Welcome! "The Evening Blues" is a casual community diary (published Monday - Friday, 7:00 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!
Tonight's music selection celebrates New Orleans contributions to the blues, there are so many that this is likely to spill over into another night. Enjoy!
Earl King, Doctor John, Professor Longhair, Meters - Big Chief
“The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly. The rich have always objected to being governed at all.”
-– G. K. Chesterton
News
Joseph Stiglitz on Occupy Wall Street & Why US-Europe Austerity Will Only Weaken Economic Recovery
Protests Turn Into Occupations Throughout Egypt
Walker’s victory, un-sugar-coated
Democrats and labor types are coming up with a lot of excuses for Scott Walker’s victory in Wisconsin. Not all are worthless. But the excuse-making impulse should be beaten down with heavy sticks. ...
There were several things wrong with the electoral strategy (beyond, that is, the weakness of electoral strategies to begin with). Barrett was an extremely weak candidate who’d already once lost to Walker (though by a slightly narrower margin than this time). Potentially stronger candidates like Russ Feingold refused to run, probably out of fear of these results. And the bar was very high for a recall. Only 19 states have recall provisions, and Walker was just the third governor to face one. Well over half of Wisconsin voters think that recalls should be reserved only for misconduct—and less than a third approve of recalls for any reason other than misconduct (Wisconsin recall: Should there be a recall at all?).
Suppose instead that the unions had supported a popular campaign—media, door knocking, phone calling—to agitate, educate, and organize on the importance of the labor movement to the maintenance of living standards? If they’d made an argument, broadly and repeatedly, that Walker’s agenda was an attack on the wages and benefits of the majority of the population? That it was designed to remove organized opposition to the power of right-wing money in politics? That would have been more fruitful than this major defeat.
Drone attacks create terrorist safe havens, warns former CIA official
Robert Grenier, who headed the CIA's counter-terrorism center from 2004 to 2006 and was previously a CIA station chief in Pakistan, has told the Guardian that the drone programme is targeted too broadly. "It [the drone program] needs to be targeted much more finely. We have been seduced by them and the unintended consequences of our actions are going to outweigh the intended consequences," Grenier said in an interview. ...
"We have gone a long way down the road of creating a situation where we are creating more enemies than we are removing from the battlefield. We are already there with regards to Pakistan and Afghanistan," he said
Hemp legalization added to Senate farm bill
In a last minute addition to the Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act of 2012, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has submitted an amendment that would legalize the production of industrial hemp, a potential new bumper crop for U.S. farmers.
“Industrial hemp is used in many healthy and sustainable consumer products. However, the federal prohibition on growing industrial hemp has forced companies to needlessly import raw materials from other countries,” Wyden said in prepared text. “My amendment to the Farm Bill will change federal policy to allow U.S. farmers to produce hemp for these safe and legitimate products right here, helping both producers and suppliers to grow and improve Oregon’s economy in the process.”
3 State Dept. employees to testify in Manning Wikileaks court-martial
Three State Department employees are due to testify at a preliminary hearing Thursday for US soldier Bradley Manning, who faces a court-martial for allegedly leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents. ...
They are to testify about the government’s “damage assessment” following the publication of a trove of US documents Manning is accused of leaking to whistleblower website WikiLeaks. ...
On Wednesday, the judge ruled that Manning’s legal team should be given access to government documents on the scandal, handing the defense a partial victory.
Lind ordered the government to hand over a redacted version of a report by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency evaluating the impact of Manning’s alleged actions.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
'Targeted Propaganda' Campaign Follows 'Targeted Killing' Campaign
New Orleans and the future of news
A Little Night Music
Professor Longhair w/ The Meters - Tipitina
Professor Longhair - Hey Little Girl
Earl King - It All Went Down The Drain
Earl King - No City Like New Orleans
Champion Jack Dupree - All About Blues Feeling
Champion Jack Dupree - Drunk Again
Louis Armstrong - Basin Street Blues
Riverside Blues - King Oliver
James Booker - Papa Was A Rascal
Dr. John - Such a Night
For further listening:
King Oliver's Jazz Band - Dipper Mouth Blues
King Oliver - Canal Street Blues
James Booker - On the Sunny Side of the Street
Professor Longhair - Junco Partner
Louis Armstrong - Struttin with some barbecue
Champion Jack Dupree - Junker's Blues
Champion Jack Dupree - Big Leg Emma