Mardi Gras, Lombardi Gras
This is a Carnival where you don’t have to say “Happy Mardi Gras” (tho’ we do, anyway)—it simply is a happy Mardi Gras, and everyone’s been in a crazy happy zone for weeks. People are changing their middle names to WhoDat. Maybe it’s ’cause “Breesus Saves,” and the rest of the Saints do, too. ...
New Orleans’s Super Weekend
We prayed for a one-two punch of good news, and the Saints and the voters delivered (helped no doubt by the prayers of the nuns and priests in Saints owner Tom Benson’s posse). It is a delicious feeling of rejuvenation only four short years after the storm left us feeling devastated, unsure of ...
Mitch Landrieu for Mayor of New Orleans
Mitch Is the Man
New Orleanians, the best way to make the Saints lucky on Sunday in the Super Bowl is by casting your ballot early and often (encore, repetez!) for Mitchell J. Landrieu as mayor of the great City of New Orleans. This is also the best way to boost the city’s fortunes for four ...
Krewe du Vieux’s “All Fired Up,” Baby!
Postively Flamin’
Of all New Orleans’s wonderful (and some rather sedate) Carnival krewes, Krewe du Vieux is the sassiest, fiestiest, and wittiest, and it pains us to miss even one parade. Led by the great Dr. John as King, this year’s parade’s theme was “All Fired Up” (there was a fire last ...
Tickets to Ride: Obama, Biden on Track with High-Speed Rail Projects
As train-lovin’ infrastructure freaks, we applaud Friday’s announcement by President Obama and Vice President “Amtrak Joe” Biden that the administration will dedicate $8 billion of stimulus funding for high-speed rail projects in 13 major rail corridors in 31 states around the U.S. The ...
“We don’t quit. I don’t quit.”
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1PWQtCDaYY&feature=featured
“To Democrats, I would remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve problems, not run for the hills.” —President Obama, Jan. 27, 2010
That was our favorite line of the State ...
In Defense of Liberalism and Good Government
“Work as if you are in the early days of a better nation.” —Alasdair Gray
We were delighted to see President Obama’s fiery, fightin’ spirit Friday as he swung into Elyria, Ohio, in full campaign mode with his “never stop fighting” speech. You go, O.
But, listen, populist rhetoric alone ...
Democrats, Be Bold. Do Not Freak Out.
Stand up straight. No cringing, no cowering.
The loss of the Massachusetts senate seat is dismaying but unfortunately not surprising. What worries us is that Democrats will learn the wrong lessons from the loss—they have a way of doing that. Some have said “we should slow down, ease off.” But ...
OMG! Wake-Up Calls and Queasy Stomachs
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 Massachusetts to vote ...
“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, 1967, in an address at ...
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 would like the whole ...
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 scale, lasted only 15 ...