, sera.” I shall never know… and that’s why life is so interesting, its uncertainties and unpredictabilities its very essence; our detailed and carefully wrought plans so often so insignificant and overpowered beside them.

About the Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Republished with author’s permission by Robert or Linda Elze http://CyberWealthZone.comhttp://CyberWealthZone.com”>http://CyberWealthZone.com>. Check out Ruthless Income -> http://www.CyberWealthZone.com/?rd=sm39Vxah

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The weakest link. PFC Bradley Manning, his court-martial, the biggest leak ofclassified information in US history. Was anyone paying attention?

Linda Elze — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 18:57:25 +0000

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by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

I have been thinking a lot lately about Eddie Slovik. He was a private in the US Army during World War II and had the unsavory distinction to be the only soldier of the Great Republic to be court-martialled and executed for desertion since the American Civil War.

Eddie Slovik was the kind of guy it was very easy to ignore, unless you were one of the householders in the Detroit, Michigan area; then, you needed to be alert, because he was probably burgling your house or stealing your car. He was a man whose life was going nowhere until he met and in November 1942 married a good woman he adored named Antoinette Wisniewski. Shortly thereafter he was drafted for service but his criminal record made him classified as unfit for duty in the US military… later, as the nation pushed for victory and needed every man, he was re-classified as fit for duty… and sent to France, where he discovered fear, desertion, execration, execution — by no means the only man who deserted… but the only man who paid the supreme price for doing so.

But consider this, Eddie Slovik never killed a man, never hurt a man, never took the necessary secrets of the Great Republic and gave them to our sworn enemies. No, Eddie Slovik never did any of these things… yet he was executed, his American born and bred body riddled with American bullets, his blood dappling the snows of newly liberated France where the crucial question resonates to this day and beyond: did we overcharge Pfc Eddie Slovik for a sin that was venial, not cardinal, an incident that hurt him, but no one else?

Another PFC, a different kind of war.

Now meet another Private First Class – Bradley Manning, young like Slovik, just 24 years old. A native of main street Crescent, Oklahoma…slight, fey, a malevolent Peter Pan who came to work day after day, wearing the insignia of the Great Republic, wearing her proud uniform, whose sworn duty was preserving, maintaining, defending, advancing America’s interests… and yet every hour of every day engaged in systematic betrayal, disloyalty, treason … the man who allegedly alone accessed over 700,000 sensitive, classified, ultra-private documents… which he then released to foes who wish us ill in all climes and places.

And yet these foes did not seek out PFC Manning. PFC Manning contacted them on his own volition… And so we come to know him…

sworn to defend the nation and all his fellow citizens, selected treason as his code; reckoning that the betrayal of his nation was more important than defending his nation.

educated himself in treason. He was his own tutor of hate, disdain, and disloyalty to America.

having discovered the means of accessing sensitive data he had no right to peruse, much less disburse, gathered these data in epochal proportions. He didn’t want just to hurt America… he wanted to humiliate her, harming as many of his fellow citizens as he could.

took hundreds of thousands of these sensitive documents, as many as 700,000 of these documents, and offered them to WikiLeaks, an organization which breaks every law to release every sensitive document it can; disclosure always trumping in their self-sanctified minds all sense, sensitivity, confidentiality, privacy; all things we value and rely upon.

released documents which had severe implications for our emissaries, agents, representatives and all their families. The very lives of America’s people at home and abroad were jeopardized — are jeopardized now — because of one man’s adamant, unyielding belief that America needed chastisement…. and that that chastisement was suitable and particular work and high mission for PFC Manning, self-appointed to do what the nation would regard as heinous, inexplicable, despicable.

And so PFC Manning became a man of infamy doing a thing of disgust.

Meet Bradley Manning, a man with a dark mission.

Bradley E. Manning was born innocent on December 17, 1987. He was born an American, son of a Navy man… every prize of the Great Republic his to win. What then caused his troubled journey? Did it start with his diminutive stature, just 5 feet 2 inches, 105 pounds? Was it his adamant disavowal of God and religion? Was it a father’s disdain of his effeminate son’s homosexual preferences, the source of argument, fights, an unloving home for a son who deserved more than disdain, threats, physical violence instead of understanding and a loving home?

