Pawlenty of Presidential Politics in the news!…or not!

up!  A GOP candidate did that yesterday! The media was elsewhere when Tim Pawlenty announced his candidacy  for the GOP presidential nomination. Is his running for President that much of a sleeper issue?  Does anybody care?
Columnist Dr. Jeffrey Lant, as usual, has some insight! Read and be entertained. Oh…and please comment when finished! Also read his article on New Hampshire.
It’s official. There is finally a real GOP candidate for 2012: ex-Governor Tim Pawlenty. Did anybody notice?
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Let me tell  you something about presidential candidates: the day they announce for the highest office in the land, they figure they’ll be the top story… their mug on the front page of America’s great dailies, their story featured on the three major commercial networks… and, of course, the object of endless glib commentary on Fox News and CNN.
For Pawlenty, the first announced Republican candidate, it just didn’t happen.
To be sure, there were really major stories being covered  March 21, 2011. Can you say nuclear reactors in Japan? That military dust-up in Libya? But even so, you would have thought Pawlenty would have gotten something.
And what’s got to irk Pawlenty good and plenty is that he has at least some credibility, not least that he was a moderately conservative governor (twice!) of a reliably Democratic state. When Pawlenty looks in the mirror, mirror on the wall… who’s the one he sees most of all? Can you say Ronald Reagan?
But Pawlenty got skunked… his Hollywood style introduction video ignored…  his message to America undelivered. What a revoltin’ development this is. If it had been Tim’s predecessor in the Minnesota governor’s office — colorful ex-wrestler and mouth man Jesse Ventura — you can bet there would have been coverage, lots of coverage.
Tim’s gotta wonder…
“Gentlemen prefer blondes” (1926),  Anita Loos said. In the sequel, she told us “But Gentlemen marry brunettes” (1928). Tim can only hope that he’s seen as the man America wants to marry. If only he can figure out how to get a date to strut his (good boy) stuff…
Minnesota… always the bridesmaid, never the bride.
Pity the state of Minnesota. It has had a respectable number of presidential candidates… but nary even a one-term president amongst them.
Harold Stassen was the hot stuff in 1938 when he was America’s youngest governor. He got a really bad case of Potomac Fever right away (1944) and never did get rid of it. He became a national  joke running for president over and over again, a (bad) joke. Minnesota cringed.
Then there was Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr., who actually got the Democrat’s nomination in 1968… and came within a hair of winning the presidency. “Tricky Dick” Nixon’s most important trick was getting the presidency that year. A profoundly decent man, Humphrey learned the hard way that loyalty (to Lyndon Johnson and his Vietnam policy) isn’t what gets you elected; hard headed realism is. Nixon had it… Hubert didn’t.
The next presidential candidate from Minnesota, Jimmy Carter’s vice president Walter Mondale had this fundamental decency and honesty, too, and it killed him.
Right out of the box Mondale, the very essence of the Minnesota boy next door, you know, the one who carries in your groceries with a smile and declines the tip, slaughtered himself. He told America the truth — that the deficit was unsustainable and there would have to be new taxes. (Deja vu all over again….)
I had to admire the man’s guts…  but you knew, right then, he was a goner. Ronald Reagan crushed him… and went on to GOP sainthood, the prototype of how to finesse the truth and become the Big Winner.
Get the picture?
Now there’s Timmy Pawlenty, and here’s what you need to know about him. His original career choice was… dentist.  I kid you not… and once you know it you can see him in white coat, dazzling smile, personable, confiding manner; the man who says “open wide”, “little pinch”, “spit here.”
He’d have been a cinch for president of the Minnesota Dental Association… and a lifetime achievement award from the Kiwanis.
What’s he bring to the table?
The problem with those Boy Scout types, the nice guys, is that nice is what they’ve got, all they’ve got. Timmie’s got likability all right but anything else?
His ascent.
He was born November 17, 1960, of German and Polish ancestry. You’ll hear about his teamster father; his mother who died of cancer when he was 15. And about his meat packing neighborhood with that all-pervasive dead meat smell. (Don’t mention that bit too much, Tim; it definitely puts people off. Ask not for whom the smell tolls… it tolls for thee.)
Born Roman Catholic, Pawlenty became an evangelical Christian… a fact he will leverage to the max, to get those all important conservative Republican and Tea Party supporters.  Powerful, they’ll demand  a hefty price.
Pawlenty’s political career shows what nice guys are capable of achieving. He was elected to the Egan, Minnesota city council in 1989, age 28. Elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 1992, he was re-elected five times and was chosen House Majority Leader when Republicans became the majority party in the State Legislature in 1998.
He won a hard fought victory in the Republican gubernatorial primary in 2002… then beat aggressive candidates from the Minnesota Democratic- Farmer-Labor Party and the Independence Party. He was re-elected in 2006. Impressive yes. Memorable no! And the high point of his rhetoric was: “We need to be a party of Sam’s Club, not just the country club.” Churchillian, he isn’t. And America likes its presidents to be masters of soaring speech.
