Welcome! "The Evening Blues" is a casual community diary (published Monday - Friday, 8:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features early blues composer, singer and pianist Leroy Carr. Enjoy!
Leroy Carr - Mean Mistreater Mama
“In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme"
-- Aristotle
News and Opinion
Obama Social Security Reform Ignores Data on Actual Living Standards of Seniors
Read this article, read it all:
Obama Does Social Security and Medicare
With Barack Obama putting his plan to cut Social Security and Medicare expenditures into writing in his Federal budget proposal the ability of those who voted for him to credibly deny his years of publicly stating he would do so disappeared. The pathetic pleas from liberals and progressives who only a few short months ago were assuring the unwashed masses Mr. Obama was on the cusp of a ‘liberal’ renaissance if only doubters would join them in granting him another term are today as empty as their assurances were then. And Mr. Obama’s self ‘sacrifice’ of voluntarily giving up 5% of his own $400,000 per year salary in solidarity with seniors present and future who will see their Social Security payments reduced calls into question his intelligence if sincere—the difference between the rich (Mr. Obama) voluntarily giving up a fraction of their yacht allowance versus millions of seniors choosing between eating and living indoors is fundamental. ...
Early reports even have liberal pundits sticking with the line Mr. Obama is only posturing with the proposals, despite his near decade prior explaining why he believes Social Security and Medicare must be cut to be ‘saved.’ However, this is truly a ‘let them eat cake’ moment. Mr. Obama’s policies will needlessly, and in economic terms gratuitously, hurt a lot of people—overwhelmingly those who self-identify as the Democrats’ political ‘base.’ And lest there be confusion over the matter, in his first term Mr. Obama fully restored the fortunes of America’s ruling class at several trillion dollars of public expense before proposing these cuts. ...
Mr. Obama’s delivery of several trillion dollars of public wealth to the banks in ongoing bailouts was sold as a way to ‘get banks lending again,’ ‘private’ Keynesianism, to raise the quantity of private debt issued to bolster consumption. But wholly reviving insolvent banks has no legitimacy in any economic theory. This is why the bailouts were, and still are, framed as liquidity provision when they are in fact solvency provision. ... The difference between the Federal government providing ‘liquidity’ to markets and restoring solvency to insolvent banks is more than a technicality. In the case of liquidity provision the government temporarily floods markets with money to facilitate transactions during bank panics– it is the ability to transact that is restored. In the case of restoring solvency the Federal government both buys bad assets from the banks that through fraud and / or incompetence rendered themselves insolvent and it provides subsidies from which banks can ‘rebuild’ their balance sheets. Both are transfers of public resources to private interests demonstrated by history to be economically destructive. ...
To those paying attention, the Dodd-Frank legislation being sold as a way to ‘reign-in’ bailed out banks contains ‘Cyprus’ clauses that leave banks (or their creditors, beginning with derivatives counter-parties) no alternative than to seize insured deposits when they need their next inevitable bailout.
Hat tip to Joanneleon:
Carville: I Think Obama Likes Angering Liberals
Appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Carville said he thinks Obama relishes the commendation he's received from deficit hawks like New York Times columnist David Brooks and host Joe Scarborough. Asked by co-host Mike Barnicle how the President will respond to the outrage from the left-wing of the Democratic Party, Carville was blunt.
"I think he likes that," Carville said.
Budget Ax Targets Heating Aid
Spending on the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program would be reduced to $2.97 billion in the fiscal 2014 spending package that President Obama unveiled April 10.
It’s the latest reduction in LIHEAP funding, which has remained set at $3.4 billion since fiscal 2012. That’s down from $5.1 billion in fiscal 2010. ...
“With poverty increasing across the nation and millions of people still struggling to recover from the recent economic disaster, reducing funding to this vital program is unthinkable,” said Marsha Belcher, board chair of the National Fuel Funds Network.
ObamaCare Clusterfuck: IRS coverage ruling throws 500,000 children under the bus
Wendy Lazarus of The Children's Partnership in HuffPo:
Today, 52 percent of uninsured Americans say the main reason they don't have insurance is because they can't afford it. Unless the ACA changes this situation, it cannot succeed. Astoundingly -- since it is in direct conflict with the central goal of the ACA -- the Internal Revenue Service recently issued a ruling on how subsidy levels will be determined. Their ruling poses a huge affordability problem for families with children. It says that subsidies for families will be based solely on whether the individual employee's coverage is affordable; if it is, the whole family is ineligible for subsidies, even where the employer's family coverage is unaffordable. As a result, nearly half of a million children across the country are expected to remain uninsured because parents would not be able to afford coverage for the whole family.