If there was treason in this boy then, the boy who loved the saxophone, science, and computer games and was firm in his often controversial opinions but could make his case without rancor and with all civility; if there was treason here, it was seen by none of the Sooners who were his classmates, friends, and neighbors, the people who see nothing at the time but talk of strange eyes and odd habits years later. Besides, no one wants to think that the quiet, unobtrusive loner at the back of the classroom is a traitor and menace to the Great Republic.

Yet America took a body blow from this forgettable, average, hardly observed young man, voluminous in his discoveries, unrelenting in his high crimes and misdemeanors.

Arrested in Iraq, May, 2010.

In October, 2009 Manning was assigned to a unit of the 10th Mountain Division, based near Baghdad. There he had regular access to the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet). It was used by the United States government to transmit classified information. He was arrested for hubris, namely by bragging to computer hacker Adrian Lamo about what he was doing. Lamo reported to the FBI that Manning had told him during online chats what he had done, what he was doing, and who got the data he downloaded to his personal computer. Amongst these data there were 250,000 diplomatic cables of first-rate significance, footage of a July 2007 Baghdad airstrike and footage of a May 2009 Granai airstrike in Afghanistan.

The FBI acted promptly and so Bradley Manning’s need to be perceived as the big guy, the important guy, the coolest of spooks, brought him down, his pride his undoing, in the proper manner of every Greek play… for if one thing is clear in this sordid matter, it is this: that Bradley Manning, product of divorced parents, one-time resident of his pick-up truck, the victim of sexual obloquy, an employee who found the computer job he loved, only to be let go after four months… if one thing is clear, it’s that Manning is just like all of us… a man buffeted by hard times and out-of-control circumstances… a man without self-respect who needed to brag and was brought down by his own foolishness and indiscretion; a man who in this gnawing vortex lost his way… a victim, to be sure, but a victim with the means to hurt us all. And so we say, “There but for the grace of God…”

But PFC Manning, despite every painful incident of his short life, despite his undeniable pains, despite every bad thing that happened to him was still a Child of God, still had the benefit of God’s boundless grace. He just didn’t get that point, and even now as he faces the majestic wrath and stern protocols of military justice he probably still doesn’t grasp this essential matter… And yet, even in extremis the perpetrator of this great evil, even now God’s grace abides for Bradley Manning, arch traitor, all unknowing about God, His Ways, and the Great Republic, God’s great enterprise.

Amazing Grace.

Your court-martial is near at hand. Tell all, Bradley Manning, reserve nothing and throw yourself upon the merciful people of this forgiving nation… the people who are horrified by what you have done and all the terrible things which could yet come from your terrible indiscretions… people who still have mercy for you and concern, although you gave none of these to us. Because of that mercy you will not receive a bullet in the heart, like Eddie Slovik, though life incarceration is possible. But even there you will still have life, for the prosecutor will not ask for your extinction.

And, thus, where there is life, there abides hope and God’s eternal grace, even for a wretch like you…

Author’s program note. Go now to any search engine; find your favorite rendition of “Amazing Grace.” We all know the tune; this time listen to the words… and ponder them.

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Indiana governor Mitch Daniels February 1, 2012 signs first right-to-worklaw in over 10 years… the key is that it’s for a crucial state in the ‘rust belt’.

Linda Elze — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 20:23:48 +0000

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by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author’s program note. When I was a little whippersnapper 60 years ago and more, my young father used to take me on his knee, his only very occasionally used guitar in hand and sing me a song that I hadn’t thought of in all these years. It’s the kind of childhood memory that comes at you when you’re least expecting, bittersweet, tugging at your heart. Now I just cannot get it out of my mind…

The song is the “Wabash Cannonball” originally written in 1882 as “The Great Rock Island Route”, a happy-go-lucky number credited to one J.A. Roff. In 1904 William Kindt rewrote the lyrics, changing the name of the train to the “Wabash Cannonball”.

It’s a pip of a tune with a chorus that makes you glad to be alive…

“Now listen to the jingle, and the rumble, and the roar, As she dashes thro’ the woodland, and speeds along the shore, See the mighty rushing engine, hear her merry bell ring out, As they speed along in safety, on the ‘Wabash Cannonball’.”

… named after the great American main street town of….. Wabash, Indiana, its claim to fame the fact that in 1880 it became the first electrically lighted city on Earth. It is the center of the center state of America, the state that has just tossed a stink bomb into the politics of the Great Republic with its brand-new right-to-work law.

Get into the spirit of this article by going to any search engine, finding one of the many excellent versions; (I prefer the one by Johnny Cash)…. then let ‘er rip…. because you’re riding the rails through the great American heartland, once so prosperous, the pride of the nation, now blighted in so many disheartening ways.

