Who better to tell you how to run your life than aging celebrity leech and homewrecker Suzy Wetlaufer Welch? Her philosophy can be summed up, according to her, by asking yourself one important question before making crucial life decisions: How rich is the old guy? [Surely, where do I want to be in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years? – Book Review Ed.]

You can't deny it works: if you see yourself jetting among houses on Nantucket, the Upper East Side, and Beacon Hill whilst pontificating on third-tier cable "news" shows (see below) ten years from now, then you'd better start looking for a really rich husband now.

And don't worry if Mr. Magoo [Surely, Right? – Ed.] already has a wife. Just apply Suzy's 10-10-10 rule: 10 seconds [Surely, minutes? – Ed.] of boffing, repeated for 10 months can win you a pre-nup that expires in only 10 years. Come to think of it, it worked for her predecessor.

Those of us who don't suffer from the current GOP amnesia, which wipes out memories of everything prior to January 21, 2009 (except Robert Bork), recall a time when a bunch of blow-dried bullies caught President Clinton with his (political) pants down in 1994 and won control of the House of Representatives.  

They proceeded to make a bloody hash of things, paralyzing government in a futile effort to cut Medicare benefits, seeking to unseat said unpantsed (but unlike his successor, duly elected) President for fibbing about nookie, and, by the way, immediately betraying the one idea that was responsible for their electoral ascent: term limits for those selfsame blow-dried bullies.

Quite a record. No wonder one of the junior members who brought us those debacles now insists in his new book that we ought to go back to those Glory Days. Of course, the electorate has long since wised up to the these threadbare Republican stunts, which is perhaps why our author has forsaken electoral politics for morning cable-"news" gasbaggery.

If it's years too late for this nonsense, it must be Morning Joe Scarborough, a brew that's both too bitter and too watered-down to swallow.

It's the great American success story: a poor boy sets out to make a lot of money, and, thanks mostly to luck, political connections, and a corrupted and dysfunctional regulatory and tax system, does so, by selling his position in some private equity knacker's shop to suckers – in other words, you and me – at the height of the most recent debt-fueled buyout bubble.

Having scored his billion, the tycoon now devotes his life to good works – in Peterson's case, setting up a tax-qualified "charitable" foundation devoted to spreading the gospel of impoverishing the poor and enriching the rich by savaging Social Security and other hard-won entitlements.

Never mind that the supposed shortfalls in programs like Social Security and Medicare could be easily filled by modest tax increases, e.g., repealing the ridiculous fiction that carried interest bonuses, like Peterson's, are capital gains (taxed at 15%) rather than ordinary income (taxed at 35%), or reducing Peterson's tax windfall from setting up his (un)charitable foundation to $28 million from $35 million.  

If you think that the present generation of plutocrats like Peterson have any interest in giving back even a few crumbs of their wealth to ease the lot of those who through no fault of their own live in want, than you sir (or madam) are a true American dreamer.