Surprising nearly everyone–their families had conducted memorial services–once again they proved that lost doesn’t mean lost for good.

The ultimate beauty of this story should serve to teach us all that survival, grit and determination are latent in human beings, that we can truly survive when outstanding odds are stacked against us. We may not be comfortable, we may get a little cold and hungry or a bit warm and thirsty, we may even fill with boredom, panic and fear, but we can survive. We can all have faith in our fortitude, it’s a part of who we are.

You and I are a the product of thousands and thousands of years of walking. Be it out of Eden or Africa we walked out into wilderness full of challenges, hardships and threats to our very existence, and yet we survived . Humans, if nothing else, are survivors.

Huffington Post has the details of the above story.

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Business as usual? Grand rhetoric? Colossal flip-flop?

Interesting story in Huffington Post suggests that the OCE might be on its way out. Created by speaker Pelosi, why would any of us tolerate its disbandment? The United States House of Reprehensibles has a sketchy record on ethics, that’s where I came up with the term!

This is a story to watch. It might be a small one, but one to keep track of.

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Not my problem!

It’s that time of year once again here in the North; as fall approaches the dry, tan and yellow leaves cover the ground. Soon the trees will be void of any foliage at all. It’s autumn, so now the yard work begins in earnest.

Today, I watched a group of landscapers, armed with leaf blowers and a mission, clearing a residential lawn. The freshly exposed yard was green while the adjacent roadway was carpeted in newly relocated leaves. The front yard looked manicured and perfect, the street? Not so much so.

You have to give these guys some credit. No back-busting rakes with blisters on their fingers and hands. Fire up the leaf blower and let her rip. No heavy lifting; blow them out of the yard and let someone else deal with them. Out of sight, out of mind I guess. They gotta load up their truck and trailer thinking, “It’s not my problem.”

So the leaves pile up, block the storm drains and eventually create havoc for someone else to deal with.

I can’t help but thinking that Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway is a bit of a leaf blower this morning. According to an article in the Huffington Post by Sam Stein, Mr. Conway “leads 200+ Candidates in demanding no cuts to Social Security.” Crafty Conway, Crafty. This is your latest attempt to beat Rand Paul? What, the “Aqua Buddha” isn’t working out for you??

Is there anyone that truly believes Social Security will be solvent in the years ahead? With more Americans withdrawing than there are contributing to Social Security and the federal government’s addiction to raiding and reallocating those dollars as they see fit? Factor in the baby boomers, the Consumer Price Index and inflation and our children have a huge mess on their hands. It’s easy to see why the fear of seriously addressing the “third rail” is one known to politicians from both sides of the aisle.

Those politicians, refusing to conduct a substantive and serious conversation about the future of Social Security are like the leaf blowers pictured above. “Let’s kick the can down the road a bit, pass the buck, blow the leaves into the future’s yard. We’ll keep our yard looking nice and green and let our children and grandchildren worry about the huge piles of dead leaves we are leaving for them.” No pun intended.

For those of us not to living like an ostrich, we can see we are at the edge. We either decide to take powerful measures now or the future will make them for us. There is no other way around this fork in our road.

“Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort without checking your aim”  goes the quote from George Santayana. Lawmakers acting like leaf blowers should be a wake-up call. Politicians refusing to confront the serious short-comings of Social Security while continuing to do the same old same old of fearfully avoiding the simple math are both fanatics and disingenuous; a combination that should be a red flag for us all!

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Above photo taken from The Atlantic.com

When in comes to politicians and their smack down of the electorate, the “no term limits” coupled with the “revolving door” of ousted politicians and their new-found lobbyist positions is a nice one-two combo perk for our congressional members.

Interesting story in the Huffington Post today about politicians grooming themselves for post-Hill lobbying jobs. Nice career gig if you can get it.

Help me on this, please. What is wrong with timeframes that support the constituency, time periods that benefit the people?  What is wrong with elected term limits and time barriers (four to six years) for converting your elected position into a lobbying gig? What’s wrong with a congressional cooling off period?

These two practices are the root of most, if not all political corruption which is why our elected officials will fight these revisions tooth and nail.

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Senator Chris Dodd jumping on board should be a huge red flag. When this leopard licks, you know it’s time to pay attention. That he calls this an “historic moment” and claims the bill has already had “an influence on the conduct of the Fed in terms of the transparency issues,” should be a wakeup call to us all. HUGE RED FLAG #2.

This isn’t an audit, it’s an attempt at appeasement, an blatant shot at pacifying those calling for a full and continual inspection and evaluation of the Federal Reserve. This is a shell game. A nice box wrapped with pretty ribbon but the box is empty. We are being hustled. Shocker, I know.

Just how gullible do Chris Dodd, Ben Bernanke and the Obama Administration think we are?

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Many, like my son, believe in a certain type of terrorist, of  “evil doers” from some distant and remote part of our planet hell bent on doing us harm. Terrorists come in turbans and that’s that. We can isolate them, keep them at bay long enough to outlast them. While our government works to convince us that those “foreigners” wanting to attack us, hell bent on destroying you and I can be held at bay with fences, airport security screenings and the reframing of political phraseology. We need to feel safe, our elected officials pander to that need and we check passports and our common sense, thinking it will protect us.