Born in 1947.

In the year of our Lord 1947, at least two significant things occurred: I was born… and the Congress of the Great Republic resoundingly overrode the adamant veto of President Harry S. Truman on a matter of resolute importance to unions. The result was the Taft-Hartley Act, a haymaker by the Republican Party that punched a gaping hole in the closed union shop, thereby providing the U.S. labor movement with an abiding grievance and red-meat for a million stump speeches and union halls. Here’s what Taft-Hartley did to the prevailing National Labor Relations Act.

NLRA dictated that all employees at unionized workplaces must be members of the union as a condition of employment. It turned employee coercion into union power… and as such became a critical component of what transformed the disorganized, scattered Democratic Party into the majority party that ruled the Great Republic under Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman for 20 years, with still major influence today.

The politics of the matter went like this: To wed the millions of laboring people to his governing coalition, Roosevelt cut a series of deals with union leaders, including giving them the right of introducing the closed shop, wherein every worker — whatever their personal views and politics — was forced to join the union… and finance it with their dues.

This gave the unions raw political power and Democrats a leg-up for local, state, and federal elections where this muscle delivered victory after victory. But it also created an outraged, seething menace from people who didn’t like Roosevelt (and despised Truman)… patriots who vociferously demanded to know how such coercion, the stuff of Red revolution and godless Communism, could possibly be justified in the Land of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln.

One side said that employee coercion, fueling union power, brought good jobs and the realization of the American dream… the other demanded liberty and unfettered freedom of choice. Both arguments had valid points… which made the resulting battle bloody, bitter, protracted and internecine, a bona fide civil war… which Indiana has now re-opened, to the outrage of the unions…

The matter was further complicated because of the unconcealed contempt the leaders of each side felt for their opponents, dictated by the unyielding, abiding, fathomless scorn and disdain of Senator Robert Taft (R-Ohio) (1889-1953) for President Truman. “To err is Truman,” Mrs. Taft said… The words Senator Taft used are unprintable. No quarter asked for, no quarter given by anyone, war to the death.

Taft-Hartley became the crucial weapon in that war.

Taft-Hartley outlawed the closed shop. The union shop rule, which required all new employees to join the union after a minimum period of time, is also illegal. As such, it is illegal for any employer to force an employee to join a union.

Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act goes further and authorizes individual states (but not local governments such as cities and counties) to outlaw union (as well as so-called agency) shops. Under the open shop rule, an employee cannot be compelled to join or pay the equivalent of dues to a union, nor can the employee be fired if he joins the union. In other words, the employee has the right to work, regardless of whether or not he is a member or financial contributor to such a union.

22 states ban “forced unionism”… 27 states and the District of Columbia do not.

Proponents of right-to-work laws, based on freedom of association, went to work with a will signing up one state after another. The states they persuaded reads like the playbook of the Republican Party, including Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming. There the great roll call of right-to-work states stopped, until now… with the adhesion of Indiana.

Why did Indiana act now… and why does it matter?

The signature tune of the people they call Hoosiers is “Back Home Again In Indiana” (1917) … and there’s nothing more domestic, more American, more representative of the Great Republic, than these sane, decent, responsible folk. They are the very salt of the Earth, the bedrock of who we are and what we believe in. And these folks in recent years have watched as the land — and lifestyle they love — diminish, as one job after another ends, so many shipped overseas, all gone forever. And as the jobs left, their outrage and despair waxed.

To sustain the people, to maintain the land, there must be jobs… and so the people demanded jobs… seeing the bloated unions no longer as job providers but as menaces to their revival and reconstruction. Their representatives (in the persons of the majority Republican Party in the legislature) heard this plea… and essentially said by their actions that Indiana, to compete again and prosper again, must be prepared to face economic facts, no matter how unpleasant. Thus, unions must give back, divest, rethink… instead of merely waving placards, opposing this, blocking that, fulminating, never solving. For the issue here is and always will be the welfare of the people, not merely the welfare of the unions.

Thus the unions face the growing disbelief in towns like Wabash that they are not up to the job at hand, the job of making Indiana, a key industrial state, livable again. And so as the unions argue against their fate in Indiana, the “Wabash Cannonball” surges anew… to Ohio, Michigan, Illinois… an engine of change for a nation that needs it, the ghost of Senator Robert Taft riding in triumph.

