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.
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Tonight's music features Oakland, California's Jesse Fuller who performed as a one-man band and composed the San Francisco Bay Blues, Beat It On Down The Line and The Monkey and the Engineer.
Jesse Fuller - San Francisco Bay Blues
News and Opinion
U.S. Death Toll in Afghanistan Passes 2,000 Mark
The official U.S. military death toll in Afghanistan has just passed the 2,000 mark. On Monday, a suicide bomber wearing an Afghan army uniform killed 14 people, including three U.S. soldiers, in the eastern province of Khost. Amidst a spate of attacks by Afghan troops on NATO forces, NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen has revealed Western forces may withdraw from Afghanistan sooner than expected. In addition, the New York Times reports the United States has all but written off hopes of working out a peace deal with the Taliban.
Little Debate About Afghan War in Election Campaign
New Federal Lawsuit Filed Against NYPD for Occupy Arrests
The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) has filed a federal lawsuit on September 20th, 2012 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York challenging the New York Police Department’s use of sidewalk arrests in which persons are targeted for false arrest based on their association with or proximity to dissent and protest. The lawsuit is filed on behalf of individuals who were falsely arrested on September 24, 2011 in the first week of the Occupy Wall Street movement, including one plaintiff who was subject to Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna’s notorious pepper spray attack on peaceful demonstrators.
The lawsuit, Sterling, et al. v. City of New York, et.al., Case No. 12-CV-7086 seeks to end the New York City police tactics of arresting people lawfully present on city sidewalks and the use of orange netting and police lines to conduct indiscriminate group arrests. The lawsuit also seeks compensatory and punitive damages against NYPD officers for the false arrests and Deputy Inspector Bologna for the pepper spray assault.
“It is evident from the mass use of illegal sidewalks arrests executed yet again this weekend during OWS demonstrations that this is an unlawful tactic the NYPD will use over and over again until a Judge declares this tactic to be unconstitutional,” stated Carl Messineo, Legal Director of the PCJF. “With this lawsuit, protestors are taking the offensive to stop it.”
Faced with Police Violence, Thousands return to Spanish Parliament
Riot police arrest 17 at Walmart warehouse worker solidarity rally
About 600 people turned out Monday in Elwood, Illinois for a sit-in protest against alleged mistreatment of warehouse workers employed by Walmart contractor RoadLink. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that 17 peaceful protesters were arrested by police in riot gear after they sat in the middle of a road and blocked vehicles from accessing the warehouse. ...
Participants in the protest weren’t just warehouse workers: local unions and community groups joined in as well, hoping to provide moral support to the group after they filed a federal lawsuit against RoadLink in September.
By the time activists sat in the road, police declared the entire event to be an “unlawful assembly,” then threatened to deploy chemical weapons and “less lethal munitions” against the group. The militarized police unit even brought what appeared to be a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), designed to disperse protesters by blasting them with extremely loud noise. The officers ultimately didn’t resort to violence, opting to walk arrested activists away one by one instead.
New York Attorney General sues JPMorgan for alleged mortgage securities fraud
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on Monday filed a lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase for alleged fraud relating to mortgage-backed securities, a type of investment that consists of mortgage loans that have been pooled together.
The case is the first brought by a White House task force called the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group against a major bank. President Barack Obama formed the group in January to investigate fraud in the mortgage-backed securities market.
The task force alleged that the bank “kept investors in the dark” regarding the quality of the loans it packaged into mortgage-backed securities. The bank failed to disclose problems with the mortgage-backed securities with its investors, such as the fact that the loans had been made to borrowers who “were highly likely to default,” according to the lawsuit.
Two Sponsors Pull Out From Debates Over Exclusion Of Gary Johnson
At least two of the original sponsors of the 2012 presidential debates have pulled their support over the exclusion of Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, arguing that the commission which runs the debates is locked into a two-party outlook. ...
