We’re Levees Not War, and We Approve This Message: httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BfjpU_yHw0&feature=player_embedded * The text of the commercial, running in various media markets in Louisiana, goes like this: We know how David Vitter handled his “serious sin.”...
Politics/Economy
Hiroshima, 65 Years On: “Countdown to Zero”
Today, August 6, is the 65th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. Nagasaki was nuked on Aug. 9. The bombs killed some 90,000 to 160,000 in Hiroshima and some 60,000 to 80,000 in Nagasaki, with half the deaths occurring in the first day, even the...
WikiLeaks’s Afghan War Diary:
A “Pentagon Papers” for Our Time
“In releasing the Pentagon Papers I acted in hope I still hold: that truths that changed me could help Americans free themselves and other victims from our longest war.” —Daniel Ellsberg, Papers on the War (1972) There’s a kind of appropriate, ironic justice that the...
Rising Tide 5 Is Aug. 28 in New Orleans: Register Today
A Conference on the Future of New Orleans The Rising Tide Conference is an annual gathering for all who wish to learn more and do more to assist New Orleans’ recovery. It’s for everyone who loves New Orleans and is working to bring a better future to all its...
Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has signed a “guns-in-church” bill sponsored by Louisiana state representative Henry Burns that will authorize individuals who qualify to carry concealed weapons in “any church, synagogue, or mosque, or other similar place of worship.”...
Declare Independence from Endless War
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” —Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., “Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam,” Riverside Church, New York City,...
Afghanistan: More Insane Than a Quagmire
* “. . . the reality, secretly guarded until now, is . . . [that] . . . it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. . . . That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had...
FDR, Treehugger-in-Chief, Inspires Hopes for Coastal Conservation Corps
This past weekend we went to the 7th annual Roosevelt Reading Festival at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York, that featured 21 authors of such works as FDR’s Alphabet Soup: New Deal America 1932–1939 (Tonya Bolden), Beyond...
“Happy Days Are Here Again”
Uplifted by the happy oyster video (below), we’re off to Hyde Park, New York, on Saturday 6/19 (taking a train, naturally!) for the seventh annual Roosevelt Reading Festival at the FDR Presidential Library—free and open to the public. The keynote address will be given...
Tony Hayward, Stonewaller-in-Chief
I am here today because I have a responsibility to the American people to do my best to explain what BP has done, is doing, and will do in the future to respond to this terrible incident. . . . —BP CEO Tony Hayward, opening statement to House Energy and Commerce...
From the Oval Office, Promises for Gulf Coast Restoration, MMS Rehab
We’ll look at the energy aspects of President Obama’s Tuesday Oval Office address “in the coming days” (as he might say). Meanwhile, we want to focus on two of the most promising elements of the president’s remarks (text here). First, about three minutes in, he...
Fake President Rachel Maddow’s Oval-Office-in-Her-Own-Head Address
Getting Real with a Fake President Superb, every word of it, except maybe the part at the very end about the White Sox and the Red Sox. Click here for the full text, and click the photo above or here for the video. Read it and share it. Watch it and weep for joy....
Unmanned Drones in U.S. Airspace? What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
File under “OMG! WTF?” We took our eyes off the BP oil cam just long enough to see this headline : “Feds Under Pressure to Open U.S. Skies to Drones.” The Federal Aviation Administration has been asked to issue flying rights for a range of pilotless planes to carry...
BP Oil Flood Brought to You by U.S. Supreme Court?
[cross-posted at Daily Kos] Let’s play what-if: Would the BP Oil Flood have happened if the Rehnquist Supreme Court in its Bush v. Gore ruling had not stopped the state of Florida’s vote-counting? We think maybe not. We think it’s not too far a stretch to say that the...
After “Epic Foolishness,” Time to Wake a Sleeping (Green) Giant
Columnist Bob Herbert of the New York Times, a stalwart advocate for reinforced infrastructure and an eloquent defender of the unemployed, of over-stressed and under-supplied soldiers, and other victims of neglect, is usually moderate in temperament as he shows...
“This Small Planet”
* At a loss for words while Louisiana’s at a loss for land, life Like many bloggers we’re sometimes at a loss for words in the face of the widening catastrophe in the Gulf—the one that began with a bang on April 20, Earth Day. We want to say something, to do something...
“Sometimes Accidents Happen”
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLhyPnZgKgg&feature=player_embedded Libertarian snipes at “un-American . . . criticism of business” Dr. Rand Paul’s comments about the 1964 Civil Rights Act have been getting the attention they deserve, but we’re also troubled by...
BP Oilpocalypse Threatens New Orleans’s Very Existence
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlPPFcy-3Vo&feature=player_embedded Steve Wereley [of] . . . Purdue University, told NPR the actual spill rate of the BP oil disaster is about 3 million gallons a day—15 times the official guess of BP and the federal government. . ....
“Oil-Spotted Dick”: Cheney’s Oily Fingerprints in the BP Disaster
It’s Not “Obama’s Katrina”—But It’s Cheney’s Second [ cross-posted at Daily Kos ] “Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.” —Vice President Dick Cheney, quoted in New York Times, May 1,...
“Held Up Without a Gun”
I was out driving just taking it slow / Looked at my tank, it was reading low / Pulled in a [BP] station out on Highway 1 / Held up without a gun / Held up without a gun . . . —Bruce Springsteen (1980) * BP’s 2010 first quarter profits were $5.6 billion, a 135 percent...