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 jazz saxophonist Lester Young. Enjoy!
Lester Young - Jammin the Blues
“Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.”
-- George Bernard Shaw
News and Opinion
Wikileaks Exposes the TPP as a Capitulation to Corporate Interests
ZEESE: The chapter that was released deals with intellectual property. And what was interesting about it was it really showed that the Obama administration was pushing for the agreement in the direction of the transnational corporations more than any other nation. In fact, other nations are resisting. And many times the United States is isolated, 'cause it's so extreme in pushing for corporate power--it's really quite amazing--going further than he has even said that his administration would go under domestic law. So it'll make things worse than Obama says he would do at home.
Fighting for His Presidency
Just four weeks after scoring one of the cleanest political victories of his presidency over the government shutdown, Obama’s job-approval rating is at a record low, and a majority of Americans don’t believe him to be honest and trustworthy. Democratic political strategists are throwing their hands in the air in desperation. Worst of all for Obama, his own party in Congress senses a titanic shift in public opinion. Fearing for their jobs in next year’s midterm elections and seeing cover in former President Bill Clinton‘s criticism of the President, Hill Democrats are on the verge of open rebellion.
Obamacare's Problems Run Deeper Than Glitchy Website, Cancellation Notices
There is growing frustration and anger at the administration in Congress from both Democrats and Republicans. Much of it is being expressed by the same people whose hypocrisy and obstructionism is responsible for a failure to do the right thing in the first place. Calls from members of Congress to delay the ACA’s implementation or to repeal it entirely will intensify.
Instead of expanding our existing Medicare program, which has been working well for almost 50 years and is our country’s most efficient and least intrusive health care financing program, the ACA creates complex new law that perpetuates and reinforces the chaos and confusion of our hodgepodge of public and private insurance programs. Coverage and financial assistance continue to depend on an individual’s employment status, income, place of residence, age, conjectures about future health status, and many other factors, some of them subject to change with little or no warning and many impossible to predict. ...
We have to ask ourselves, who are the winners from requiring us to go through the expense and confusion inherent in trying to implement a law of over 2,000 pages? The answer is clear. It’s a health insurance industry that profits from complexity and confusion, and providers of pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, devices and services who benefit excessively from the very weak cost controls inherent in our fragmented system of paying for services.
The losers are all the rest of us. The ACA’s objective, access to health care for all Americans, could have been accomplished much more easily with far less confusion, expense and complexity.
Priorities. I guess if you can't get support from your party in Congress on the basis of your great ideas and spectacular policy, you can always bribe them.
Obama taps wealthy Philadelphia donors after day of healthcare drama
Barack Obama has called on rich donors to "pay" for a new kind of politics, as he attended his 31st private fundraiser of the year in the home of a cable television executive.
On Thursday night, amid criticism of the time the president is spending on political financing, Obama took a five-hour detour to fly to Philadelphia during one of the toughest days of his presidency, in order to raise more than $1m for midterm election campaigns in the Senate.
On Tuesday, a Guardian investigation revealed that Obama is carrying out nearly twice as much fundraising as recent predecessors averaged after their re-election year, and more than three times as much as George W Bush averaged in the same period.
In his speech to donors at the home of Comcast executive David Cohen, Obama acknowledged the distorting effect of campaign finance. ...
Tickets for the event ranged in price from $10,000 to $32,400 and the eight tables of guests contributed more than $1m, according to Cohen.
Russell Brand calls David Cameron a 'filthy, dirty, posh wanker
Russell Brand has called David Cameron and George Osborne “filthy, dirty, posh wankers” on fellow comedian Alan Carr’s talk show.
Following on from the Newsnight interview in which he encouraged viewers to spark a political “revolution” and not vote, the 38-year-old star has now criticised the government for being “mean and tight”.
“If you’re always cutting benefits and being horrible, it’s because you don’t know how to f*@$ properly,” he told Carr on Chatty Man, which airs this Friday.
“I think if your job is to look after the country and you don’t care about the people who need it most, you’re out of order, and you’re a filthy, dirty, posh wanker,” he argued.
Days after the prime minister gave a speech in favour of austerity surrounded by gold-embellished furniture, Brand insists that his privileged background means Cameron is unable to relate to the society he governs.
Bill Maher Minimum Wage New Rules
Our Government Has Weaponized the Internet
The internet backbone — the infrastructure of networks upon which internet traffic travels — went from being a passive infrastructure for communication to an active weapon for attacks.
According to revelations about the QUANTUM program, the NSA can “shoot” (their words) an exploit at any target it desires as his or her traffic passes across the backbone. It appears that the NSA and GCHQ were the first to turn the internet backbone into a weapon; absent Snowdens of their own, other countries may do the same and then say, “It wasn’t us. And even if it was, you started it.”
