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 features Furry Lewis a first generation bluesman from Memphis. Lewis' history is inextricably intertwined with the birth and history of Memphis blues, he played with W.C. Handy's orchestra, recorded with the Memphis Jug Band and made a number of influential recordings in the 1920's. Lewis was "rediscovered" in the early stages of the folk music boom of the the 1960's which led to a rejuvenated musical career. Enjoy!
Furry Lewis - Kassie Jones
Furry Sings The Blues
Old beale street is coming down
Sweeties’ snack bar, boarded up now
And egles the tailor and the shine boy’s gone
Faded out with ragtime blues
Handy’s cast in bronze
And he’s standing in a little park
With a trumpet in his hand
Like he’s listening back to the good old bands
And the click of high heeled shoes
Old furry sings the blues
Propped up in his bed
With his dentures and his leg removed
And ginny’s there
For her kindness and furry’s beer
She’s the old man’s angel overseer
Pawn shops glitter like gold tooth caps
In the grey decay
They chew the last few dollars off
Old beale street’s carcass
Carrion and mercy
Blue and silver sparkling drums
Cheap guitars, eye shades and guns
Aimed at the hot blood of being no one
Down and out in memphis tennessee
Old furry sings the blues
You bring him smoke and drink and he’ll play for you
Lt’s mostly muttering now and sideshow spiel
But there was one song he played
I could really feel
There’s a double bill murder at the new daisy
The old girl’s silent across the street
She’s silent - waiting for the wrecker’s beat
Silent - staring ar her stolen name
Diamond boys and satin dolls
Bourbon laughter- ghosts - history falls
To parking lots and shopping malls
As they tear down old beale street
Old furry sings the blues
He points a bony finger at you and
"i don’t like you"
Everybody laughs as if it’s the old man’s standard joke
But it’s true
We’re only welcome for our drink and smoke
W.c. handy I’m rich and I’m fay
And I’m not familiar with what you played
But I get such strong impressions of your hey day
Looking up and down old beale street
Ghosts of the darktown society
Come right out of the bricks at me
Like it’s a saturday night
They’re in their finery
Dancing it up and making deals
Furry sings the blues
Why should I expect that old guy to give it to me true
Fallen to hard luck
And time and other thieves
While our limo is shining on his shanty street
Old furry sings the blues
-- Joni Mitchell
News
Ignoring Supreme Court Ruling, Texas Prepares to Execute Mentally Retarded Prisoner
Culture in Decline | Episode #1 "What Democracy?"
Germany outraged by Italian newspaper’s ‘Fourth Reich’ headline
German politicians have reacted furiously to this front page in the Italian daily Il Giornale with its headline “Fourth Reich” above a picture of Chancellor Angela Merkel raising her hand in a vaguely fascist salute. ...
It says: “Since yesterday, Italy is no longer in Europe, it is in the Fourth Reich.” It argues that Germany has won while Italy, Europe and the euro have lost. It blames Merkel for failing to allow the European central bank to assist the Italian economy. ...
The paper has also laid into Italy’s prime minister Mario Monti – who replaced Berlusconi – for not doing enough to stand up to Germany. It compared him to the appeasing British prime minister Neville Chamberlain who declared in 1938 he had “secured peace in our time” after meeting Adolf Hitler.
OMFG! OMFG! In other countries they actually try to prosecute banksters and hold them accountable for their frauds! Oh well, too bad it can't happen here.
As Libor Fault-Finding Grows, It Is Now Every Bank for Itself
With billions of dollars and their reputations on the line, financial institutions have been spreading the blame in recent meetings with authorities, according to government and bank officials with knowledge of the matter. While acknowledging their own wrongdoing, institutions are pointing out actions at other banks that they believe are worse — and in some cases, extend to top executives. ...
The Swiss bank UBS, which has a history of regulatory run-ins, has shared e-mails, instant messages and other information suggesting it had colluded with traders at Deutsche Bank, HSBC and the Royal Bank of Scotland to manipulate key interest rates, according to court documents and bank employees. In talks with authorities, HSBC is providing its own account of the activities, according to a lawyer briefed on the matter. Citigroup has also detailed rate manipulation with other banks. ...
When banks first started conducting internal investigations at the behest of regulators two years ago, they figured the potential penalties would be manageable, according to bank officials. ... Part of the banks’ problem is that their internal investigations have created a road map that authorities are using to pursue criminal and civil cases.
Holy carbon credits, Batman! These guys have cut all of Mother Nature up and are about to sell off her parts on the stock market! We've got to let them, though because they know the price of everything and the value of nothing!
