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.
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Hey! Good Evening!
Tonight's music features Otis Spann, an incredible gut-bucket Chicago blues piano player who played for a while in the Muddy Waters band and had a significant solo career. In his later years he recorded a handful of albums with the early Fleetwood Mac, when Peter Green was with the band. Enjoy the music!
Otis Spann & Muddy Waters - Nobody Knows My Trouble & Cold, COld Feelin'
“In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.”
― Matt Taibbi,
News
Citizens United, Part 2? Supreme Court Overturns Montana Law Banning Corporate Spending on Elections
Small-Town Cops Pile Up on Useless Military Gear
Small police departments across America are collecting battlefield-grade arsenals thanks to a program that allows them to get their hands on military surplus equipment – amphibious tanks, night-vision goggles, and even barber chairs or underwear – at virtually no cost, except for shipment and maintenance.
Over the last five years, the top 10 beneficiaries of this “Department of Defense Excess Property Program” included small agencies such as the Fairmount Police Department. It serves 7,000 people in northern Georgia and received 17,145 items from the military. The cops in Issaquah, Washington, a town of 30,000 people, acquired more than 37,000 pieces of gear.
In 2011 alone, more than 700,000 items were transferred to police departments for a total value of $500 million. This year, as of May 15, police departments already acquired almost $400 million worth of stuff. Last year’s record would have certainly been shattered if the Arizona Republic hadn’t revealed in early May that a local police department used the program to stockpile equipment – and then sold the gear to others, something that is strictly forbidden. Three weeks after the revelation, the Pentagon decided to partly suspend distribution of surplus material until all agencies could put together an up-to-date inventory of all the stuff they got through the years. A second effort, which gives federal grants to police departments to purchase equipment, is still ongoing, however. According to the Center for Investigative Reporting, since 9/11, the grants have totaled $34 billion.
US Covers Up Rwanda Supported Mutiny in Congo
New study reveals BP oil doubled erosion rates in parts of Louisiana marshes, already being lost at alarming rate
Louisiana's salt marshes, which had already been degrading at an alarming pace due to human activities, have suffered tremendous losses, in some cases leading to permanent marsh ecosystem loss due to BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, according to a study published Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The study found that "oil concentrated on the marsh edge enhanced the rate of decline of Louisiana salt marshes" and some areas had double the natural rate of erosion because of the effects of the oil.
“Louisiana is already losing about a football field worth of wetlands every hour, and that was before the spill,” said Brian Silliman, a University of Florida biologist and lead author of the study, referring to the "oilpocalypse" when 4,900,000 barrels of crude poured into the Gulf of Mexico.
Bill McKibben of 350.org on Colorado Wildfires, Debby, Keystone XL and the Failure of Rio+20
Natural Gas Companies May Have Colluded to Keep Land Prices Low in Michigan
A Reuters investigation has found that Chesapeake Energy and Canadian natural gas giant Encana plotted to keep prices for fracking leases low in Michigan, in 2010.
Whether the emails examined by Reuters are enough evidence to prove criminal collusion under antitrust laws remains to be seen, but a former antitrust lawyer for the Justice Department characterizes the emails as not a smoking gun but "a smoking H-bomb."
French, New Orleans musicians revive colonial-era language
With furrowed brows and fervent nods, the French and native American musicians were introducing a new form of jazz to New Orleans centered on a colonial trade language used by their ancestors.
There were no furs or beads on the table. Instead, the musicians were exchanging traditions to create a unique sound that hops from jazz standards to blues, to reggae to mellow, cymbal-heavy lounge music.
Holding it all together were the soulful chants of ancient folk tales and more modern stories told in Mobilian, a language once used by tribes across the Gulf of Mexico to communicate with each other and with the French traders.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
ACLU: The Government’s Pseudo-Secrecy Snow Job on Targeted Killing
A Little Night Music
Otis Spann - Spann's Blues
Otis Spann - Blues Don't Like Nobody
Otis Spann - T'Aint Nobody's Business If I Do
Otis Spann & Sonny Boy Williamson - Nine Below Zero
Otis Spann - Good Morning Mr. Blues
Otis Spann - It Was a Big Thing
Otis Spann - 'Chicago Blues' and 'Nobody Knows Chicago Like I Do'
Otis Spann - Hungry Country Girl
Otis Spann - Must Have Been The Devil
For further listening (because you can never get enough):
Otis Spann - Evil Ways
Otis Spann with Fleetwood Mac - She's Out of Sight
Otis Spann - Divin' Duck
Otis Spann - Riverside Blues
Muddy Waters & Otis Spann - I Live the Life I Love
Otis Spann - In The Dark