“Oh, the Eastern states are dandy, so the Western people say Chicago, Rock Island, St. Louis by the way To the lakes of Minnesota where the rippling waters fall No changes to be taken on the Wabash Cannonball.” All aboard…

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I accuse you of doing everything you can to sabotage your onlinesuccess…. and what you must do — at once — to change that and profit.

Linda Elze — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:05:17 +0000

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by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author’s program note. In 1894 Captain Alfred Dreyfus, artillery captain for the General Staff of France, was charged with treason and espionage… thereby inaugurating one of the most outrageous and ignoble events in the entire history of France.

It was a story of lies… but not by Dreyfus.

It was the story of evidence made up… evidence tampered with… evidence destroyed… but not by Dreyfus.

It was the story of grave injustice… deliberately done and with malice… but not by Dreyfus.

It was the story of a man attacked, mauled, censored, imprisoned, humiliated, villified because of his religion… but not by Dreyfus.

And above all it is the story of how one man with brilliant, slashing language changed the entire debate… securing at long last freedom, restitution and justice for Dreyfus.

This man was celebrated novelist Emile Zola who took just two words and transformed them into the most powerful weapon on earth… two words that galvanized a nation, securing the attention and support of the good people of France who, because of Zola, were outraged by the terrible and enduring blot on the honor of France… and who joined their voices to his in the service of truth.

J’accuse!

These are the words — I accuse — which by making the outrages clear — began the healing process that saved France from ignominy and redeemed her. Now I intend to use the great model created by Zola and to save you from business ignominy… to redeem you… and enable you to profit online… for you have been doing everything possible to fail… and little or nothing to succeed.

To help you on your way I have selected the soaring 1937 score Max Steiner wrote for the Best Picture of the Year; “The Life of Emile Zola” starring Paul Muni. Such grand music must enable success… so go to any search engine now and play it. We are ready to begin the transforming process that starts with “I accuse…” and ends with “I salute…”, wafted on our way by the grandeur of Steiner’s composition.

I accuse you of not understanding what business is… of understanding that business is now and always will be about two things and two things only: the generation of prospect leads… and following up with each and every one of these leads to make offers and close business.

I accuse you of engaging in endless trivia every day, focusing on anything and everything instead of generating prospects… and calling these prospects, to work with them and begin the development of the business relationships necessary to secure success.

I accuse you of trying to run a business solely by email… trying that is to motivate people to buy without doing the most important thing to profit: picking up the phone, calling prospects, engaging prospects, building relations with prospects.

I accuse you of sloth, laziness, of sitting around and waiting for success, instead of doing what is necessary — everything that’s necessary — to build the business you say you want… but for which there is absolutely no evidence that you have ever done on its behalf any meaningful thing at all.

I accuse you of the sin of inertia… of waiting, waiting, waiting, for, what?, a sign from Heaven, an email from God? I accuse you of not knowing what needs to be done, of not educating yourself so that you know how to do it, and not doing the least thing to secure your success.

I accuse you of spending more time gossiping on the phone with people who cannot make you richer (your best friend, your bowling buddies, the chick you met bar hopping last week) instead of using the phone to do what it does so well… connecting with the people who can buy from you, buy now, and make you money every single day.

I accuse you of trying to build your online business alone, all by yourself, when all the evidence says this is not possible, is absolutely impossible, because there is too much to do…too many things to master… and insufficient time to learn them, then do them. You need a team… and you need it at once.

I accuse you of the sin of talking about success far more than doing the necessary deeds and actions that ensure success. You have become, thereby, a specialist in the endless rhetoric and bombastic language of success, while achieving nothing. It is time, therefore, past time, to cease and censure the flatulent babble and get on with the doing.

I accuse you of not staying at your post every day until you have achieved the financial objective you have set for yourself for this day, focusing, persisting until you have achieved this goal… every penny of this goal.

I accuse you of coddling yourself, of a too prompt tendency to forgive your inadequacies, overlook the negatives, whitewash your poor performances, rationalize your failings, pooh pooh each and every peccadillo, extol too greatly minor triumphs instead of pushing on to make the insignificant significant.

The words used by Zola to end his famous declamation to French president Felix Faure, January 13, 1898:

“I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered too much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul.”

I couldn’t say it better myself, so won’t try. Zola’s letter changed the world… my hope is that this changes yours.

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It’s time to recognize those who have failed. It may be the very best way to get them to succeed. An audacious idea.