If the NSA can hack Petrobras, the Russians can justify attacking Exxon/Mobil. If GCHQ can hack Belgacom to enable covert wiretaps, France can do the same to AT&T. If the Canadians target the Brazilian Ministry of Mines and Energy, the Chinese can target the U.S. Department of the Interior. We now live in a world where, if we are lucky, our attackers may be every country our traffic passes through except our own.
Which means the rest of us — and especially any company or individual whose operations are economically or politically significant — are now targets. All cleartext traffic is not just information being sent from sender to receiver, but is a possible attack vector.
[See article for an explanation of how they did it.]
Glenn Greenwald, James Bamford, Ariel Dorfman and Bruce Schneier - Presented by PEN American Center in partnership with the ACLU and the Center on National Security at Fordham Law.
They're Watching Us: So What?
CIA Creating Vast Database of American's Personal Financial Records: Report
'Collected data goes beyond basic financial records and uses Social Security numbers to tie financial activity to a specific person
In a news story published Friday, the Journal reporting shows the CIA program "collects information from U.S. money-transfer companies including Western Union" and that some of the data goes "beyond basic financial records, such as U.S. Social Security numbers, which can be used to tie the financial activity to a specific person."
According to the Journal, the program
is carried out under the same provision of the Patriot Act that enables the National Security Agency to collect nearly all American phone records, the officials said. Like the NSA program, the mass collection of financial transactions is authorized by a secret national-security court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
The CIA, as a foreign-intelligence agency, is barred from targeting Americans in its intelligence collection. But it can conduct domestic operations for foreign intelligence purposes.
As the ACLU warned from its very inception, the U.S. Patriot Act would allow the CIA to (once again) turn its spying capabilities on Americans by permitting "a vast array of information gathering on U.S. citizens from school records, financial transactions, Internet activity, telephone conversations, information gleaned from grand jury proceedings and criminal investigations."
C.I.A. Collects Global Data On Transfers Of Money
The Central Intelligence Agency is secretly collecting bulk records of international money transfers handled by companies like Western Union -- including transactions into and out of the United States -- under the same law that the National Security Agency uses for its huge database of Americans' phone records, according to current and former government officials.
The C.I.A. financial records program, which the officials said was authorized by provisions in the Patriot Act and overseen by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, offers evidence that the extent of government data collection programs is not fully known and that the national debate over privacy and security may be incomplete. ...
Several officials also said more than one other bulk collection program has yet to come to light. ...
Lawmakers on the House and Senate Judiciary Committees have been trying to gain more information about other bulk collection programs.
In September, Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin and an author of the original Patriot Act, sent a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. asking if the administration was collecting bulk records aside from the phone data. An aide said he had yet to get a response. Even lawmakers on the Intelligence Committees have indicated that they are not sure they understand the entire landscape of what the government is doing in terms of bulk collection.
Senators Dianne Feinstein of California and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, recently sent a classified letter to Mr. Clapper asking for a full accounting of every other national security program that involves bulk collection of data at home or abroad, according to government officials.
Burning the Evidence: Gunmen Torch Records Documenting War Crimes, Missing Children in El Salvador
Top judge criticises DoJ for not holding individuals accountable
Judge Jed Rakoff, an outspoken jurist with a history of questioning regulatory settlements, said a shift over the past several years to prosecute companies and not individuals for wrongdoing “has led to some lax and dubious behaviour on the part of prosecutors”.
Public criticism from a judge is unusual and comes as the DoJ has signalled to major banks that it will bring civil charges against them for allegedly mis-selling mortgage-backed securities in the lead-up to the financial crisis. The civil review comes as the statute of limitations for most criminal violations has passed. ...
“The DoJ has never taken the position that all the top executives involved in the events leading up to the financial crisis were innocent, but rather has offered one or another excuse for not criminally prosecuting them – excuses that, on inspection, appear unconvincing,” Judge Rakoff said.
In response, the DoJ said it had “a number of financial investigations open and some of the best prosecutors in the country are aggressively working on them.”
Judge Rakoff Blasts Breuer, Prosecution of Companies Rather than Individuals in Bar Speech
Rakoff threw down another gauntlet in a New York Bar Association speech on Tuesday. I’m taking the liberty of quoting it at length because his rebuke is a breath of fresh air and roused the Department of Justice to issue a “we really are doing our job” response. ...