The Truth About Corporate Tax Rates
US Govt. can read your emails, text messages, DMs and chats without a warrant
Internal Revenue Service guidelines state that they can access your email, direct message tweets, and even your Facebook chats and cell phone text messages without a search warrant, according to the results of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request initiated by the ACLU.
As the ACLU notes, sadly the federal law governing all of this is “hopefully outdated.” ”It draws a distinction between email that is stored on an email provider’s server for 180 days or less, and email that is older or has been opened,” writes Nathan Freed Wessler, a staff attorney at the ACLU. “The former requires a warrant; the latter does not.”
In other words, the law still treats email as some newfangled gimmick that real people don’t use for serious things. So if you have an email saved that’s over 180 days old – who would do that? – clearly you intended for the entire world to read it, because no one in the right mind would have email that old. Right? ...
How would you know if the government did this to you? Well, you wouldn’t necessarily. If the government uses a warrant, they don’t have to tell you. If they don’t use a warrant, they are required to tell you, but can delay it 90 days in the interest of the investigation (i.e., they don’t want to tip you off). But then, at the end of the 9o days they can delay notification for another 90 days, and so on, and so on, and so on. So you may never find out.
‘The Nightmare Has Started Again,’ According to Hunger Striking Guantanamo Prisoner
A prisoner, who has been held in detention for eleven years without charge or trial, has told an attorney that the prison authorities are trying to “break Muslims.” He is participating in a major hunger strike that has been ongoing since early February and shared details on his health as a result of his participation and what is fueling the hunger strike.
Clive Stafford Smith, executive director of the UK-based legal action charity, Reprieve, spoke with Younus Chekkouri on the strike on April 9. Chekkouri has been in the prison for eleven years without charge or trial. He is “very, very depressed” and misses his family.” ...
The following message was offered by Chekkouri to President Barack Obama:
The nightmare has started again. For some time, things had got a bit better here, some of the guards were acting like human beings. Even if we were treated like sheep, at least we were not always mistreated. But now it has changed again. And now 86 of us have been cleared for release and we are still here. Let us leave Guantánamo with clear hearts, and without hatred. Hatred is evil, and it harms the person who is hating as well as the person who is hated.”
Gitmo vs Govt: Force-feeding via tubes in nostrils 'humane'?
Gitmo Defense Lawyers Say Somebody Has Been Accessing Their Emails
The long-troubled military trials at Guantanamo Bay were hit by revelations earlier this year that a secret censor had the ability to cut off courtroom proceedings, and that there were listening devices disguised as smoke detectors in attorney-client meeting rooms.
Now, another potential instance of compromised confidentiality at the military commissions has emerged: Defense attorneys say somebody has accessed their email and servers.
“Defense emails have ended up being provided to the prosecution, material has disappeared off the defense server, and sometimes reappeared, in different formats, or with different names,” said Rick Kammen, a lawyer for Abd Al Rahim Al Nashiri, who is accused of plotting the 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole.
In response to the apparent breaches, the military’s chief defense counsel ordered defense lawyers to stop using email for privileged or confidential communications.
“This follows on the heels of the seizure of over 500,000 e-mail containing attorney-client privileged communications as well as the loss of significant amount of defense work-product contained in shared folders,” Commander Walter Ruiz, one of the military defense counsels, said in an email.
Where are the Guantanamo legal files?
Thatcher's Funeral: World Elites, 'Death Parties'... Rubber Bullets?
As 10 Downing Street issued invitations for next week's funeral for former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, police and security forces in the UK are debating how to handle the expected presence of those who will mark the occasion with public celebrations, a form of final protest against the 'Iron Lady's' legacy of neoliberal policies and political contempt for the common good. ...
With 'death parties' planned for this weekend, and protests expected during next Wednesday's procession, the police in London announced that though they will protect the rights of those who wish to mourn Thatcher, they "have no plans" to employ harsh tactics—such as water cannons or rubber bullets—to disrupt the protests likely to arise. ...
Still, one asks whether the funeral is the appropriate venue to protest, even if the the policies of Thatcher were highly abbhorent? According to journalist and historian Dave Zirin, the time immediately following the death of "a powerful public figure" like Thatcher "is when the halo becomes permanently affixed to their head." Citing Ronald Reagan's death, he argues:
When Ronald Reagan passed away, a massive right wing machine went into motion aimed at removing him from all criticism. The Democrats certainly didn't challenge this interpretation of history and now according to polls, people under 25 would elect Reagan over President Obama, even though Reagan's ideas remain deeply unpopular. To put it crudely, the political battle over someone's memory is a political battle over policy. In Thatcher's case, if we gloss over her history of supporting tyrants, we are doomed to repeat them.