Now the nicest guy aims at the highest office. Everyone will like him. Almost no one with think him the Great White Hope of America, and his poll numbers will always be anemic. Just as they are now.
You see Tim suffers from  Minnesotitis… the disease that takes boys next door and turns them into likable cogs in the wheel… always on the team, hardly ever the captain and never ever champion.  Leo Durocher summed up their plight in 1939 with his immortal line, “Nice guys finish last.” Tim Pawlenty is about to discover just how deflatingly true that is, as he joins the list of nice guys from Minnesota who couldn’t wow America.
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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.
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The third in a series of “Spring Is Here” articles

Dr. Lant must have something about spring. He’s been writing about it for a month now. Well….it is finally here and now summer looms.  I can’t wait to read his summer articles. One thing you can be sure of…they will be warm bright and sunny, just like the summer itself!  The first spring article about the crocus is here and the second about the Robins is at this link. After you read this one, go back and enjoy them.
Spring on!
Here is a beautiful spring song for accompaniment
On the vernal equinox and the advent of spring. All poets need apply.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
An event occurred just the other day which impacts each and every one of us on Spaceship Earth, but which hardly one of us knows anything about and mentions, if at all, quite casually. Yet so momentous is this occurrence,  coming with clock like precision, that our very existences depend upon it; nothing could be less prosaic, nothing more significant.
It is the vernal equinox…
Hereabouts in old New England, the vernal equinox took place at 7:21 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time, March 20, 2011. The spring we have all been awaiting, the spring that delivers the relief from the oppression of cold and damp and short dull days, the spring that blows soft winds, as so many unexpected kisses — and flowers, too –  that spring, right on the dot, arrived…
but we were heavy laden and may have been distracted when it came as our new reality.
Good citizens of this galaxy, give an ear now to this great event, which next occurs September 22, 2011 at 10:49 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time.
There is nothing that concerns you more than these great celestial movements, the unheard but momentous, unearthly music of the spheres, awesome, terrible,  the very stuff of grandeur, eternal, too.
Put aside mundane concerns and remember, for an  instant,  who you are,  a one-way passenger on the greatest of galleons, and wither it goes, you go.
What is an equinox anyway?
An equinox occurs twice a year, when the tilt of the Earth’s axis is inclined neither away from nor towards the Sun, the center of the Sun being in the same plane as the Earth’s equator. The term equinox can also be used in a broader sense, meaning the date when such a passage happens.
The name “equinox” is derived from the Latin “aequus” (equal) and “nox” (night) because around the equinox, the night and day have approximately equal length. Each are, then, about 12 hours long (with the actual time of equal day and night, in  the Northern Hemisphere, occurring a few days before the vernal equinox.) The Sun crosses the celestial equator going northward; it rises exactly due east and sets exactly due west.
But of all  this, we need remember only one thing: the vernal equinox, and the unending adjustments we make to the matter of human time, are all about light and the Sun at the center of our universe. Sol Invictus.
While the celestial movements, now this way, now that, are liable to confuse; we all know the crucial significance of our Sun; even the youngest amongst us looks up, involuntarily to admire, rejoice, and be glad of it. Our Sun, of an immensity and heat unimaginable, is brought nearer to us, and happily so, with the vernal equinox.
We are, all of us, Sun worshippers… for without it there would be nothing here for us, or of us either.
The vernal equinox brings that Sun closer.
Tinkerings with time.
Because of its unexcelled desirability, we humans have long been beguiled with the notion of how to get more of the Sun we crave. All ancient peoples, particularly the Greeks and Persians, the sophisticates of antiquity, gave serious attention to the matter. Sadly, much of their findings are lost; what remains from the works of Greek astronomer and mathematician Hipparchus (ca. 190- ca.120 BC)  and Aristarchus of Samos (around 280 BC) is suggestive of their expertise and insights. But we cannot tell more.
However, we do know about Benjamin Franklin, jack of all trades, master of all.
Franklin, with his unstoppable curiosity, wanted what only God could deliver: more time. It is easy to see why he desired it so: he, long before Edna St. Vincent Millay, burnt the candle at both ends, and not in purely scientific endeavors, either. At the Court of the Bourbons of France there were any number of elegantes who found Franklin, American minister, worthy of closer study. There was never enough time to gratify them all…
And so Franklin advanced the suggestion that became daylight savings. It was a quintessentially American proposal — bold, audacious, practical, based on science, not theology. Sadly, it is still not clear that it actually works… and each American state, every single one, is by law entitled to adopt it, or not. For God and His equinox time is simple, majestic; humans muddle the matter, to general grumbling and consternation.
But not poets…
All poets worth their salt weigh in with a will on one of their signature topics: the advent of light, of Sun, of spring. So excited are they by this topic, that they are severely prone to skip over the residue of winter that comes in the first spring days of March, concentrating on the riotous, unrestrained days of April and May. This is wrong, and Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933) rightly noted in “Fisherman’s Luck” (1899).
“The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is as great as a month.”