And Rakoff described why prosecuting companies, rather than targeting individuals, produces lame outcomes:
But if your priority is prosecuting the company, a different scenario takes place. Early in the investigation, you invite in counsel to the company and explain to him or her why you suspect fraud. He or she responds by assuring you that the company wants to cooperate and do the right thing, and to that end the company has hired a former Assistant U.S. Attorney, now a partner at a respected law firm, to do an internal investigation. The company’s counsel asks you to defer your investigation until the company’s own internal investigation is completed, on the condition that the company will share its results with you. In order to save time and resources, you agree. Six months later the company’s counsel returns, with a detailed report showing that mistakes were made but that the company is now intent on correcting them. You and the company then agree that the company will enter into a deferred prosecution agreement that couples some immediate fines with the imposition of expensive but internal prophylactic measures. For all practical purposes the case is now over. You are happy because you believe that you have helped prevent future crimes; the company is happy because it has avoided a devastating indictment; and perhaps the happiest of all are the executives, or former executives, who actually committed the underlying misconduct, for they are left untouched.
I suggest that this is not the best way to proceed. Although it is supposedly justified in terms of preventing future crimes, I suggest that the future deterrent value of successfully prosecuting individuals far outweighs the prophylactic benefits of imposing internal compliance measures that are often little more than window-dressing. Just going after the company is also both technically and morally suspect. It is technically suspect because, under the law, you should not indict or threaten to indict a company unless you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that some managerial agent of the company committed the alleged crime; and if you can prove that, why not indict the manager? And from a moral standpoint, punishing a company and its many innocent employees and shareholders for the crimes committed by some unprosecuted individuals seems contrary to elementary notions of moral responsibility.
On the one hand, it’s good to see Rakoff again rattling cages. On the other, it’s disheartening that the comparatively restrained remarks of a Federal judge serve as bold talk. It’s yet another reminder of how candid discussion of fraud and criminal conduct in the crisis has been successfully mislabled by a lapdog media as naive or ill informed.
Jailed for Life for Stealing a $159 Jacket? 3,200 Serving Life Without Parole For Non-Violent Crimes
And here's why people who commit non-violent crimes get life in prison. It's profitable for the 1%:
Cash Cons: American private jails reap record profits
Speaking of criminals - here are a couple that deserve jail for life terms...
Obama Administration still protecting George W. Bush
US blocks publication of Chilcot’s report on how Britain went to war with Iraq
Although the Cabinet Office has been under fire for stalling the progress of the four-year Iraq Inquiry by Sir John Chilcot, senior diplomatic sources in the US and Whitehall indicated that it is officials in the White House and the US Department of State who have refused to sanction any declassification of critical pre- and post-war communications between George W Bush and Tony Blair.
Without permission from the US government, David Cameron faces the politically embarrassing situation of having to block evidence, on Washington’s orders, from being included in the report of an expensive and lengthy British inquiry. ...
The protected documents relating to the Bush-Blair exchanges are said to provide crucial evidence for already-written passages that are highly critical of the covert way in which Mr Blair committed British troops to the US-led invasion.
[Wow! Check out this (presumably American) Diplomat's totally awesome, over-the-top hissy fit; I wonder if he's chanelling Obama:]
One high-placed diplomatic source said: “The US are highly possessive when documents relate to the presence of the President or anyone close to him. Tony Blair is involved in a dialogue in many of these documents, and naturally someone else is at the other end – the President. Therefore this is not Tony Blair’s or the UK Government’s property to disclose.”
The source was adamant that “Chilcot, or anyone in London, does not decide what documents relating to a US President are published”.
'Gitmo 2': US mulls inmate rehabitation center in Yemen
The Evening Greens
'Missing Heat' Discovery Prompts New Estimate of Global Warming: Arctic Warming Fast
An interdisciplinary team of researchers say they have found 'missing heat' in the climate system, casting doubt on suggestions that global warming has slowed or stopped over the past decade.
Observational data on which climate records are based cover only 84 per cent of the planet -- with Polar regions and parts of Africa largely excluded.
Now Dr Kevin Cowtan, a computational scientist at the University of York, and Robert Way, a cryosphere specialist and PhD student at the University of Ottawa, have reconstructed the 'missing' global temperatures using a combination of observations from satellites and surface data from weather stations and ships on the peripheries of the unsampled regions.
The new research published in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society shows that the Arctic is warming at about eight times the pace of the rest of the planet. Previous studies by the UK Met Office based on the HadCRUT4 dataset, which only covers about five-sixths of the globe, suggest that global warming has slowed substantially since 1997. The new research suggests, however, that the addition of the 'missing' data indicates that the rate of warming since 1997 has been two and a half times greater than shown in the Met Office studies. Evidence for the rapid warming of the Arctic includes observations from high latitude weather stations, radiosonde and satellite observations of temperatures in the lower atmosphere and reanalysis of historical data.
