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 Memphis bluesman and one-man-band Joe Hill Louis. Enjoy!
Joe Hill Lewis - Back Slide Boogie
"If [Obama] had been the guy that had led the charge against the systemically dangerous institutions, Romney couldn't get away with this. But they haven't taken on the systemically dangerous institutions. They have bailed them out. You can't blame it on Dodd–Frank, but you could blame it on the Obama administration, and the Bush administration before it, and the administrations before them, all of whom have taken as their major source of contributions money from these systemically dangerous institutions and refused to deal with them. And frankly, no one thinks Romney is going to take on these largest banks either. But that's why Obama was so completely unprepared to simply say, you're not telling the truth, it does no such thing. And, you know, then he should have been able to say, in fact, I led the charge to get rid of the systemically dangerous institutions."
-- William Black
News and Opinion
Obama susceptible to attack by Romney because he failed to deal with systemic risk to financial system - even though Romney would be worse
Did Obama Blame the Financial Crisis on Budget Deficits
This was a very strange part of the debate last night.
I would just say this to the American people. If you believe that we can cut taxes by $5 trillion and add $2 trillion in additional spending that the military is not asking for, $7 trillion — just to give you a sense, over 10 years, that’s more than our entire defense budget — and you think that by closing loopholes and deductions for the well-to-do, somehow you will not end up picking up the tab, then Governor Romney’s plan may work for you.
But I think math, common sense, and our history shows us that’s not a recipe for job growth. Look, we’ve tried this. We’ve tried both approaches. The approach that Governor Romney’s talking about is the same sales pitch that was made in 2001 and 2003, and we ended up with the slowest job growth in 50 years, we ended up moving from surplus to deficits, and it all culminated in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
The Bush tax cuts were very bad fiscal policy, and shifted wealth upwards. But budget deficits create public debt, and the 2007-2009 financial crisis was fundamentally a problem of excessive private debt. Conflating the two is an intentional strategy to impose austerity on a population. White House Fiscal Commission co-Chair Alan Simpson has pointed to Greece as a possible future for the US, if the US doesn’t begin reducing its deficit. Bowles and Simpson argue that our budget deficit is heading us towards “the most predictable economic crisis in history”. In fact, the budget deficit basically exploded because of reduced output due to the financial crisis, and the transfer of private debt to the public balance sheet.
There are many narratives of why the financial crisis happened. The only credible narrative, though, starts with banks and hedge funds manipulating the capital markets to push capital into junk mortgages.
Italian Students clash with police in anti-austerity protests
In Italy, students protesting against the country's austerity programme have clashed with riot police in Rome, Milan and Turin today. Thousands of people took part carrying banners.
The demonstrations were focused on Mario Monti's recent cuts to local government spending and his freeze on public sector hiring, as well as cuts made by his predecessor, Silvio Berlusconi.
Pakistan's Imran Khan: If Elected, 'I Would Shoot Down US Drones'
In an interview with BBC this week, Pakistani politician Imran Khan stated that if he were elected as Prime Minister in elections next year, he would opt to shoot down US drones that invade Pakistan, should the US and the international community continue to ignore pleas to stop the fatal strikes in the region.
Khan told BBC that US drone strikes are counterproductive because they have resulted in thousands of civilian deaths, cause great hardship in the country and drive up anti-US sentiment and militant recruitment.
The "vast majority of people killed are civilians or very low level militants," Khan continued.
Khan went on to criticize the "duplicity" of the Pakistani government, who publicly condemns drone attacks, but covertly gives the US approval for the strikes.
Gar Alperovitz, Systemic Crisis, Politics as Usual
Elements in Iran and US that Want War
Ironically, Sanctions Success Strengthens Iran’s Strait of Hormuz Trump Card
Military strategists appear to have missed a foreseeable outcome in their efforts to pressure Iran.
As the temperatures are rising in the Mideast, as reader chatter about Turkey’s involvement in Syria attests, a Financial Times article describes how the success of economic sanctions against Iran have strengthened its ability to make credible threats to restrict oil shipments.
Market participants have long discounted the idea that Iran would restrict the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, a comparatively narrow channel though which 35% of the world’s oil supplies pass. Threatening cargo ships would also interfere with Iran’s own oil shipments, far and away its biggest source of foreign exchange, and critical food imports.