Having said  this, I confess I, too, want immediate egress from the grim, cold, muddy days of March spring.  I am impatient, like Walt Whitman:
“Give me the splendid silent sun   with all his beams full-dazzling.”
(1819-1892) From “Leaves of Grass” (1855; 1891-92.)
Patient through long, drear winters we can be but as we see relief near at hand, we can be patient no longer, for we know, we all know, what is coming and we cannot longer wait. Still liable to be tripped up by winter… we are adamant that the spring is coming.
“The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day When the sun is out and the wind is still, You’re one month on in the middle of May. But if you so much as dare to speak, A cloud comes over the sunlit arch, A wind comes off a frozen peak, And you’re two months back in the middle of March.”
Robert Frost (1874-1963) “Two Tramps in Mud Time” (1936).
But I cannot better end than by urging you to find in any search engine your favorite recording of Aaron Copeland’s “Appalachian Spring” (premiered 1944)…. It will seize you, uplift you, refresh you… and perfectly position you, in reverence,  as you walk into this springtime of your life, whatever your age or circumstances. We are all young again in springtime… such is the magic of the vernal equinox.
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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.
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‘Happy and glorious…’ Kate marries her Wills and every grumbler on earth has a field day. April 29, 2011.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
What can you say about the quintessential non-event that has over 2 billion viewers showing up to watch with unfeigned interest?
Plenty, if you’re Boston Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham, “God save me from the Queen,” she wrote on April 24, as if her pen were filled with acid reflux. “And especially from their Wedding of the Century.”
Then she goes on her hackneyed way, “I didn’t embrace citizenship of a country defined by its violent rejection of monarchy to turn around and be surrounded by all things royal.”
My, my Mother Abraham is in a pother today… and will, if she keeps on this way, be positively apoplectic by the time Kate becomes, at the touch of a golden ring symbolizing eternity, Her Royal Highness and the world oohs and aahs.
Ms. Abraham is Australian (she has to get that in in every column she writes), and Aussies can be amongst the rudest people on earth; too often priding themselves on just how cheeky and brash they can be. It’s a sign of their often blatant need to “grow up” and abandon their egregious manners for better ones. But Abraham just cannot let go…
“Come Friday, the birthplace of the revolution will be lousy with cucumber sandwiches, Pimm’s Cups and jelly donuts shaped like hearts (Et tu Dunkin D?)”
Why does the lawful marriage of one young man of striking good looks, a mega-watt smile, good posture and average intelligence to one young woman of intelligence, undeniable beauty, a coal miner’s grand daughter who once denied him and broke off their thing, irritate so many… turning otherwise sensible folks into grumps and bores on the subject?
Such people tumble over themselves to recite the reasons for their loud lamentations and hostilities.
* The day for a monarchy has, they assure us, passed… down with the Windsors and every other crowned entity on earth.
* No one should be so privileged as the Windsors are and their ilk. It’s time for them to get with the republican agenda.
* America, as Yvonne Abraham has naggingly reminded, went to war, bloody, long, vicious, to get rid of the very people the wedding glorifies.
* The monarchy is a symbol of all that’s wrong with the world… being at once elitist, privileged, coddled, protected, immune from the realities of life from which we should all be suffering, prince or pizza maker.
Let’s examine these remarks. Is there anything here beyond unsubstantiated opinion, bias, and the need to mouth off?
First and foremost: this is above all else the celebration of a fundamental rite, marriage, the selection for life of one smitten by another, hopefully equally smitten, or even more. A marriage celebrates the decision to try to love, honor, cherish. For 50% or so of the people so venturing divorce and mayhem loom… but people want to try anyway. And they are glad that their princes, too, embrace the concept.
As clever 19th century British journalist Walter Bagehot (1826-1877) wrote in his insightful book “The English Constitution” (published 1867): “A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind.” Spot on.
This marriage will feature more carriages, more guests, more presents, and more media coverage than you got at your wedding… but the heart of this wedding will be the same as yours: “Do you…? Do you…?” And they with all their palaces, wide acres, jewels and powdered footmen to spare will then offer the same simple kiss that you gave your new spouse, the kiss that symbolized your desire to love and live for this now very special person and your sanctified relationship. And at that moment, with that kiss the two billion viewers will be thinking not just of the prince and new princess… but of themselves, of their marriages, their ceremonies… and their personal dreams and illusions. And of how not even princes emerge from fairy tales unscathed.
Their way will feature different problems than yours, but they will face problems all the same. What they are saying is that they want to be with each other as they face these problems. They deserve the same chance that you had and like all newly married couples the same generous good wishes from those of us who know better than they that even princes will need those good wishes in future since no one lives on this planet without costs of every kind and amount.
And as for the comments by designated commentators like Yvonne Abraham, angry that America, the first great republic of modern times, should waste its time watching people whose ancestors robbed, plundered and pillaged amongst us. Have we forgotten that, well have we?
Slow down, darling’, most assuredly you have got your knickers in a twist… and every word beside the point.
