How Long Can You Tread Water?

While a stupidly large section of the media is still focused on the sexual proclivities of a Congressman, while another stupidly large section is focused on the e-mails of Sarah Palin from three years ago, a large chunk of the American people seem to be thankfully doing what they do best - ignoring the majority of the media hoopla, and focusing on what's important.

For those Americans living near near the Missouri River, that means being prepared for what appears to be a once in a millennium flood.

This isn't the only time in history that the Missouri has flooded, as our friend Jim McKee pointed out over the weekend. There have been more worrying concerns with this flood - as we mentioned last week, the nuclear power plant north of Omaha among them. Still, as natural disasters go, so far this has been a very tame one.

We don't mean to play this off as a minor event. Some of our friends have been affected, including our photographer/cartoonist friend Scott, down in Watson, Missouri. But because of the planning and infrastructure investment that was made during the 1960s, those who live along the "Mighty Mo" have had weeks, not hours, to plan and and enact their escapes, and flood preparations.

Unlike so many of the disasters Americans have faced in recent memory, because Americans worked TOGETHER, planned, prepared, and invested in the future success of their fellow citizens, a flood that might be a once-in-a-thousand year phenomenon, may end up being mostly an event that discomforts more than than it destroys.

The sad thing to note is that if the proposal to invest in the kinds of flood preparation the United States enacted during the 1960s was made today, it would never pass.

While those Midwesterners affected by the floods soldier through these next few weeks, and the cleanup continues into Husker football season and beyond (which it will), we hope that one key fact about the floods of 2011 continues to float to the top of your brains.

We were told during the 1960s we couldn't afford to spend so much government money on projects like those involved in Missouri River flood control. We had just gotten out of the Korean War when planning for these projects began. By the time these projects were primarily finished, we were involved in Vietnam, another costly venture. We also added the costs of Medicare and Medicaid to our expenses during the 1960s. Yet we Americans decided that we needed to invest in America anyway, through projects just like the flood control efforts along the Missouri.

Some state governments spent more than they had planned during those investments, and some government programs ran into cost overruns too. In short, we spent more than the immediate direct benefits we got from these projects.

Yet, as those Americans back then knew, the benefit wasn't for just them. It was for their children, their grandchildren, and people they didn't even know.

People like our friends and neighbors now.

If only Americans had that kind of vision today.

Friday Funday: Silver Lining? It's The Off Switch

Every Friday, we try to lighten the mood a bit from our weightier discussions earlier in the week. It's not always an easy task, given the myriad number of challenges facing our country, and facing some of our friends, for that matter.

There were more storms in the Midwest last night, and some damage did take place in the neighborhood of someone we know, down in Kansas. The floods are decimating the lives of many we know near the Missouri River. Parts of Interstates 29 and 680 along the Iowa-Nebraska border are closing due to the flooding, something none of us can ever remember having happened before. There are droughts in Florida, and DC has been uncomfortably hot far too early in the season.


Those are just the weather-related issues. Don't even get us started about the actions of our media colleagues, the economic forecasts stuck in neutral, or a jobless situation that makes us want to blow our tops.

With having to deal with all these frustrating issues and more, it's more important than ever to find things in life that recharge everyone's spirit.

The things that recharge you don't always have to be major events, like those we mentioned last Friday, to fill up our emotional and spiritual energy.

Sometimes, it's enough to spend time with our friends and family, or even talking to them on the phone. Gardening, walking through the neighborhood with our spouse or a friend, or just sitting and reading a good book (whether in paper or Kindle form).

Something else we've found that helps recharge us at times like this is tuning out the distractions. Turn off the computer, Facebook and Twitter - even the cell phone- for a while this weekend. Turn off the tv, unless you have it on to specifically watch something like a movie. Ignore the news for a day or two, and even click the radio off.

Whatever activities you engage in to gain some clarity in your life, we hope you take some time - or that you make some time - this weekend to do those things.

And don't worry about missing anything. The world will still be here on Monday - and we will too.

It's About What They Do At Work

For nearly two weeks, the media has been having an apoplectic fit over the sexting peccadillo of Congressman Anthony Weiner. We have already blasted our media colleagues on how they've acted on that topic - but like many stories these days, it seems a sub-section of Americans won't be truly satisfied and ready to move on until Weiner is broke, out of office, crouched in a fetal position in the gutter, alone, and waiting to die.

These paragons of compassion are often the same people who will be the first to tell you how ethical they are.

America is filled with people who are hypocrites in the worst way, in part, because Americans often display a desire for things to be as they can only be in the movies, in books, and on TV - fictional and unrealistic.

Politicians - all of them, from every party - are all, to a greater or lesser degree, liars. Frankly, so is everyone reading - or writing - this commentary. We all lie. We tell ourselves that a little white lie won't matter all that much, or that THEY lie but WE are virtuous. The fact is, we all lie.

We lie when we tell ourselves that one more slice of pizza isn't that big a deal or when we dump in a little bit more sugar in our coffee. When we say we'll make it to an optional religious ceremony, business meeting, or kid's school function and then don't show, we say, "Meh. It was OPTIONAL. No big deal."

To your business colleagues, your spiritual leader, your kid - or your waistline - all of those may have been a big deal after all. You knew that - and you lied to yourself anyway.

We're all human. We make mistakes. Some mistakes are easier to fix than others. Eating better and exercising more, for example, could fix that waistline lie you've been telling yourself.

Taking prurient pictures and sending them over the internet to anyone - and then explaining it to your spouse? Having an inappropriate sexual liaison with an intern? Impregnating your housekeeper and not telling your wife for thirteen years? Or how about leaving your cancer-stricken wife while she's on her deathbed to go marry your next wife? Those "little mistakes" are a bit harder to explain - and to fix.

What about getting your country involved in multiple questionable wars, with no single significant reason, while putting the cost of both wars on your country's credit card - and allowing millions to be killed or maimed because of your little "slip-up"?

As you can see, some mistakes were built to last - and not every mistake is the same.

We'll admit - Anthony Weiner screwed up. He shouldn't have been taking lewd photos of himself, and sending them to anyone, anywhere - including girlfriends when he was single, or even his wife after they were married.

But that's not our point today.

We don't elect our leaders in America to be anything other than what they are. They ARE liars - and if we think they're not, then we're liars, too. However, there are degrees of lying - and those degrees DO matter, especially when judging the performance of our elected officials.

If an elected official is lying about a war, or about whether they are being paid under the table by a corporation, or whether they're shifting laws to benefit their family...? Those are the kinds of lies that matter.

If an elected official likes sending pictures of themselves in their undies - or even in the buff - to a private friend or two...? We think it's stupid behavior - but we really don't care. In the case of Anthony Weiner, he didn't even end up in the sack with someone other than his wife, so we're truly unconcerned about him.

The people we worry about are the real clowns and twisted individuals in office who are attempting to abuse our system until it's dead and buried. Those individuals are the truly twisted ones - and they're the ones screwing us all.