But that dynamic has now changed. As the Financial Times notes:
Sanctions imposed over Iran’s nuclear programme have grown tighter, and the effects are being felt across the country. Fears are rising that Iran’s leadership, facing increasing domestic unrest over spiralling inflation, has less and less to lose through brinkmanship in the channel now that its own oil income is being squeezed to a trickle. For years, oil traders were inured to rhetoric from Iran that it stood poised to shock world energy markets by blocking the seaway in retaliation for sanctions or an Israeli attack. They were sceptical it would engineer a crisis in a region so critical to its own economic survival. But Iran’s plummeting oil exports mean that a cornered Tehran could see a confrontation in the strait as less an act of self-immolation and more a calculated gamble.
Film dramatizing bin Laden raid airing Nov. 4
A film dramatizing the death of Osama bin Laden is set to debut next month on the National Geographic Channel, two days before the presidential election.
"Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden," from The Weinstein Co. and Voltage Pictures, will air Sunday, Nov. 4, the channel said Thursday. President Barack Obama faces Republican challenger Mitt Romney at the polls two days later.
Weinstein co-chairman Harvey Weinstein is a prominent fundraiser for Obama's re-election campaign, which has touted bin Laden's death as an example of the president's leadership.
Study: Climate change disbelievers get most column space in U.S. and UK newspapers
Climate sceptics feature more prominently in newspapers in the US and UK than other countries, and their views are more likely to go unchallenged in right-leaning papers, an academic study has shown.
Friday’s report, which was published in the Environmental Research Letters journal, delved deeper into data that was first published last year. For the study, 2,064 newspaper articles from the US, UK, France, China, Brazil and India over two three-month periods in 2007 and 2009-10 were scrutinised for the quantity and type of climate sceptic voices featured on both news and opinion pages.
The authors examined in particular the political leanings of each newspaper and concluded that there was “little evidence” that this influenced coverage of climate sceptics in Brazil, India and China. However, in the US and UK, and to some extent France, the political leaning of the newspaper did affect coverage of climate sceptics.
“The strongest evidence for a distinction between left-leaning and right-leaning newspapers can be found in the opinion pages in France, the UK and the US, where right-leaning newspapers are much more likely to include uncontested [climate] sceptical voices,” concluded the authors.
Sioux race to find millions to ransom sacred land in the Black Hills
The Black Hills, the rolling range of mountains that rise out of the badlands of western South Dakota, are considered sacred to the Sioux, who for 150 years have fought on battlefields and in courtrooms for the return of the land.
And so the Great Sioux Nation exulted this summer when a long-sought parcel in the mountains called Pe’ Sla by the Lakota was put up for sale and a bid from the Sioux was accepted by the family that had controlled the land since 1876, the year that Gen. George Armstrong Custer died not far to the west at Little Bighorn.
But now, anxiety has replaced optimism as more than a half-dozen Sioux tribes, which include some of the nation’s poorest people, race to come up with the $9 million purchase price before the deadline next month.
Not only poverty stands in the way, but also the charged history: many Sioux ask why they should have to pay for land that already belongs to them, given numerous treaties broken by the United States and a landmark federal court decision in 1979 that called the government’s seizure of the Black Hills one of the most dishonorable acts in American history.
“It’s like someone stealing my car and I have to pay to get it back,” said Tom Poor Bear, the vice president of the Oglala Lakota Tribe in South Dakota.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
Americans Press U.S. Ambassador for End to Drone Strikes in Pakistan, and the Ambassador Responds
Rare event: Transwoman wins battle with insurance carrier
A Little Night Music
Joe Hill Louis - Boogie In The Park
Joe Hill Louis - When I'm Gone (She Treats Me Mean And Evil)
Joe Hill Louis - Gotta Let You Go
Joe Hill Louis - Tiger Man
Hydramatic Woman - Joe Hill Louis & Big Walter Horton
Joe Hill Louis - We all gotta go sometime + She may be yours
Chicago Sunny Boy AKA Joe Hill Louis - Western Union Man
Joe Hill Louis - Keep Away From My Baby
Joe Hill Louis - Joe 's Jump
Joe Hill Louis - Keep Your Arms Around Me
Walter Horton w/Joe Hill Louis - Blues In The Morning + Little Boy Blue
Johnny Lewis (aka Joe Hill Louis) - She's Takin' All My Money
Johnny Lewis (Joe Hill Louis) - Jealous Man
We believe in fighting with another purpose -- waging peace.
While we will write and debate about many topics on our new site, one that will always be in sharp focus is the issue of war and peace.
"Like any other people, like fathers, mothers, sons and daughters in every land, when the issue of peace or war has been put squarely to the American people, they have registered for peace."
~ Paul Robeson
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