Our interest in this marriage and attendant events has absolutely nothing to do with being seduced away from our republican constitution and government. Even the question is silly. First, many millions amongst us have a high regard for the old countries of the United Kingdom, England, Scotland, Ireland. They are part of our history and heritage. To abjure them is to abjure a part of ourselves. Why would we ever want to do that? Even the Founding Fathers didn’t advocate such a course. The men who had toppled George III and his emblems in every colony worked hard after the Revolution to establish diplomatic relations with England. Then they worked long and hard to turn mere relations into an alliance of heart and mind, not just politics and commerce. The United Kingdom, whose monarchy we rebelled against and expelled from our land, is now our closest ally and friend.
Suppose for a moment that you had once quarrelled with your parents. Suppose terrible things, regrettable things were done and said by you and them. Would that end matters, in grief and recrimination? Certainly not, for are they not your parents still and have you no regard for them and the good things they did? And here’s the point: if they invited you to an important event, say a wedding, would you refuse to be friends again? You’d go of course, for auld lang syne.
That is why billions of people will gather round their television sets this Friday, April 29. for us on this side of the Pond at very early hours indeed. We shall watch closely, commenting freely and, for nearly all, in good humor. And when these young now married people go onto the balcony of Buckingham Palace for The Kiss, our hearts will go out to them, not as gaudy royalty but as good people on whose slender shoulders a valued thousand year old institution will in due course be placed. Then they will surely need from us not just cheers, but support. They shall have it from me.
One last word for you, Mother Abraham. In 1999 the citizens of Australia voted in a national referendum about whether to abolish the monarchy and become the Republic of Australia, or not. Your fellow citizens voted 55-45 percent to keep the Windsors and the monarchy.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also a noted historian and author 18 best-selling books. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell http://homeprofitcoach.com/. Check out Commission Maniac -> http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=rb14eOHk

In the spirit of George W. ….here comes Michele Bachmann!

It must be awesome to not know a thing about history, make many many mis statements and not be held accountable. that’s all fine and dandy. Just don’t even think of trying to run for President . Didn’t we just get done with one of those?
U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann’s presidential aspirations latest casualty of ‘shot heard round the world’? Maybe.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota), had the uncomfortable experience March 12, 2011 of opening her mouth and inserting her own stiletto heel. Ouch!

But this experience is almost a commonplace for the lady from Minnesota. She’s rapidly becoming a national byword for gaffes, missteps, misinformation, and just plain old American stupidity.
And yet the lady from Minnesota still thinks she has a shot at being president of the United States! Michele, whose grasp of history is (to put it charitably) non-existent has probably never looked up the derivation of the word “minnesota.” It is from the Dakota Sioux who named the place “cloudy water”. Michele’s been drinking the stuff for a long time… maybe that explains the frequency and the goofiness of her gaffes. She ought to look into that water problem… those pinko one-world types have probably put fluoride in it.
This time she made her faux pas de jour in New Hampshire, a place for which she’s suddenly developed an acute tendresse. She hopes the yokels like her unique brand of one-liners, misstatements, tough talk, and silky tresses. It worked for the folks in Minnesota’s sixth congressional district.
Problem is, Michele’s tongue moves faster than her historical knowledge and accuracy. Really and truly, I don’t think that bothers Michele one bit. But it sure bothers the people she’s misinforming. “Really,” they say “she ought to know better…”
This time she made another doozie.
March 12, 2011 in Manchester, N.H., photogenic Michelle (whose luxurious locks are worth any number of political accuracies) butchered the facts about one of America’s signature events: the “shot heard round the world,” much venerated in these parts.

“You’re the state where the shot was heard round the world in Lexington and Concord,” she told a group of conservative lawmakers and students at a Manchester, N.H. school. “And you put a marker in the ground and paid with the blood of your ancestors the very first price that had to be paid to make this the most magnificent nation that has ever arisen in the annals of man in 5,000 years of recorded history.”
Her Gaffiness’ latest muff was reported March 12 on the RealClearPolitics website. Bachmann, according to the site, gave the wrong details once; then stated them wrongly again in the same speech. Michele doesn’t dispute the facts as reported.
Given the fact that Michele is a leader in the Tea Party movement, which takes its name from another signature episode in American history, Michele’s latest flub is not insignificant. Her audience, hardened conservatives all, didn’t bother to clue her into her mistake. After all, she looked cute when she fluffed her hair and tossed her head. The audience no doubt appreciated the herbal essence moment and wanted more of that, not her scalp — yet.
Facts? Who needs facts when you’re a sound-bite machine?
So frequent are Michele Bachmann’s gaffes that there’s actually a website entitled “The Ultimate Collection of Bad Michele Bachmann Quotes.” She’s so prolific in her faux pas that the owners of that site are exhausted keeping up with her non-stop “What me worry?” motor mouth. It is Michel’s proud boast that she never allows mere facts to get in the way of what she’s saying. She’s quite simply above accuracy. It worked for Ronald Reagan; it’s sure to work for her!