Want to Piss Off the White House? Talk About Climate Change
Politico's Glenn Thrush has a revealing new piece on the pressures of being in President Obama's cabinet—a supposedly fun thing most of its members will never do again. There a lot of nuggets in there, but one in particular stood out: the White House's private outrage at former Secretary of Energy Steve Chu's impromptu decision to talk about climate change while visiting an island nation uniquely threatened by it. On a trip to Trinidad and Tobago with the president, a staffer persuaded press secretary Robert Gibbs to let Chu answer a few questions:
Gibbs reluctantly assented. Then Chu took the podium to tell the tiny island nation that it might soon, sorry to say, be underwater—which not only insulted the good people of Trinidad and Tobago but also raised the climate issue at a time when the White House wanted the economy, and the economy only, on the front burner. "I think the Caribbean countries face rising oceans, and they face increase in the severity of hurricanes," Chu said. "This is something that is very, very scary to all of us. … The island states … some of them will disappear."
Earnest slunk backstage. "OK, we'll never do that again," he said as Gibbs glared. A phone rang. It was White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel calling Messina to snarl, "If you don't kill [Chu], I'm going to."
Emanuel didn't kill Chu, although that would have made for a more interesting story.
Fears Confirmed: Offshore Fracking a Toxic Mess
Offshore hydraulic fracturing operations off the coast of California use highly toxic chemicals that are often released directly into water along the state's coast, the Center for Biological Diversity revealed today, calling on the state's Coastal Commission to halt fracking for oil and gas in state waters.
In an analysis sent by letter to the Commission ahead of a meeting this week in Newport Beach, The Center for Biological diversity pulls from data disclosed by oil companies and obtained from government documents that highlights seven risky chemicals used in "hundreds of recently revealed frack jobs in state waters" that directly violate the Coastal Act.
Multiple oil platforms, according to the research, are discharging wastewater directly into the Santa Barbara Channel, according to a government document, and other areas along the California Coast.
Water usage by fracking operations challenged in B.C. Supreme Court
VANCOUVER - Environmental groups are taking the British Columbia Oil and Gas Commission to court for allowing oil and gas companies to withdraw vast quantities of fresh water from lakes, rivers and streams for fracking operations without proper approval.
The lawsuit seeks an order declaring the Commission’s practice of repeatedly granting short-term water approvals to oil and gas companies is unlawful. Encana Corporation, one of B.C.’s natural gas players, is also named in the suit.
“Our clients’ position is that the Oil and Gas Commission is violating the Water Act and thereby unlawfully allowing oil and gas companies drain water from lakes, rivers and streams in the northeast for drilling and fracking,” said Karen Campbell, Ecojustice staff lawyer. “Our clients are worried that the hundreds of short term approvals issued every year under the Water Act are having an impact on water resources and the environment.”
Ecojustice has brought this case on behalf of Sierra Club BC and the Wilderness Committee.
Texas Pipeline Fire May Burn for 36 Hours
The fire from an LPG pipeline explosion that triggered the evacuation of the town of Milford on Thursday is expected to burn well into Friday, Ellis County officials said.
Officials said crews were excavating at the site at about 9:30 a.m. Thursday when a 10-inch liquid petroleum gas pipeline was punctured. Chevron, who owns the line, immediately evacuated their crew of five; all escaped without injury. When the line exploded and caught fire, several vehicles and equipment parked at the site along Cosby Road were destroyed and burned.
At about 2:30 p.m., Chevron released a statement that said the flow of product along that particular pipeline in the West Texas LPG system had been shut-off, though the residual burn-off continues. Officials said Thursday afternoon that it may take up to 36 hours for the line to burn out and to cap the line.
By 4:30 p.m., seven hours after the explosion, the height of the flames coming from the pipeline had been significantly reduced. Officials warn that a real threat exists and that they are watching a 14-inch pipeline that is near the pipeline that ruptured. There is concern that if the line gets too hot due to the nearby fire, it too may explode.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
DiFi’s Circular Defense of the Phone Dragnet’s Legality Proves It Is Illegal
Boston Police Charge Two Journalists With Felonies For Doing Their Jobs
Jeydon only wants his photo in the yearbook Update: It's in!
Grey Wolves betrayed by Fish & Wildlife Service
A Little Night Music
Lester Young & Coleman Hawkins - Jumpin' with the Synphony Sid
Lester Young - Blues for Greasy
Count Basie w/Lester Young - Shoe Shine Boy
Billie Holiday w/Lester Young - Fine And Mellow
Count Basie w/Lester Young - Lester Leaps In
Lester Young with Oscar Peterson Quartet - Ad Lib Blues
Lester Young - Blue Lester
Lester Young - DB (Detention Barrack) Blues
Lester Young - Prez's Mood
Lester Young Quintet - Jump, Lester, Jump
Lester Young - Big Eye Blues
Billie Holiday w/Lester Young - I can't get started
Lester Young and Harry Edison - One O' Clock Jump
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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