Linda Elze — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:00:21 +0000

Come see us live: http://bigdogmoneymaker.com/3a0

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author’s program note. In 1962 one of the grandest American musicals hit the cinemas of the Great Republic. It was Meredith Wilson’s “The Music Man”… and we got up and marched as we heard its effervescent score. No high fallutin’ Eye-talian music you had to scratch your head about, understanding hardly a word.

No, this was Iowa music, Kansas music, music every last citizen of Tennessee and Oklahoma could understand, every last word. As for the star, insinuating Robert Preston; we all knew someone like him… scamp, con man, plausible trickster redeemed by the love of a good woman.

Oh, yes, “The Music Man” was something we could get our teeth into… which is why, a mere lad, I was set the onerous task of mastering its “76 Trombones” on the piano; for the next school recital. Anyone but a doting mother and her unctuous piano teacher, who had wife and children (and, I always thought, a bit of a drinking problem) to support would have looked at me on that concrete piano bench (or so it seemed) and blurted out the first words that came to mind: “He stinks!” But those words were not heard until…

… the day of the school recital.

Kids good got up and did their bit… that didn’t take so long, since there weren’t so many of them… and it was obvious which ones had worked hard and deserved the top prizes.

Then kids, carefully turned out in best bib and tucker, got up and did their mediocre bit. A large chunk of my classmates found themselves in this category; having done some work, but not enough to reap the blue ribbons that said “First Prize”. They got the red ribbons… just good enough to assuage anxious parents.

Finally, there were the kids who had to be pushed — umbrella ferule in the small of their back — to get up and recite… or dance… or play an uncooperative instrument. And I — and my ragged rendition of “76 Trombones” — was in this group… stinkers all. But awarded notwithstanding an Honorable Mention and a few seconds of rousing, possibly even sincere applause, lead by mothers who would never admit — much less on school recital day — their little Hannah, Billie and Mike were anything other than paragons; “most likely to succeed” tattooed on their foreheads.

Privately, however, even some of the mothers gave vent to the truth; being Midwestern they just couldn’t help themselves…. “They stink!” I heard them say… and then “Jeffrey stinks!”

And so truth came to River City. Truth, embarrassment, red-faced humiliation… which could not be assuaged by any white ribbon that said Honorable Mention. It all poured out now; how I was horrid… tone deaf… rhythm challenged… note oblivious… absolutely hopeless…. hot words that caused my little brother (who had a lifetime of Jeffrey plaudits to work through) to dance with glee… “Ol’ Jeffrey stinks.” On this day of days he just couldn’t say it enough and knew a profound happiness long deferred. He talks about it to this very day.

I was 15, I was humiliated, I was determined this would not be the end of the story… …. and that’s why I won the next recital prize fair and square… because I was resolved, and fiercely too, that “Jeffrey stinks” would not be the last word on this subject…

… In other words, from abashment and humiliation came triumph and reward. So it worked for me on the grave matter of the school piano recital and so it is about to work for you in your business. For I am about to urge that all your business failures, slothful habits, egregious errors, failure to achieve significant results; that all of these, things which have placed you well and truly amongst the stinkers… be brought out… and publicized to the world; thereby ensuring that your humiliation be thorough and detailed…

Why?

So that you will do everything needful, yes move heaven and earth, to ensure you are never, ever in that shocking place again, your dunce cap retired, your name no more ridiculed but revered, honored and extolled, which is the only way it should be.

Consider how you did “business” yesterday, the day before, the day before that…

Have you done the necessary to profit? Did you get up early to handle all aspects of your prospect-generating machine? Did you generate prospects? Follow up (and especially telephone) prospects? Did you make offers, improve offers, and improve these offers again until you had a deal and the money that accompanies it? If so, you made money… and have every right to be happy with yourself… for you are a true and faithful business impresario and you deserve every penny and every compliment you got.

You did get that profit and those compliments, didn’t you? Well, didn’t you? If not, it’s time for an alternative approach to the business of helping you succeed in business. It’s time for the motivating Failure Awards, a kick in the pants like no other.

Imagine the following scenario. You wake up tomorrow, go to your website, and see emblazoned across it these words

“You have just been dishonored with the

BIG-TIME LOSER OF THE DAY PRIZE.

Trustees of the foundation have selected you because you didn’t do one darn thing yesterday, absolutely nothing, to make money, generate leads, work with leads, make offers, close deals and build your business.

