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 the Jelly Roll Kings, Frank Frost, Sam Carr and Big Jack Johnson. They were a turbocharged delta blues outfit, whose work collectively and individually is quite extensive.
Jelly Roll Kings - Jelly Roll King
"Man is not free unless government is limited."
-- Ronald Reagan
News
Chris Hedges on Capitalism’s ‘Sacrifice Zones’
Book Reveals Extensive Effort by Reagan, FBI to Undermine California’s Student Movement in 1960s
Investigative journalist Seth Rosenfeld’s new book, "Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power," is based on more than 300,000 pages of records Rosenfeld received over three decades through five Freedom of Information lawsuits against the FBI. The book tracks how then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover ordered his agents to investigate and then disrupt the Free Speech Movement that began in 1964 on the Berkeley campus of the University of California. In part two of our interview, Rosenfeld discusses how Ronald Reagan collaborated with the FBI to target California’s student movement and strengthen Reagan’s own rise to power.
Reagan-appointee Posner admits mistakes in market fundamentalism and unloads on constitutional originalists:
Reagan-appointed judge: Deregulation advocates made a fundamental mistake
“I was an advocate of the deregulation movement and I made — along with other, a lot of smarter people — made a fundamental mistake, which is that deregulation works fine in industries which do not pervade the economy in their consequences,” he said. “The financial industry undergirds the entire economy and if it is made riskier by deregulation and collapses and widespread bankrupties the entire economy freezes because it runs on credit.”
Capitol Hill reporter tires of role as stenographer, quits
After 14 years at National Public Radio, Andrea Seabrook left in July and, to hear her talk about her experience covering Capitol Hill, it’s clear that she had one takeaway: It’s damn frustrating.
“I realized that there is a part of covering Congress, if you’re doing daily coverage, that is actually sort of colluding with the politicians themselves because so much of what I was doing was actually recording and playing what they say or repeating what they say,” Seabrook told POLITICO. “And I feel like the real story of Congress right now is very much removed from any of that, from the sort of theater of the policy debate in Congress, and it has become such a complete theater that none of it is real. … I feel like I am, as a reporter in the Capitol, lied to every day, all day. There is so little genuine discussion going on with the reporters. … To me, as a reporter, everything is spin.”
Drug war’s racial disparity moves NAACP to embrace marijuana legalization
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), one of the nation’s oldest civil rights groups, said at its Colorado-Montana-Wyoming state conference on Thursday that its members support Colorado’s marijuana legalization ballot initiative.
“We are committed to changing policies that result in a disproportionate number of African-Americans and other people of color being introduced into the criminal justice system,” NAACP chapter president Rosemary Harris Lytle said, according to a media advisory.
“With this endorsement, NAACP activists in Colorado take a significant step: calling for equity, justice and more effective policy — such as the proposal to regulate marijuana like alcohol in our state,” she added. “The flawed drug policies that so negatively impact our communities must be replaced with policy that is not disproportionately punitive based on race but that helps us get to the root causes of drug use and abuse in America.”
FDA trying to ban gay men as sperm donors
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is preparing to implement new rules that will ban men who have had sex with other men from acting as anonymous sperm donors. The agency claims to be adopting the measures as a means of protecting recipients from HIV transmission, but according to the Associated Press, LGBT rights groups have been quick to point out that not only is the policy discriminatory on its face, it isn’t based in scientific reality.
“The part I find most offensive — and a little frightening — is that it isn’t based on good science,” Kevin Cathcart of Lambda Legal told the AP. “There’s a steadily increasing trend of heterosexual transmission of HIV, and yet the FDA still has this notion that you protect people by putting gay men out of the pool.” ...
Leland Traiman, director of a California clinic that specializes in sperm donations from gay men, said, “Under these rules, a heterosexual man who had unprotected sex with HIV-positive prostitutes would be OK as a donor one year later, but a gay man in a monogamous, safe-sex relationship is not OK unless he’s been celibate for five years.”
Greek PM in crisis talks with Merkel
Greece’s prime minister was expected to press for more time to make key reforms and spending cuts to keep his debt-wracked country in the eurozone at crisis talks Friday with Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Antonis Samaras kicks off a two-day trip to Berlin and then Paris with Greece’s future in the 17-nation bloc again in the balance as its cash reserves dry up and a new injection of European funds hangs by a thread.
The prime minister’s trip comes a day after Merkel and French President Francois Hollande stressed they wanted to keep Greece in the euro but insisted it must redouble its reform efforts to unlock a new funding lifeline.
Tampa Sherriff gears up for mass arrests of RNC protesters
TAMPA - A big factor during the RNC is the potential for a large number of arrests.
In anticipation, in an unprecedented move, Hillsborough County jail officials announced one facility is completely cleared and essentially reconstructed just for the Republican National Convention. ...
They are ready to handle a mass amount of inmates. Previtera said the system can handle 1000 additional arrests.
"Be Honest About the History of Our Country": Remembering the People’s Historian Howard Zinn at 90
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
From Greenwashing to Workerwashing
You saw the video about "Subversives" above, now catch up on what the authoritarians are up to now:
CNN compares protesters to terrorist insurgents; Feds scare up reason to use drones for conventions
A Little Night Music
Jelly Roll Kings - I Didn't Know / Road Of Love
Jelly Roll Kings - I'm a big boy now
Jelly Roll Kings - Something On Your Mind
Jelly Roll Kings - Catfish Blues
The Jelly Roll Kings - Have Mercy Baby
Frank Frost - I Didn't Know (Chicago Blues Festival)
Frank Frost - Big Boss Man
Frank Frost - Never Leave Me At Home
Frank Frost - Pocket Full of Money
Frank Frost - Didn't Mean No Harm
Frank Frost - Harpin' On It
Frank Frost - Now What You Gonna Do
Frank Frost - Everything's Alright
Frank Frost w/The Night Hawks - Pocket Full of Shells
Frank Frost - Just Come On Home
Frank Frost - Backscratcher
Frank Frost Things You Do
Frank Frost - Mean Black Spider
Frank Frost - Harp and Soul
Frank Frost - Feel Good Babe
Big Jack Johnson - Bluebird
Sam Carr's Delta Jukes - Let The Good Times Roll
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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