On the subject of gay marriage, Michele sagely says, “(Gay marriage) is probably the biggest issue that will impact our state and nation in the last, at least, thirty years. I am not understating that.” Here Michele manages to slaughter verb tenses, grammar and factual accuracy all at the same time. Bravissima! What matter pending national bankruptcy, our many wars, the nuclear question after the recent Japanese tsunami, emigration reform etc., etc., when we have a few gays who want to marry? Good for Michele, keeping America moral, one shot from the lip at a time.
“I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America?” Michele’s view of history (hold the facts) is highly colored by conspiracy theories, malfeasance of the highest order at the highest levels, and always those damnable liberals who are Determined to Bring America Down. She looks for these people under every bed, and if she happens to find they’re gay, too, she wags a knowing finger at the miscreants, always making sure the omnipresent camera gets her best side while she’s ranting.
“I want the people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back.” Michele’s imagery is always violent, always predicated on the need to shoot early, shoot often. How she intends to shoot and keep her hair fluffed are not doubt amongst the many subjects in which her presidential campaign will in due course enlighten us. I can hardly wait to find out. There’s more, much more:
“But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.” More of Michele’s neo-history. We’d urge her to give it up, but she looks go good talking in front of the students she’s misinforming, and conservatives don’t care what their kids are taught… so long as they get to pray in school and condemns evolution.
There’s more… much, much more. But now it’s time to see how Michele responds to the mere reporting of her words. Instead of simply saying that she doesn’t know everything, takes responsibility for her missteps, and maybe even saying she plans to bone up on the subjects she mangles, Representative Michele Bachmann does what her Tea Party is so adept at doing: she comes out swinging; saying that she’s the victim of a media double standard that wouldn’t apply if she were a liberal Democrat.
March 15, 2001 ABC News Radio quoted Bachmann as saying “We all know there’s a double standard in the media… as we know all 3,400 members of the mainstream media are part of the Obama press contingent.”
Wow! She knocked that one out of the park. We can only admire Michele the more, the persecuted little lady from Minnesota. It’s better than David against Goliath, because at least David had a few buddies. But Michele’s only got her fabulous “do”… Come to think of it, that worked for Samson. As a Bible scholar of renown, Michele no doubt knows his prowess with the jawbone of an ass. It’s certainly worked for her, too.
Michele, keep up the good work. And don’t even think of cutting your hair!
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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.

Since Rodney King, all behavior has been highly scrutinized thanks to Video!

What goes around comes around. O’Keefe will certainly get his. In the meantime, many will learn the lesson of the digital age – there are no more secrets or confidences. WHAT WHAT YOU SAY AND TO WHOM YOU SAY IT.
You are probably being taped!!!
I hope you enjoy this article. Feel free to comment. Here is some spy music.
The menace and idealism of James O’Keefe III punking liberal America one ‘gotcha’ incident after another.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
You’ve got to hand it to James O’Keefe.
The man is clever, determined, bold, gutsy.
And he’s certainly dedicated, though what he does can be both immoral and illegal.
That doesn’t seem to worry O’Keefe one iota.
He’s a man on a mission… and he knows that every time he pulls off another punk, he not only achieves his specific objective; he gains more of the attention and resources of the greatest nation on earth, thereby enabling him to continue his unique endeavors.
And what’s thrilling, he doesn’t need a lot of money to achieve the results he wants; just the willingness of powerful people to talk honestly with him and to be what they so often are, indiscrete. Indeed, these indiscretions are ridiculously easy to get. Someone just needs to coax them, with hidden cameras at the ready.
James E. O’Keefe III is that someone.
And he’s now very, very good at what he and his organization do.
Background
O’Keefe (born June 28, 1984) is the elder of two children born to James E. O’Keefe Jr., a materials engineer, and Deborah O’Keefe, a physical therapist. He grew up in Bergen County, New Jersey, in a home that was politically “conservative but not rigidly so,” according to his father.
He graduated from Westwood High School, where he showed an early interest in the arts, theater, and journalism. He achieved the highest rank, Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America.
He attended Rutgers University in New Jersey, where he majored in philosophy and began writing a bi-weekly column for the university’s student paper, The Daily Targum. He later founded the Rutgers Centurion, a conservative student newspaper with a $500 “Balance in the Media” grant from The Leadership Institute (LI), a non-profit organization that trains and places conservatives in government, politics, and the media.
Following graduation, O’Keefe worked for LI for a year traveling to various colleges to train students how to set up independent (conservative oriented) papers. He was good at this job, but LI was worried that what he was doing might imperil their non-profit status. O’Keefe was asked to leave LI, but not before he began to understand the purifying potential of video; namely catching his subjects while “breaking the law.” It was the nubbin of his outrageous successes.
After attending UCLA Law School for a year, O’Keefe formed his own organization, Project Veritas (Latin for truth). Its stated mission is to investigate and expose corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions in order to achieve a more ethical and transparent society.”