Yep, you are on the bottom of the heap, no money in the till and none expected or possible, until you change the way you do ‘business’ so that you can profit from it.

Then you see a picture of yourself festooned with mulish ears… with a caption that says simply

LOSER OF THE DAY… (then the date).”

Your reaction?

How will you feel when you see this? I’ll tell you, you’ll fly into an unparalleled rage… condemning everyone… everyone, that is, except the one person whose lack of constructive endeavors got you there in the first place: that would be you!

Your lack of effort got you this (boobie) prize. It’s only your constructive efforts that can get you out.

But will you make them?

In my humble opinion you will do so faster, with more energy and determination if you publish the unpalatable truth, shining full, unyielding light on the success you didn’t get, letting the world see your inadequacies. You will hate this situation and rightly so, for being amongst such a passel of losers is humiliating indeed.

That’s why you should award yourself this egregious and sick-making award… and spend the rest of this day and every day doing what is necessary to expunge it and reap the substantial benefits which you’ll get when you do.

Now go to any search engine. Play “76 trombones” and get in the mood for success, joy, and many happy returns of the day, a day where failure is just a word in the dictionary.

About the Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Services include home business training, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting, hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online Home Business Training program by getting a free Associate Membership today. Republished with author’s permission by Robert or Linda Elze http://CyberWealthZone.comhttp://CyberWealthZone.com”>http://CyberWealthZone.com>. Check out Commission Breakthrough -> http://www.CyberWealthZone.com/?rd=ez6scoCb

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Spotlight on Mark Zuckerberg, hacker, Harvard drop-out, with a cute smile and a net worth already over 28 billion dollars. What’s not to like?

Linda Elze — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 20:48:36 +0000

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by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author’s program note. I doubt that the subject of today’s article is familiar with the celebrated English novelist E.M. Forster, but he ought to be. Foster’s famous aphorism “Only connect” is the basis for what is already one of the greatest fortunes in the history of the world. Only connect… and the world is your oyster, all the oysters and all the pearls within them, too.

For what is the secret to the vast Zuckerberg fortune but an understanding that people need people, crave connection with them, need togetherness and a place to hang out. And so today I have selected as the incidental music for this article, the song made famous by Barbra Streisand (1964), “People”, composed by Jule Styne; lyrics by Bob Merrill.

Go now to any search engine and listen to that soaring Streisand sound. Forster got it… Streisand got it… and now Zuckerberg has enabled everyone in the world to get it, for no one more than he, in the entire history of mankind, has connected more people than he has, as effortlessly as he has. And that is both good and not good… as we shall see.

Meet Mark Zuckerberg.

Whether you are familiar with Mark Zuckerberg depends to a considerable extent on your age and Internet savvy. The greater the one, the less the other, the more this soon to be iconic name will be unknown… and that, of course, means you’re the oldest of fogies… and must instantly make amends. I intend to make that very easy for you.

Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984 in a “Leave It to Beaver” town with the quintessential name of Dobbs Ferry, New York. His life consisted of the very best and most appealing of what suburban life in the Great Republic offers; his father a dentist, his mother (before the birth of her four children), a psychiatrist. His was a loving, close-knit family that valued the most important thing of all: education, and made sure Mark got the best.

He was a prodigy from his earliest days; spurred on by his parents, who supplied tutorial assistance for this gifted boy, who seemed to know from conception that computers were his destiny, as they were for the world. He was sent to one of the Great Republic’s most celebrated prep schools, Phillips Exeter Academy, where he captained the school’s fencing team. Then, like so many of his gifted classmates, he made the expected move to Harvard… There in his now famous dorm room, right across the street from where I am writing, he began the steps that would not only make him one of history’s wealthiest people… Croesus and Midas being pikers by comparison… but a social innovator of literally cosmic significance.

But all that is hindsight. At Harvard, Zuckerberg with his boyish grin that won’t quit, danced administrators a merry measure. Harvard is famous for dealing with exceptional students; they are there, after all, precisely because they are exceptional… and, as often, difficult… as they try the patience of lesser deans charged with riding genius with a deft hand… and a recognition that these students will in due course rule the Great Republic and many other nations, its businesses and nonprofit organizations of every kind, and one tech enterprise after another. Future success — and generous donations to Harvard — must never be forgotten… and never are.

Zuckerberg, hacking meister.

Harvard was, of course, familiar with young men of technical brilliance for whom The World’s Greatest University, though undoubtedly an honor, moved just too slow. Quick, can you say Bill Gates?

