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!
Tonight's music features country blues string band The Mississippi Sheiks and a member of the band on his own Sam Chatmon who may have been Charley Patton's half brother.
Sam Chatmon Interview
"Every president needs to deal with the permanent government of the country, and the permanent government of the country is Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats and the questions becomes what is the relationship between that president and Wall Street."
-- Cornel West
News
American Autumn: An Occudoc - Filmmaker Dennis Trainor Jr. on his new film and the challenges facing the Occupy Movement
American Autumn: an Occudoc
FBI: Monitoring Occupy was within rules
The FBI says its newly disclosed surveillance of the Occupy movement in Northern California stayed within federal rules and did not result in "unnecessary intrusions into the lives of law-abiding people."
The American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained FBI surveillance documents on the movement in a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act, wants to know why the agency is withholding nearly two-thirds of the records it says it has, and why it is citing national security as one reason for the nondisclosure.
"Why does a political protest amount to a national security threat?" ACLU attorney Linda Lye asked Monday. She said her organization has asked the FBI for specifics on the additional documents and its reasons for withholding them.
Obama Admin Appeals NDAA Ruling in Bid to Preserve Indefinite Detention at Home and Abroad
Obama considers executive order in wake of Cybersecurity Act failure
The Obama administration is considering issuing an executive order to achieve some of the aims of the Cybersecurity Act, which died in the Senate in August.
“Following congressional inaction, the President is determined to use existing executive branch authorities to protect our nation against cyber threats,” John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, wrote in a letter to Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. “Specifically, we are exploring an Executive Order to direct executive branch departments and agencies to secure our nation’s critical infrastructure by working with the private sector.” ...
The vague proposal would put the Department of Homeland Security in charge of implementing the new cybersecurity apparatus, which aims to protect so-called “critical infrastructure” from Internet-based attacks.
Does President Obama Want to Cut Social Security by 3 Percent?
That is a pretty simple and important question. Unfortunately most voters are likely to go to the polls this fall without knowing the answer. ... One of the items that continuously comes up in reference to the budget deficit is President Obama's support for the plan put forward by the co-chairs of his deficit commission, Morgan Stanley director Erskine Bowles and former Senator Alan Simpson. On numerous occasions President Obama has indicated his support for this plan.
One of the items in the Bowles-Simpson plan is a reduction in the annual cost-of-living adjustment of roughly 0.3 percentage points. This would be accomplished by using a different index that, by design, would show a lower measured rate of inflation. It is important to recognize that this is an annual cut that would accumulate over time. After a retiree has been receiving benefits for 10 years the cut would be 3.0 percent, after 20 years it would be 6 percent. If a typical retiree lives long enough to get benefits for 20 years the average benefit cut over their years of retirement would be 3 percent.
This is the most immediate cut to Social Security in the Bowles-Simpson plan but not the only one. The plan also would gradually raise the age at which retirees receive full benefits to 69. It also phases in a reduction in benefits for workers whose earnings averaged more than $40,000 a year over their working lifetime.
When President Obama indicates his support for the Bowles-Simpson plan, he is indicating his support for all of these measures.
Anti-Austerity Protests and Strikes Rock Spain
Study: Deeper CO2 Cuts Needed to Save World's Dying Corals
Limiting climate change to two degrees C won’t save most coral reefs, according to new, state-of-the-art research.
About 70 percent of corals are projected to suffer from long-term degradation by 2030 with two degrees C of warming, the first comprehensive global survey reported Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The planet will get far hotter than two degrees C based on current commitments by countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning oil, gas and coal. Humanity is on course to heat up the atmosphere an average of three and even four degrees C, according to the Climate Action Tracker, an international scientific monitor. Those temperature levels are what most scientists consider “catastrophic”.
Coral reefs are considered by many to be one of the life-support systems essential for human survival. For more than 2.6 billion people, seafood is the main source of protein. Corals act as the nurseries and habitat for many fish species, and are vital for up to 33 percent of all ocean species, according to the World Conservation Union (IUCN).
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Engineers Charge Government Coverup Of Flood Threat To Nuclear Plants
In a letter submitted Friday afternoon to internal investigators at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a whistleblower engineer within the agency accused regulators of deliberately covering up information relating to the vulnerability of U.S. nuclear power facilities that sit downstream from large dams and reservoirs.
The letter also accuses the agency of failing to act to correct these vulnerabilities despite being aware of the risks for years.
In the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Huffington Post, Richard H. Perkins, a reliability and risk engineer with the agency's division of risk analysis, alleged that NRC officials falsely invoked security concerns in redacting large portions of a report detailing the agency's preliminary investigation into the potential for dangerous and damaging flooding at U.S. nuclear power plants due to upstream dam failure.
Perkins, along with at least one other employee inside NRC, also an engineer, suggested that the real motive for redacting certain information was to prevent the public from learning the full extent of these vulnerabilities, and to obscure just how much the NRC has known about the problem, and for how long.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel = Bain Capital Strategy II
Five Looming Curses of Privatization
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Engineers Charge Government Coverup: Reactor Meltdown “Absolute Certainty” If Dam Fails … 100s of Times More Likely than Tsunami that Hit Fukushima
A Little Night Music
The Mississippi Sheiks - Sittin' on top of the world
Bob Wills - Sittin' on top of the world
Sam Chatmon - Who's Gonna Love You Tonight?
Mississippi Sheiks - The World Is Going Wrong
Mississippi Sheiks - I am the Devil
Sam Chatmon - Make Me A Pallet On the Floor
Sam Chatmon - Corrina
Sam Chatmon - The Preacher and the Bear
Mississippi Sheiks - He Calls That Religion
Sam Chatmon - Cold Blooded Murderer
Sam Chatmon - Let's Get Drunk Again
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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