O’Keefe calls himself a “progressive radical”; others have used such descriptions as “guerrilla documentarian”, “muckraker”, “gonzo journalist”. His “aha” moment came while studying labor organizer Saul Alinsky’s insight, to make “the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
At Rutgers O’Keefe, now publisher of the Centurion, practiced his hidden camera craft by claiming the breakfast cereal “Lucky Charms” was insensitive to the Irish. It was typical undergraduate fare… but it helped O’Keefe master the technical aspects of video… as well as what would grab people’s attention and advance his career.
His lucky charm proved not to be a cereal, but Planned Parenthood.
In 2006 and 2007, O’Keefe helped plan and produce a series of 7 undercover videos with pro-life activist Lila Rose. These showed several Planned Parenthood workers willing to circumvent state laws requiring that abortion clinics report statutory rape. The videos received national attention and showed O’Keefe just what was possible… if he selected his subjects carefully and helped them, on the camera of course, to be confiding and indiscrete. Planned Parenthood lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in public grant money because of what O’Keefe got their own officials to show and say.
Bingo! O’Keefe now had a winning formula…
ACORN undercover videos.
In September, 2009, O’Keefe and his associate Hannah Giles published edited hidden camera recordings in which Giles posed as a prostitute and O’Keefe as her boyfriend in an attempt to elicit damaging responses from employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), an advocacy organization for persons of low and moderate income.
The videos were recorded during the summer of 2009 and showed low-level ACORN employees in six cities purportedly providing advice to Giles and O’Keefe on how to avoid detection by authorities of tax evasion, human smuggling and child prostitution.
Reaction from federal authorities was immediate and punitive; the U.S. Congress voted to eliminate federal funding to ACORN. James O’Keefe was on his way, a man not content to sit around and wait for reform. Instead, he was determined to get it fast by a proven ability to get officials to be indiscrete; then releasing the tapes via the Internet and other media resources.
Now a personage of consequence amongst conservatives, O’Keefe was ready for more, a whole lot more.
Getting a job at the U.S. Census Bureau, he explained to his superiors that he was being paid for work he didn’t do. They shrugged their shoulders and essentially told him to make the most of his good fortune. Because their response was on camera, he did, giving the Census Bureau the black eye he felt it roundly deserved.
O’Keefe in due course went on to something that really bothered him: the situation at National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. For years, conservatives had railed about the perceived liberal bias of NPR. But O’Keefe was about action, not just windy talk.
He aimed to bring them down… and he had a ridiculously easy way of doing so…. by getting NPR officials to confirm (always on hidden camera of course) their strong biases. They were happy to give him just what he wanted…
Ronald Schiller, then NPR’s senior vice president for fundraising, gave O’Keefe’s operatives one injudicious comment after another… indiscrete observations O’Keefe released at once, thereby bringing down Schiller and, just hours later, NPR’s CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation), too. These were trophies conservatives en masse hadn’t been able to deliver… but which O’Keefe got in a cake walk. Lots of eyes (and no doubt some checkbooks) were thereby opened, and O’Keefe’s stock soared. It went even higher when he bumped off, almost as an afterthought, NPR executive Betsy Liley. Her indiscretion, on camera, was to suggest that a Muslim organization (again O’Keefe and his people) could probably make an anonymous $5 million donation the IRS need know nothing about. It was pathetic how fast she fell, leaving another gaping hole in NPR’s much vaunted “impartiality”.
O’Keefe’s future looks rosy indeed amongst conservatives. He delivers what they want but can’t get, thereby earning their admiration, even if his methods are often suspect, illegal, even cruel. In due course, of course, he’ll go too far and become, for someone younger, bolder, more outrageous, the target himself. Hero though he is to some today, he will, at that moment, fall without a kindness from anyone, a fact which will embitter him for the rest of his long life. It often happens that way in politics, an unforgiving occupation.
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.
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Saving your heirs from the hassles is a great reason for a will!

Your loved ones will be so happy if you leave them an organized estate. A will is a necessity. No matter what your age, start your will now and keep it current. also include in the process medical information, who is to make life decisions for you and instructions for your funeral and burial or cremation.
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Dr. Lant told Mr. Joseph and his wife that they will be getting a gift upon his passing. They were able to appreciate it and thank him while he is still alive. I hope he stay’s alive for quite a while. He writes these incredible, educational articles. Stick around good Doctor!
Enjoy the article!
Thoughts on aging, kindnesses, and the satisfaction of a will well done and friends remembered, tangibly.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
I am now at the stage of life where one of the unexpected pleasures is the satisfaction and serenity one gets from a will well done. Should you be a youngster of say, 45 or so, you might regard the creation of a will as the most onerous of nagging responsibilities. I know; I used to think that way myself.
One thing exacerbating that feeling for me was my mother, now gone. It was my duty, eagerly passed to me by my sister and brother; so desperate to toss this hot potato to me that they lavished unheard of compliments, sweet words, and often too, they had never rendered to me before — or since.
They knew, Poor Old Mother (universally known as POM) would be, say, difficult, on this matter, procrastinating, exasperating, insisting. We loved her anyway… it was who she was and from whence we came.
