Last June we were handed an opportunity to block the funding of our illegal, murderous, counterproductive, catastrophic, and hated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The president insisted on an off-the-books "emergency supplemental" bill, and the Senate added an IMF bailout to the bill, leading all the Republicans in the House to commit what for years they'd called treason: they all voted No on war money.

So, we only needed 39 Democrats to vote No, and we could have stopped the thing, at least temporarily. We had a week-long knock-down drag-out fight, with the White House telling freshmen Democrats they would be "dead to us" if they didn't vote Yes. And we still persuaded 32 Democrats to vote No.

Then we continued building opposition to the wars, and awareness of the need to choose between wars and jobs. But we had to hope that we would again be handed a "supplemental" vote and that again some crazy scheme would be found to get all the Republicans to vote No. If these wishes could be granted, then we would only have to find 40 Democrats to stand with the majority of Americans, soldiers, Iraqis, and Afghans. Otherwise, we'd need 218 congress members.

Political satire and drama comes to the Columbus Performing Arts Center, Saturday, Feb 6, with the help of the Available Light Theatre company and the Phoenix Theatre for Children. The play, "Welcome to the Saudi Arabia of Coal," is about life in the coal fields of Appalachia where men and women chain themselves to heavy machinery to stop mountain top removal mining, and where others try to protect, sometimes violently, jobs the mining industry provides.send comments

"It's totally possible to conceive of an evening of theater that will be entertaining and moving but also have relevance to something very current,” said Matt Slaybaugh who writes and directs for the theater company and teaches at the Columbus College of Art and Design.

This isn't defense.
The new budget from the White House will push U.S. military spending well above $2 billion a day.
Foreclosing the future of our country should not be confused with defending it.
Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors, the New York Times reports this morning (February 2). send comments

It isn't defense to preclude new domestic initiatives for a country that desperately needs them: for healthcare, jobs, green technologies, carbon reduction, housing, education, nutrition, mass transit . . .

When a nation becomes obsessed with the guns of war, social programs must inevitably suffer, Martin Luther King Jr. pointed out. We can talk about guns and butter all we want to, but when the guns are there with all of its emphasis you dont even get good oleo. These are facts of life.

This isn't "defense."

The new budget from the White House will push U.S. military spending well above $2 billion a day.

Foreclosing the future of our country should not be confused with defending it.

"Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors," the New York Times reports this morning (February 2).

It isn't defense to preclude new domestic initiatives for a country that desperately needs them: for healthcare, jobs, green technologies, carbon reduction, housing, education, nutrition, mass transit . . .

"When a nation becomes obsessed with the guns of war, social programs must inevitably suffer," Martin Luther King Jr. pointed out. "We can talk about guns and butter all we want to, but when the guns are there with all of its emphasis you don't even get good oleo. These are facts of life."

At least Lyndon Johnson had a "war on poverty." For a while anyway, till his war on Vietnam destroyed it.

Congressman Donald Payne (D., N.J.) has voted against war funding bills for years. Last summer he was one of 32 heroes to vote No under intense pressure from the White House to vote Yes. When I asked him a couple of years ago to sign onto impeaching Bush he immediately said "Sure!" and he did it.

Today I asked him if he would commit to voting No on the next $33 billion for war. I asked him privately, just after he'd given a long speech to a Progressive Democrats of America conference in New Jersey, a speech about how much he opposes the wars.

Payne told me that he didn't want to commit to voting No on the next "emergency war supplemental" because Obama is president, echoing Jan Schakowsky's comments last June when she made a similar reversal.

"Congressman Payne," I said, "aren't the bombs the same? Isn't the dying the same?" He agreed and told me I was preaching to the choir.

"And is the only difference that a different person is president?" I asked. "Yes," he replied.