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 the Delta Blues musician Robert Wilkins who later became known as Reverend Robert Wilkins. Enjoy!
Robert Wilkins - Prodigal Son
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."
-- Henry Ford
News and Opinion
11 Years of Guantanamo; Brennan CIA Nomination Consolidates Drone Assassination Strategy
The Grilling that John Brennan Deserves
As Washington’s pundit class sees it, Defense Secretary-designee Chuck Hagel deserves a tough grilling over his hesitancy to go to war with Iran and his controversial detection of a pro-Israel lobby operating in the U.S. capital, but prospective CIA Director John Brennan should get only a few polite queries about his role helping to create and sustain Dick Cheney’s “dark side.”
During the upcoming confirmation hearings of these two nominees for President Barack Obama’s national security team, we all may get a revealing look into the upside-down world of Washington’s moral and geopolitical priorities, where too much skepticism about rushing to war is disqualifying and complicity in war crimes is okay, maybe even expected.
Merkley Statement on Brennan Nomination
Washington, DC- Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley issued the following statement on the nomination of John Brennan as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
“I will certainly be looking to hear how John Brennan responds to concerns that have been raised about his nomination. I have followed reports that Brennan, as a former senior official in the Bush-era CIA, knew about and may have supported controversial programs, including the use of torture, extraordinary rendition, secret prisons, and warrantless wiretapping. If true, connections to these programs would be cause for concern. I want to hear clear answers from him about how he may have been involved in these activities, as well as his vision for the Agency.”
"Zero Dark Thirty" Filmmakers Start a Debate, But Don't Participate
"Mark and I are truly awed by the remarkable national conversation that this movie has spurred. As filmmakers, nothing is more flattering, humbling, and quite frankly, somewhat intimidating," director Kathryn Bigelow told the audience at the Newseum Tuesday night. Yet she didn't stick around for any of that "remarkable conversation," absconding before the film started and missing the post-screening panel discussion. During that panel, screenwriter Mark Boal boasted that the heated argument over the film and torture are "a compliment to the work that Kathryn did—that she created a film that's so complex, and so dense, and so multifaceted."
But Boal, too, fielded no queries from a well-informed audience of journalists, government officials, policy advocates. At the event, former Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, now the film industry's top lobbyist, called the film "courageous." Yet after Boal answered a few chummy queries from ABC News' Martha Raddatz, burly men in suits blocked the entrance to the stage and later escorted the courageous screenwriter to a black SUV waiting outside.
"One Of The Biggest And Most Elaborate Falsehoods Ever Sold To The American People"
Treasury nominee Jack Lew caused devastating harm to American people and economy says William Black
The Inconvenient Truth About Jack Lew
Not only did Lew go along with the Clinton administration’s policy, he continued to endorse a radical deregulatory approach to financial markets as a board member of the Hamilton Project, funded by Rubin at the Brookings Institution. Lew’s myopic view of the origins of the economic meltdown, at odds even with Greenspan’s own admission of culpability, hardly qualifies him for the top economic position in the Obama administration. As Sanders told the Post this week, “In my view, we need a Treasury secretary who is prepared to stand up to corporate America and their powerful lobbyists and fight for policies that protect the working families in our country. I do not believe Mr. Lew is that person.”
But if we need that quality in a Treasury secretary, we certainly need it even more in the president, and given Obama’s appointments—from Lawrence Summers through Geithner and now Lew—it is clear that he is not that person. In announcing Lew’s nomination, the president only once referenced his chief of staff’s Wall Street experience, noting, “He helped oversee ... one of our largest investment banks.” That he also helped destroy it was buried as an inconvenient truth.
It is also an inconvenient truth for those “progressives” who gave Obama a pass on the dismal economic performance of his first term when he bailed out the banks but not their victims. At a time when the Federal Reserve continues to purchase $40 billion each month of Wall Street’s toxic assets and provide the ever more concentrated financial conglomerates with interest free funds, the president dares brag that “We’ve put in place rules to prevent that kind of financial meltdown from ever happening again.” No, he hasn’t, and with Lew holding down the fort at Treasury, he won’t.
Idle No More: Think Occupy, But With Deep Deep Roots
But I sense that it's every bit as important as the Occupy movement that transfixed the world a year ago; it feels like it wells up from the same kind of long-postponed and deeply-felt passion that powered the Arab spring. And I know firsthand that many of its organizers are among the most committed and skilled activists I've ever come across. In fact, if Occupy's weakness was that it lacked roots (it had to take over public places, after all, which proved hard to hold on to), this new movement's great strength is that its roots go back farther than history. More than any other people on this continent, they know what exploitation and colonization are all about, and so it's natural that at a moment of great need they're leading the resistance to the most profound corporatization we've ever seen. I mean, we've just come off the hottest year ever in America, the year when we broke the Arctic ice cap; the ocean is 30 percent more acidic than it was when I was born.
Thanks to the same fossil fuel industry that's ripping apart Aboriginal lands, we're at the very end of our rope as a species; it's time, finally, to listen to the people we've spent the last five centuries shunting to one side.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
A Little Night Music
Robert Wilkins - That's No Way To Get Along
Robert Wilkins - Get Away Blues
Rev. Robert Wilkins - Streamline 'Frisco Limited/Wish I Was In Heaven Sitting Down
Robert Wilkins - Alabama Blues
Robert Wilkins - New Stock Yard Blues
Rev. Robert Wilkins - Don't Let Nobody Turn You 'Round
Robert Wilkins - Police Sergeant Blues
Robert Wilkins - I Do Blues
Robert Wilkins - Dirty Deal Blues
Robert Wilkins - Old Jim Canan's
Remember when progressive debate was about our values and not about a "progressive" candidate? Remember when progressive websites championed progressive values and didn't tell progressives to shut up about values so that "progressive" candidates can get elected?
Come to where the debate is not constrained by oaths of fealty to persons or parties.
Come to where the pie is served in a variety of flavors.
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." ~ Noam Chomsky
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