The Great Impostors: In the Name of Saving Natural World, Governments Are Privatizing It
In many countries, especially the United Kingdom, nature is being valued and commodified so that it can be exchanged for cash. The effort began in earnest under the last government. At a cost of £100,000, it commissioned a research company to produce a total annual price for England's ecosystems. After taking the money, the company reported – with a certain understatement – that this exercise was "theoretically challenging to complete, and considered by some not to be a theoretically sound endeavour". Some of the services provided by England's ecosystems, it pointed out, "may in fact be infinite in value".
This rare flash of common sense did nothing to discourage the current government from seeking first to put a price on nature, then to create a market in its disposal. The UK now has a natural capital committee, an Ecosystem Markets Task Force and an inspiring new lexicon. We don't call it nature any more: now the proper term is "natural capital". Natural processes have become "ecosystem services", as they exist only to serve us. Hills, forests and river catchments are now "green infrastructure", while biodiversity and habitats are "asset classes" within an "ecosystem market". All of them will be assigned a price, all of them will become exchangeable.
The argument in favour of this approach is coherent and plausible. Business currently treats the natural world as if it is worth nothing. Pricing nature and incorporating that price into the cost of goods and services creates an economic incentive for its protection. It certainly appeals to both business and the self-hating state. The Ecosystem Markets Task Force speaks of "substantial potential growth in nature-related markets – in the order of billions of pounds globally".
Another study finds fracking wastewater wells make earthquakes more likely
Wastewater injection wells that accompany natural gas “fracking” sties are linked to an increase in the probability of earthquakes, according to a University of Texas study published this week in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Cliff Frohlich, the University of Texas researcher who conducted the study, used seismic data from the Barnett Shale region of Texas taken between November 2009 and September 2011. He found that while injection wells were typically near the site of small quakes, they did not always cause tremors, leading Frohlich to speculate that injection wells near existing faults were more likely to cause seismic activity. Most of the quakes registered for the study were so light that they could not be felt on the surface.
The study is just one of several that have warned about the possibility of inducing seismic activity by injecting hundreds of thousands of gallons of water underground in a short period of time. The National Research Council said earlier this year that while the risks posed by fracking itself are rather low, wastewater injection wells, along with the carbon capture and storage techniques typically used with “clean coal,” do in fact pose a heightened risk of earthquakes.
Curfew lifted after toxic smoke from Chevron refinery fire contained
San Francisco-area residents were allowed to leave their homes late Monday night after a fire at a nearby refinery was contained, but not before it led to a scare in local emergency rooms.
According to KRON-TV, officials at Chevron say a diesel seal broke at the company’s refinery in Richmond, in the East Bay, causing a fuel spill, which may have sparked with heated metal, leading to the fire erupting around 6:30 p.m. Monday night.
As black smoke escaped the facility, residents in Contra Costa County were ordered to confine themselves and their pets indoors. The Contra Costa Times reported that about three dozen people were treated at a local hospital for respiratory problems. The smoke could reportedly be seen from as far as Oakland.
Also see this diary We can not allow Chevron to get away with this by Horace Boothroyd III
Is Dilbit Oil? Congress and the IRS Say No
The oil industry has often said that dilbit, a heavy crude oil from Canada's tar sands, isn't much different from conventional crude oil. But when it comes to paying into a federal fund used to clean up oil spills, it's different enough to deserve a sizeable tax break.
Dilbit is exempt from the tax, because the 1980 legislation that created the tax states that "the term crude oil does not include synthetic petroleum, e.g., shale oil, liquids from coal, tar sands, or biomass..."
The tax helps support the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, whose primary funding comes from an 8-cent-per-barrel excise tax on domestically produced and imported crude oil and on imported refined products such as gasoline.
Money from the fund is helping to clean up the 2010 oil spill in Michigan, where a ruptured pipeline spewed more than 1 million barrels of diluted bitumen, or dilbit, into the Kalamazoo River. Unlike conventional crude oil, which floats on water, much of the dilbit sank into the river. Removing it has been so difficult that cleanup crews are still struggling to mop it up, making the Michigan disaster the most expensive oil pipeline spill in U.S. history.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
The Science of Genocide
A Little Night Music
Furry Lewis - Furry's Blues
http://www.youtube.com/...
Furry Lewis - When I lay my burden down
Furry Lewis - Judge Harsh Blues 1928
Furry Lewis - John Henry
Furry Lewis - Dry Land Blues
Leon Russell & Walter "Furry" Lewis - Furry's Blues
Furry Lewis - Falling Down Blues
Furry Lewis - I've Got A Bird To Whistle
Furry Lewis - Big Chief Blues
Furry Lewis - Going To Brownsville
Joni Mitchell's song about Furry Lewis and Memphis (which Lewis hated) - Furry Sings the Blues
We are ready for some serious change. We are ready to take up the tools of a free and analytic press to peacefully undermine the stranglehold of the kleptocrats on our battered democracy. We are ready to expose and publicize their greed, lies and illegal machinations and hold their enablers in government and the media to account. Are you in?
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
~ Margaret Mead
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