Multinational corporation Philips Electronics and the women's organization the YWCA both dropped their sponsorship after being flooded with E-mails and letters from supporters of former Republican New Mexico Gov. Johnson, as well as two election watchdog groups, Open Debates and Help the Commission. ...
In a letter announcing its sponsorship withdrawal, Philips wrote that it was concerned the commission's work "may appear to support bi-partisan" instead of "non-partisan" politics. YWCA similarly wrote that it was dropping out because it is a "non-partisan" women's organization.
Third Party Candidates to Join in Real Time on Democracy Now!’s Live Coverage of First Pres. Debate
As President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney square off in the first presidential debate in Denver on October 3, Democracy Now! will broadcast live from Denver with a special expanded presidential debate from 8:30 to 11:30 p.m. ET. We will air the debate, pausing after questions to include equal time responses from two presidential contenders who were shut out of the official debate: Jill Stein of the Green Party and Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party.
Voter registration slumps amid lack of enthusiasm for Obama and Romney
The Democratic and Republican parties are struggling to engage new voters in this year's presidential race, with an apparent deficit of enthusiasm suppressing the number of people who have registered to vote ahead of the 6 November election.
A Guardian survey of six of the most crucial swing states upon which the outcome of the presidential ballot is likely to depend has found that new voter registrations recorded between January and August this year are markedly down compared with the same period in 2008. The drop is particularly pronounced in several states for the Democrats – a likely indication that Barack Obama's re-election team has been unable to match the exceptional levels of voter excitement generated by his candidacy four years ago.
Nagasaki further voices protest against "new" type of nuclear test by U.S.
Japan's southwestern city of Nagasaki expressed its outrage and protest against a new type of nuclear test conducted for the sixth time in August by the United States, local press reported on Tuesday.
The report said that the United States conducted the nuclear test, which simulated a nuclear blast using intense X-ray beams and checked how plutonium would react, at the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico on August 27. ...
According to the report, Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue sent a letter of protest, dated September 24, to U.S. President Barack Obama, saying that the people of Nagasaki, who have been calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons, cannot retsrain their resentment after encountering reports about a further test despite their protest. ... The letter also urged that the United States to make sincere efforts to stop any nuclear tests, adding that the country should fulfill its leadership role in achieving a world without nuclear weapons.
'Intimidation, Threats, and Lawyers': The Great American Gas Fracking "Land Grab"
Introducing a couple from Texas who, despite their objection, had the natural gas sucked out from beneath their property by the Chesapeake Energy Corporation without paying a dime in compesation, an investigative report by Reuters recounts how the gas giant has embarked on an aggressive nationwide "landgrab" with a series of legal maneuvers and industrial fracking equipment in tow.
In a special report, The casualties of Chesapeake's "land grab" across America, a review of official state records by Reuters shows that since January 2005, the Texas agency in charge of granting waivers under a land regulation statute—known as Rule 37—"rejected just five of Chesapeake's 1,628 requests" to access land without the owners permission.
The exemptions granted by the state "effectively secured [Chesapeake's] ability to drain the gas" from private properties without royalties or other payments. ...
And in Ohio, where fracking has also come under heavy fire, State Rep. Mark Okey, a Democrat who represents communities where drilling has been heavy, said of the gas company: "They believe in intimidation tactics. They threaten you. They will yell at you….It's all about getting you to sign [the lease agreements]."
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Drone Week
Whistleblower Mash-Up: Bradley Manning, Sweden's Version of "Due Process" & WPEA
Big Finance's Pathology Compels the Logic of Socialized Banking
Voting while Trans
A Little Night Music
Jesse Fuller - Monkey And The Engineer
Jesse Fuller - As Long As I Can Feel The Spirit
Jesse Fuller - Midnight Cold
Jesse Fuller - I Got a Mind To Ramble
Jesse Fuller - Jesse's New Midnight Special
Jesse Fuller - Stranger Blues
Jesse Fuller - Beat It On Down The Line
Grateful Dead - Beat It On Down The Line
Eric clapton - San francisco bay blues
The Grateful Dead - The Monkey And The Engineer
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