Zuckerberg was impatient with things others deemed appropriate and suitable for him; a common Harvard malady. He had a sense, growing clearer by the day, of what he wanted, and it wasn’t writing term papers on recherche’ subjects minutes before they were due.

No, he wanted a career on the Internet, something his young generation “got” which was (and to a considerable extent still is) terra incognita to its woefully clueless parents. Not to put too fine a point on it, he spent his time at Harvard inventing what every red- blooded boy wants: a simple, effortless, infallible way to pick up chicks (and their hunky male equivalents.) And there was the Internet, universal, revolutionary, exhilarating right before him…. How could this force be put to work assisting the massive energies of “the urge to merge,” the most powerful drive in the lives of everyone on this planet, especially adolescents pulsating with untrammeled desire…

Mark, a recognized “go-to” guy at Harvard for solving computer problems, first invented something scholastically useful: “CourseMatch” which gave students absolutely candid (and hence often abashing to instructors) reviews of all courses and professors. It was an instant, irreverent hit…

Then, he invented Facemash, which matched pictures of two students, asking teen-aged connoisseurs to deliver comments on the various merits (and demerits) of each. Needless to say, comments were often rude, crude, hurtful… and funny. Harvard stepped in and killed this enterprise as “inappropriate”. And chastised Zuckerberg, who, to get the personal information Facemash required, hacked into protected areas of Harvard’s sensitive and strictly private computer network. Its popularity was undoubted — 22,000 photo-views in its first four hours alone. But what was equally undoubted was Zuckerberg’s blatant disregard of privacy and misuse of other people’s data, issues which will always be part and parcel of his business life and fortune.

Facebook.

In February, 2004 Zuckerberg launched “Thefacebook” at www.thefacebook.com All hell broke loose amongst Zuckerberg’s classmates — Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra — who complained he was using their ideas. They sued, got a settlement and for the rest of their lives — no matter how successful they may well be – will always be overshadowed by Zuckerberg, and no matter how many bucks they settled for… It Will Never Be Enough. Just as the hapless owner of the domain name facebook.com probably says, getting a mere $200,000 for a name that is now worth untold riches. But it is in the nature of entrepreneurs to see things others don’t and reap an avalanche of benefits as a result… and, why not? For after all they shouldered all the risks which are real enough and daunting.

Young, richer than rich, the apple of Wall Street’s eye.

Mark Zuckerberg is now not merely a role model to every young techie just out of rompers, but a titan amongst plutocrats, whom he can now buy and sell. He is said to be quiet, unassuming, polite, never flaunting his fabulous wealth. But his may be the technical equivalent of “The Portrait of Dorian Gray.” We shall just have to wait and see.

As for Zuckerberg, he should be reminded of the aphorism by Satchel Paige, “Don’t look back. Something may be gaining on you.” Because you can bet on it, Zuckerberg and the wealth of Facebook with over 800,000,000 members, one-third of all the Internet’s ad revenues, and a mailing list worth billions and billions more, is now the target…

With the Initial Public Offering for Facebook stock coming very soon, this month, Zuckerberg has other things on his mind, like what’s a young man, just 27 years old, to do with 28 billion dollars, give or take a buck? There aren’t enough things on our tired old planet to purchase… as he’ll soon find out.

But while he’s wondering how many zeroes there are in all those billions, he should never stop focusing on how to improve his corporate baby, for he must tend its cornucopia of information with strict regards for privacy, and he has a bad record here. He must root out the millions of underaged users (13 being the threshold) and urge them, with all due respect, to do more with their lives then develop oversized posteriors clicking computer keys.

He must urge all members to tell the truth (to be barred if they do not), for the “Veritas” (truth) he learned at Harvard is in lamentable short supply online, with Facebook members amongst the worst offenders…. Finally, he must work assiduously with all law enforcement personnel for Facebook is a haven for every human vice and malefactor on Earth. Use some of your mind-boggling fortune to preserve what is best about Facebook where happy serendipity is a constant occurrence and must remain so.

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About the Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Services include home business training, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting, hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online Home Business Training program by getting a free Associate Membership today. Republished with author’s permission by Robert or Linda Elze http://CyberWealthZone.comhttp://CyberWealthZone.com”>http://CyberWealthZone.com>. Check out Commission Breakthrough -> http://www.CyberWealthZone.com/?rd=ez6scoCb

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