As a result I resolved, as children will do, to do things differently when my time came.
It has come.
And I believe I am living up to my goal, both in the original creation of the will and, even more importantly, in keeping this will do-to-date and current; you see, a will while you continue to cavort on this planet is not final; it is always a work in progress. It becomes final (if you’ve done it right) only upon your final breath. Until then it is subject to change… a fact which you and every other person connected to this document must never forget.
There are those, of course, certain to use this fact to control their expectant heirs, to cause them irritation, frustration, even despair.Some folks, of a carping disposition, enjoy having those who will remain on this planet while you are planted 6 feet deep dance attendance, cringe, every one an incipient Uriah Heap, so very humble…. delivering ersatz sentiments along with rich auntie’s daily medications.
A legion of literary works, often great like Dickens and Thackeray, or of no significance whatsoever (it is a favor to these authors not to say who) exists on the subject. Here a will, a well known plot device, is used as an implement of control, cruelty, revenge and bitterness. Those people without a sou to their names would be willing to hover; a chance at riches, even such a humiliating chance, is better than no chance at all.
But these are not the people the about-to-be- departed want to control with their wills. By no means.
They want to control the proud, the robust, the most vibrant of their would-be heirs. These, and only these, are worth controlling for to control them indicates just how much life the giver still has. To control is to live… and they mean to live on and fully even if only for an instant, life is so precious.
One who knew all this, and more, was Madame de Maintenon, morganatic wife of the greatest sovereign of all, Louis XIV. Madame knew just how steep are the stairs of the charitable. She had climbed these forbidding, humiliating stairs… and when her time came she used this profound knowledge to cause the highest in the land to wait upon her favor, which was but slowly, exquisitely given. She was a woman with a rare will indeed…
Think what Edgar Allan Poe would have made of this insight, where the testamentary, thought to be dead and gone, yet reaches a gnarled hand from within the casket, grabbing the astounded heir by the throat, shouting “I live yet!… I live yet!… I live yet!”, grasping life more fervidly at the moment of its conclusion.
But I trust you are not of this tormenting, embittered mode, for I like to think well of all my readers and whilst fascinated by such cruel folk, I do not wish to dwell amongst them long, not even to augment my fortune.
I am of a different turn of mind. And my will proves it.
I wrote my will to make the ultimate disposition of my affairs easy for all. Items from my collections are carefully marked, some to be retained by the designated heir, some to be sold for cash, which will then be divided between these same heirs… and, of course, by the government, which considers itself the universal heir.
Then there are the special bequests to the special people I have known, valued, lived with and, one way and another, loved. I give these, as you should, the greatest attention, for I aim not merely to enrich with these gifts… but to define our relationship and touch them, memento mori. This is, after all, the last word to them… and it must be intimate, candid, the well considered, the ultimate truth. As such you must think long and well about what you will say.
To this group, I have now added two names, and I want you to know them, for if you are lucky you, too, can count on the same rare friends and will wish to honor them so.
I met Aime Joseph when I jumped into his cab in front of the Sheridan Commander Hotel in Cambridge. I was hurrying, distracted, as usual planning in my mind how to do what needed to be done, faster. Aime (whom I always call, with just a touch of whimsey “Mr Joseph”) was as Haitians generally are, amiable, voluble, good with people. You find many driving taxis hereabouts.
He gave me his card… and that impressed me, for it’s the kind of thing I do myself and what every entrepreneur should always have available, and give. He invited me to call when I had the need… and this being a thing I did often need, I did…. and did… and did…
In due course I met his sympatica wife Mercedes, with her rich heart and the tendency to giggle and say, laughing, “Oh…… Doctor Lant!”, for I am the master of the trenchant line whose full meaning only emerges later. I liked them both, enormously. And they cared for me… as became apparent during an extended hospital stay where, fiercely independent though I am, I needed help… and they were there, unasked, for me. Such things one does not forget… and does well to remember.
Recently, I told them I had something important to relate… but would only tell them if they would neither thank me nor cry (for I know their lacrimose tendencies). I said I had instructed my bank to make them a liberal bequest. Though they had promised not to thank or cry, they both broke these promises, as I knew they would. Tears upon such an occasion are sweet, a benediction. And so it was with Mr. Joseph and his dear wife — and me, for we cried together, hugging.
Reader, it is only in novels and films where the heirs are notified after the death of their benefactors. In life, it is more sensible to make all those receiving bequests fully aware of all the facts. They deserve the clarity… and you need to know them better and be thanked before you, too, go into the sweet by and by unburdened by today’s distracting reality, ready to receive your own special gift. Here you will surely get as you have.

Why the New Hampshire presidential primary will and must remain the nation’s first.

I am used to Iowa and New Hampshire vetting the candidates for all of us. Then South Carolina gives the south a say.
I think it works but never thought of it in the terms Dr. Lant presents below. Do you have an opinion on this? If so let me know. I’ve included New Hampshire’s state song as the song of the day
Thanks
Why the New Hampshire presidential primary will and must remain the nation’s first.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
They’re at it again.