But what of the home grown models? What of the new breed of terrorists, more Tim McVeigh that Taliban, more Terry Nichols than Khalid Sheikh Muhammad? I learned a new term today from a Huffington Post article by Dan Collins. In his piece, he uses the catchy phrase “nut job of unexpected origin” in referring to the early evidence surrounding the attempted bombings this past weekend in New York City. Terrorists, what ever their varied origins, have one common destination in mind. They may hail from half way around the world or just down the street. Doesn’t matter. In their hearts thrives the goal to scare and disrupt, to cripple their targets in chaos and fear.

As we work to reframe our understanding of the threats we face from NJUO’s let’s concede right now that the new breed of terrorist is preparing to strike from an “unexpected origin.” It’s their version of shock and awe.

As we adopt this fresh viewpoint we can be still be vigilant, aware of our surroundings and prepared for whatever fate throws at us yet in doing so, let’s not surrender our common sense, our civil liberties, our decency towards each other or our tax dollars on walls that were never going to work in the first place.

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Oh, the blatant sacrilege. Making roadways safer and more accessible for cyclists across the country? Those pesky bicycle riders. They think they own the road already. Now they want more room to ride?

According to an AP article on Huffington Post, one of the biggest uphill climbs comes in the form of Congressman Steve LaTourette, R-Ohio. Questioning a Transportation official at a recent House hearing LaTourette is quoted as asking, “Is that a typo?” Continuing, “If it is not a typo, is there still mandatory drug testing at the Department?”  This from a gentleman that sits in the same body that brought us a top-heavy, capsizing Guam. Perhaps we should consider mandatory IQ testing for Congress?

In that the proposals are not mandatory, what’s wrong with keeping an eye out for cyclists, for working to insure bicycling safety? Who benefits from peddling paranoia? He has no problem taking a pannier full of cash for his own district for bike paths. Hmmm. Handouts for handlebars, fine by me as long as I get the dough??? No double standard here. Clearly LaTourette has dropped his chain.

Perhaps he should spend less time on the couch and a little more in the saddle.

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According to an article in the Huffington Post, a Somali boat, filled with brainless bandits opened fire on the USS Ashland, mounting the third such attack in two weeks. One would think, that after President Obama gave the order to kill the pirates that took U.S. Maersk Alamba Captain Richard Phillips hostage last year, they would wake up just a bit.

The captains on these outlaw skiffs must be the greatest motivational speakers ever. Move over Zig Ziglar and Tony Robbins. Can you imagine giving, better yet, following the order to “open fire” on a U.S. Navy warship? For a new definition of lunatic looters, I nominate the latest round of Somali simpletons.

As for our side, I’m all over pirate diplomacy backed with a bit of gunpowder!

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In reading the article by Yale Professor David Bromwich, “Iran Was an Easier Enemy Before We Saw Their Faces” on The Huffington Post, two sentences jumped out at me. These two simple sentences, in terms of their structure, didn’t rhyme, didn’t contain a word with more than 3 syllables, lucky for me I didn’t need a dictionary to help me through them. With all of that, I’m not sure I’ve read two more gut-grabbing sentences in some time.

“The faces of the people, and not “the face of the enemy.’” He writes a few lines later, “It isn’t the face of the enemy that we see in these pictures. No, these are people much like ourselves, who don’t want to die at the hands of their government–or at the hands of ours, either, for that matter.”

Face or faces?

For expediency sake, I suspect, we tend to brand a people, a country, a government as a singular entity. It’s a good bit easier to foment blame or craft a label of evil against a Face. Ignoring the varied tapestry of the people’s faces allows us to paint with strokes of a very broad brush.

I’m guilty! Probably, way guilty at times. When I think of North Korea, I think of Kim Jong-il, when I hear of Iran my mind instantly focuses on Mahmoud Amadinejad and now a host of Ayatollahs.  In the Sudan it’s Omar Hassan al-Bashir and in Rowanda, Robert Mugabe. For how ling was the face of Saddam Hussein synonymous with Iraq?

Despicable? One-in-all. But with that myopic nearsightedness, it’s easy to focus a sense of outrage on a Target; but what of the targets?

I need to do a better job at looking through the Face to get to the faces.

As we take umbrage with a foreign Head of State, should we not take a moment to look beneath the umbrella and reflect on the people? When we decry a Dictator and call for military action to oust him/her, should we pause long enough to look at the “dictated” so to speak?

Thanks to Professor Bromwich, the term “surgical strike” doesn’t seem as synonymous with “clinical” to me these days.

Governor Mark Sanford perhaps does benefit from the spotlight and the focus being shifted to the death of Michael Jackson. There is little room left in the 24 hour news cycle.  All Michael, Every Minute.

I’m not terribly worried about Mark, his marriage or the next occupant of the Governors Mansion in South Carolina.

What does worry me? That the Iranian Mullahs are just as excited about the sad turn of events in Michael Jackson’s life.

By taking the spotlight off the megalomaniacs running Iran, while focusing on the death of the “King of Pop” instead of the protesters dying in the streets of Tehran, we aid, or at the very least enable the brutal crackdown to continue.

President Obama might not want to get too tightly involved, and I suspect it is for good reason. That said, it falls on the international free press to help the freedom fighters in Iran by holding the Mullahs feet to the fire.

There is a posted article in the Daily Beast by Benjamin Sarlin I’ve just learned about.  “How Jacko helps the Mullahs.”

RIP Michael Jackson.

Manjushri.