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 evenings music features Jimmy Witherspoon and a few talented but relatively obscure Blues Shouters. Enjoy!
Jimmy Witherspoon & Don Weller - Money's Getting Cheaper
“Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves."
-- George Gordon Byron
News and Opinion
Rich Should Be Happy with Cliff Deal
And the sound of a giant can rattling on asphalt was heard throughout the land...
Fiscal Stickup: Obama signs Satisfy the 1% Owners Demands Act of 2012 into law
President Barack Obama has signed into law the contentious compromise bill hammered out in Congress, narrowly averting the US ‘fiscal cliff’ of tax hikes and drastic, immediate cuts in spending, the White House said early Thursday.
In a statement, the White House said that Obama late on Wednesday signed the “American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012,” raising taxes on households earning above $450,000 and delaying spending decisions for two months.
Officials said the US president, who is on vacation in Hawaii, signed the measure electronically by autopen.
Cliff Deal a "Moderate" Betrayal
Exposé Reveals Wal-Mart Blocked Improvements Despite Vows to Improve Safety After Deadly Factory Fire
FUrther evidence that the Reagan Era is back like a mouthful of bad reflux:
World Bank investor backs luxury hotels over poverty-reduction programs
Accra is a city of choking red dust where almost no rain falls for three months at a time and clothes hung out on a line dry in 15 minutes. So the new five-star Mövenpick hotel affords a haven of sorts in Ghana’s crowded capital, with manicured lawns, amply watered vegetation, and uniformed waiters gliding poolside on roller skates to offer icy drinks to guests. A high concrete wall rings the grounds, keeping out the city’s overflowing poor who hawk goods in the street by day and the homeless who lie on the sidewalks by night.
The Mövenpick, which opened in 2011, fits the model of a modern international luxury hotel, with 260 rooms, seven floors, and 13,500 square feet of retail space displaying $2,000 Italian handbags and other wares. But it is exceptional in at least one respect: It was financed by a combination of two very different entities: a multibillion-dollar investment company largely controlled by a Saudi prince, and the poverty-fighting World Bank.
The investment company, Kingdom Holding Company, has a market value of $12 billion, and Forbes ranks its principal owner, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, as the world’s 29th-richest person, estimating his net worth at $18 billion. The World Bank, meanwhile, contributed its part through its International Finance Corporation (IFC), set up back in 1956to muster cheap loans and other financial support for private businesses that contribute to its planet-improving mandate. “At the World Bank, we have made the world’s most pressing development issue to reduce global poverty our mission,” the bank proclaims.
Why, then, did the IFC give a Saudi prince’s company an attractively priced $26 million loan to help build the Mövenpick, a hotel the prince was fully capable of financing himself? The answer is that the IFC’s portfolio of billions of dollars in loans and investments is not in fact primarily targeted at helping the impoverished. At least as important is the goal of making a profit for the World Bank.
Bush Era Warrantless Wiretapping is Totally Legal
Idle No More: Hints of a Global Super-Movement
What started as a murmur in early October from First Nations People in Canada in response to Bill C45 has become a movement that echoes the sentiments of people all over the world, a battle cry of love for the planet, "Idle No More." At first glance it might appear that this movement is isolated and doesn't effect you if you are not native or if you don't live in Canada, yet it does. It may appear that this resistance is not related to The Occupy Movement, The Arab Spring, The Unify Movement, Anonymous, or any of the other popular uprisings sparked by social unrest, but it is.
At its very core, all of these movements have very common threads and are born from common issues facing people everywhere. Those who represent financial interests that value money over life itself, that are devoid of basic respect for human decency, and for nature have dictated the future for too long and people everywhere are standing up to say, "No more." This non-violent social uprising is viral in the minds and hearts of everyone across the planet determined to bring healing to our troubled communities, our planet, and the corruption that is eroding the highest places of governments around the world. ...
Society and nature work in similar ways to our own body's immune system. We are given a symptom that causes us to be aware that there is an illness that needs to be addressed. We can try to suppress the symptom, but that does not heal the illness. Popular uprisings with very core commonalities are spreading all over the planet. Exploitation of our environment, as well as the exploitation of people and cultures for the sake of financial gain is immoral and must be stopped at the highest levels of our governments. It is possible to have a thriving economy and environmental ethics.
Here in America, the response to Occupy is tucked into NDAA as Washington prepares ways to suppress the symptoms of social discord. Without addressing the illness at its root nothing will change. It is like the mythical Many-Headed Hydra, if you cut one head off, two more will grow back. Popular uprisings will continue here and all over the world until leaders understand that people want real fundamental change in policy. Governments should lead by example if they want to be respected.
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
Jimmy Witherspoon with Art Pepper - Past Forty Blues
Gatemouth Moore - Somebody's Got to Go
Gatemouth Moore - My mother thinks I'm something
Boogie Woogie Papa - Gatemouth Moore
Gatemouth Moore - I Ain't Mad at You
Gatemouth Moore - Did you ever love a woman
Kansas City Jimmy - Cheatin' Woman
Jimmy Witherspoon - Blues in the morning
Jimmy Witherspoon - It's a Low-down Dirty Shame
Jimmy Witherspoon - Love Me Right
Jimmy Witherspoon & T-Bone Walker - I've been treated wrong
Eric Burdon and Jimmy Witherspoon - The Laws Must Change
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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