Keiser Report: Myths of Margaret Thatcher
Venezuelan Democracy: A Tension Between Centralized Power and Local Democracy
Cove Where Exxon Oil Has Been Found Is Part of Lake Conway
Local wetlands experts say that oil is in the lake, and Exxon tweaks its message.
When ExxonMobil's Pegasus pipeline ruptured on March 29, the company announced that no oil had leaked into Lake Conway, a major recreational reservoir just nine-tenths of a mile from the spill site in central Arkansas.
Some oil had spilled into a "cove adjacent to" the lake, the company said, but "Lake Conway remains oil free," according to news releases Exxon issued as recently as April 5.
That position has sparked a debate over where Lake Conway—one of Arkansas' premier fishing spots—begins and ends.
Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel told reporters, "I don't understand where this distinction is coming from. ...The cove is part of Lake Conway."
Oglala Sioux Tribe renews vow to stop XL Pipeline
PINE RIDGE RESERVATION - The Oglala Sioux Tribal Council renewed its commitment to stop TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL Pipeline at a meeting on March 26. The pipeline would slurry tar-sands crude oil from Alberta Province across the Great Plains to refineries and export facilities in Oklahoma and Texas. ...
Passage of the new Resolution 13-60, “reaffirming the Yellow Bird Steele-Poor Bear Administration opposition to the Keystone XL Pipeline” aims to keep the pipeline “from crossing the Mni Wiconi Water Line, any part of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and any and all 1851 and 1868 treaty lands,” it states.
The Mni Wiconi Rural Water Supply Project, enacted by the U.S. Congress, pipes Missouri River water to Pine Ridge, Rosebud, and Lower Brule Indian reservations, as well as to non-Indian communities in the South Dakota counties of Haakon, Jackson, Jones, Lyman, Mellette, Pennington, and Stanley.
The resolution by the Oglala Sioux Tribe, which is a 1934 Indian Reorganization Act government, explicitly supports the traditional Black Hills Sioux Nation Treaty Council's resolution approved unanimously on Feb. 18, 2012. The earlier resolution states: “The Great Sioux Nation hereby directs President Barack Obama and the United States Congress to honor the promises of the United States made through the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie treaties by prohibiting the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline and any future projects from entering and destroying our land without our consent.”
The traditional leaders’ resolution, argues against the dilbit pipeline on the grounds of international law, citing the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Action Center
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
10 Facts Obama Doesn't Want You to Know About His Social Security Slashing Budget Plan
Hell No! Joe Biden in Iowa 2015
Hell No! Lieberman told us why Social Security must be cut
One way to blackmail progressives in office — put a hostage in the bill
Congressman Grayson Asks for an Investigation into Federal Reserve’s FOMC leak
Hell No! A Fail On Every Level
Hell No! I Can't Sell This $hit to Voters!
Obama, WTF? Game Changing Attacks on Medicare
The humanity shortfall in federally funded faith-based charity
Hell NO!!! No grand bargain.
Hell No! No Grand Bargain. How did we end up with Social Security in the first place?
A Little Night Music
Leroy Carr + Scrapper Blackwell - Midnight Hour Blues
Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell - How Long Blues
Leroy Carr - (In The Evening) When The Sun Goes Down
Leroy Carr And Scrapper Blackwell - Blues Before Sunrise
Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell - Papa Wants A Cookie
Leroy Carr & Scrapper Blackwell - Blue Night Blues
Leroy Carr - Barrel House Woman
Leroy Carr & Black Boy Shine - Bad Whiskey Blues
Scrapper Blackwell and Leroy Carr ~ Alabama Women Blues
Scrapper Blackwell and Leroy Carr - Naptown Stomp
Leroy Carr- I Keep The Blues
It's National Pie Day!
The election is over, it's a new year and it's time to work on real change in new ways... and it's National Pie Day. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to tell you a little more about our new site and to start getting people signed up.
Come on over and sign up so that we can send you announcements about the site, the launch, and information about participating in our public beta testing.
Why is National Pie Day the perfect opportunity to tell you more about us? Well you'll see why very soon. So what are you waiting for?! Head on over now and be one of the first!
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