Two posts that should be read in full—“A Wake-Up Call” by Robert Kuttner on what the Massachusetts special election for senator tells us about the Rahm Emanuel White House’s wrong priorities—and another by a reader at Talking Points Memo who was calling voters in...
Levees Not War
“Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam”
In the first two years after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. maintained a skeptical but moderate and relatively quiet position on the war in Vietnam. He spoke out forcefully and at length against the war on April 4,...
America’s—and New Orleans’s—Debt to Haiti
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A2q60qg0WA&feature=player_embedded In reply to Pat Robertson’s comments about Haiti’s alleged “pact to the devil” (aptly described by Gawker as “galactically vile”), Mr. Raymond Joseph, the Haitian ambassador to the U.S., says: “I...
Help for Haiti
A 7.0 magnitude earthquake has rocked and toppled much of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, the most powerful quake to strike there in 200 years. The quake lasted a full minute; the Loma Prieta earthquake that shook the San Francisco Bay Area in 1989, also 7.0 on the Richter...
Country First
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqaNbazBmKY&feature=player_embedded “The campaign we raged” John McCain is a United States senator. In the past he was a candidate for president. He prides himself on having survived some five years in a North Vietnamese prison and...
Entering 2010: New Year’s Wishes and Resolutions
A very merry Christmas / And a happy new year / Let’s hope it’s a good one / Without any fear —John Lennon, Yoko Ono, “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” Positive Wishes, Sincere Resolutions We’ll see if we still feel so new and happy and resolved when the champagne wears off,...
Best Wishes for a Green and Peaceful Christmas Present
And Hoping for a More Prosperous New Year for All “The walls and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a perfect grove, from every part of which, bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the...
“Winter of Our Discontent”
In the already-dark of the shortest day of the year, the first day of winter, rather than denying the obvious it feels appropriate to acknowledge a certain lowness of spirits, a mood that the holidays will warm temporarily but not dispel altogether. “Winter of our...
Obama, Lieberman, Emanuel—
All Skewered as Not “Tough Enough to Govern”
Joe Conason in a hard-hitting Truthout op-ed rips Joe Lieberman for demanding, and President Obama and his chief of staff and “self-styled tough guy from Chicago” Rahm Emanuel for bowing to the gutting of the elements of real reform in the Senate health care...
Copenhagen Climate Accord Better Than Nothing
(Sound Familiar?)
First they put the planet in square brackets, now they have deleted it from the text. At the end it was no longer about saving the biosphere: it was just a matter of saving face. As the talks melted down, everything that might have made a new treaty worthwhile was...
Senate Dems, Stop: Go to Reconciliation (51 Votes)
“Not Health, Not Care, Not Reform” Ed. Note: The writer of this post volunteered for about a half-dozen Organizing for America phone banks to ask voters to call their senators to press for a public option. The Senate Democrats’ over-compromised health reform...
Deeper into Afghanistan: 360 Degrees of Damnation
“we must rebuild our strength here at home . . . . the nation that I’m most interested in building is our own.” —President Obama, Dec. 1, 2009 We wanted to take time to try to make sense of President Obama’s speech at West Point last week in which he announced his...
“We Need Strong Leadership” on Health Care Reform
Talking Points Memo reports that Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ), co-chairman of the House Progressive Caucus, released a statement Tuesday that calls “troubling” the White House and Senate Democrats’ compromises on the public option—by this point a mere shadow of the...
It’s Not About You—It’s All About Joe
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETAFMgGTMiQ&feature=player_embedded When long-serving Connecticut senator Joseph Isidore Lieberman lost the Democratic primary to telecommunications executive Ned Lamont in August 2006, rather than bow out as defeated candidates...
Wrong Call, Mr. President
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.” —Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953 Having taken a long walk after a filling Thanksgiving...
Army Corps Found Negligent by Federal Judge
The failure of the Corps to recognize the destruction that the MRGO [Mississippi River–Gulf Outlet navigation canal] had caused and the potential hazard that it created is clearly negligent on the part of the Corps. Furthermore, the Corps not only knew, but admitted...
Coastal Conservation Corps:
A New CCC for Coastal Restoration—and Jobs
Levees Not War is pleased to direct your attention to LaCoastPost, where you can read a guest post titled “Why Not Institute a ‘Green’ Corps for the Coast?”, or, “Reinventing the CCC and WPA.” In collaboration with LaCoastPost editor Len Bahr, a coastal science and...
“The Brown Pelican Is Back”
An Environmental Protection Success Story The brown pelican, a species that was driven nearly to extinction by use of the pesticide D.D.T., has grown back in strong enough numbers that the admirable bird has been removed from the endangered species list. The decision...
Homeless on Veterans’ Day
We reprint the following editorial from today’s New York Times as a reminder that a grateful nation owes its veterans more than ceremonies and nice words. Also, we salute the admirable commitment of General Eric Shinseki, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, to improving...
Harm’s Way, or, A Surge of His Own?
The ceremony at Fort Hood yesterday was beautiful, and heart-breaking. The pain was all too real, and the president’s speech was sincere, somber, respectful, and probably healing. But . . . could the ceremony have been designed in part as a warm-up, a stirring of our...