Picking on the little guy.
Telling you you don’t deserve it… trying to take away your chief claim to fame and fortune.
But this little guy is shrewd, he’s been through all this before, and will, I predict and hope, remain the little guy we want to hold the very first presidential primary every four years.
You are the State of New Hampshire… and I, for one, though from one of the big states with a lackluster primary, support you and salute you for the supremely smart ways you use to retain your crucial #1 primary position.
Unlike the covetous folks from Florida, Michigan, even California who don’t know you. I do; New Hampshire after all is only 30 minutes away from Cambridge, Massachusetts. I know just how tenacious, inventive, clever you are…. and just how much you value and love your place in America’s political history.
You are New Hampshire… and no one is going to take your beloved presidential primary away from you, though this year as always they are trying like the dickens to do just that.
Some background
The first New Hampshire presidential primary was held in 1916. On the Republican side a slate of unpledged delegates was elected. The reigning GOP establishment ordinarily did this when there was no sitting Republican president (like Calvin Coolidge in 1924); they could use these delegates to bargain.
The first named person to win the New Hampshire primary was President Woodrow Wilson. He then went on win a second term.
The primary didn’t begin to take on its current significance until 1952. The Republicans had been out of power since 1932 and were desperate to get the White House back. Senator Robert Taft of Ohio (“Mr. Republican”), son of President William Howard Taft, was expected to net the nomination. But a group of Republicans, including twice defeated (1944, 1948) presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey, were sure Taft was a loser. They wanted General Dwight David Eisenhower.
Eisenhower was what America loves, a real bona fide hero, scandal free, a household name. “I like Ike,” said the famous campaign button… and everybody else did too.
So likeable, so electable, was Ike that both the Democrats and the Republicans went after him as their preferred presidential candidate. Having simplified its ballot access rules in 1949, New Hampshire was ready to make history in 1952.
Eisenhower
However, was Eisenhower a Democrat… or a Republican? No one, maybe even the General himself, knew…. President Truman, however, offered to forego another run in favor of Eisenhower if the Democrats could get him. The Republicans also wanted him. Eisenhower chose the GOP; Truman threw his hat in again though he had spirited competition in folksy Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver. New Hampshire was poised to make history… and it did.
First Kefauver beat Truman, thereby ending the President’s political career, sending him back, embittered, to Independence, Missouri and his nagging mother- in-law, who still thought he hadn’t been good enough for her dowdy daughter Bess. Then Ike pulverized Taft. New Hampshire woke up to the fact that it was Important, Very, Very Important. And they have never forgotten, making history over and over again; each time enraging other states… who don’t like the power and glory of the pip-squeak.
They say, envy and jealousy unpleasantly apparent, that New Hampshire is too small to have this honor…. its population insufficiently representative of America… its kind of personal politics outmoded in the age of mass media.
New Hampshire’s clipped, New England response? “Nuts” (The celebrated reply of U.S. General McAuliffe when asked in 1944 to surrender.) Here is their more complete response.
On the matter of retail politics being outmoded, New Hampshire says that it provides an absolutely crucial service for both candidates and America. Candidates, they rightly say, need time to perfect their message and learn how to interact with people… and run a better campaign. They learn these skills in New Hampshire and from its citizens, who, remember, tutor the candidates every four years.
Folks in New Hampshire pepper the candidates with every kind of query and remark; the better to know them, the better to educate them. Its citizens come to see and know the candidates well, weighing their merits and demerits, scrutinizing them up close and personal.
Candidates who are not known before the New Hampshire primary are able to use foot power and meagre campaign budgets to gain adherents and become effective persuaders. They couldn’t do this elsewhere, in other states; there the logistics work against this approach.
New Hampshire, advocates of other, bigger states, aver is unrepresentative of America. This criticism roils its citizens.
Have we not paid America’s taxes?
Have we not fought America’s wars?
Have the sons and, yes, the daughters, too, of our Granite State not died to maintain the nation?
Have we not helped America by conscientiously scrutinizing each and every candidate helping to select the best of what this great country offers?
Is all this not enough to keep the institution we have created, protected, built?
No, these covetous, big states say, it is not enough… and never will be. You are small and weak, New Hampshire, we shall eat you and take the presidential primary you have fashioned, with all its emoluments and perquisites, the money, the fame, the storied place in our nation’s legend.
New Hampshire’s ultimate weapon.
For just such states and circumstances, New Hampshire has on its books a purposeful law. This strict law, universally popular and supported by every Granite State citizen of whatever party, mandates that the New Hampshire primary must and shall be held at least one week before ANY other state’s presidential primary.
In this law, the mouse has well and truly roared.
This is why, about a year from today (or earlier if necessary to maintain its primacy) the good citizens of New Hampshire will trek through the snow and mud to exercise one of the chief rights of our democracy; to advance some, to rusticate others, with grave deliberation and forethought. It is New Hampshire’s pride to do so… and they will do whatever is necessary to keep it, “Live Free or Die.”
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