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!
This evenings music features boogie woogie piano pounder Meade Lux Lewis. This is one amazing piano player, enjoy!
Meade Lux Lewis - Boogie Woogie
"With deregulation, privatisation, free trade, what we're seeing is yet another enclosure and, if you like, private taking of the commons. One of the things I find very interesting in our current debates is this concept of who creates wealth. That wealth is only created when it's owned privately. What would you call clean water, fresh air, a safe environment? Are they not a form of wealth? And why does it only become wealth when some entity puts a fence around it and declares it private property? Well, you know, that's not wealth creation. That's wealth usurpation."
-- Elaine Bernard
News
Bill Black on Obama's Social Security Reform
So this grand bargain is: we will weight this much more heavily towards killing social programs, or at least cutting them back significantly and raising taxes on the rich.
Now, that's got most of the attention from progressives, but note two other things that he was saying. One, he's talking about austerity. He's talking about following exactly the kind of model that Europe has followed that put them gratuitously back into recession, and indeed into a Great Depression. And as we're doing this interview, it has just come out that European unemployment reached a new high in September, which is the latest month that they had data for. So this has cost millions of Europeans their jobs, and it's Great Depression levels of unemployment in Spain and Greece, and growing in many other nations. So this is insane to follow this strategy.
But, of course, one of the things that's happened during this election cycle is that Bill Clinton has been restored to glory within at least Democratic Party ranks as the great person who produced the balanced budget, and indeed budget surpluses. And they want to run politically on these things. And so they've essentially adopted Romney's critique that the deficits are immoral and that they're a burden on our children and our grandchildren, and that the way to help our children and grandchildren is to unemploy their parents and throw millions of additional children and grandchildren into poverty.
Supreme Court doubtful on warrantless police detention
The US Supreme Court showed skepticism Thursday of the government’s argument that police can follow and arrest a suspect while waiting for a search warrant, even far from the premises. ...
“What you’re arguing for is a special rule which says once you have a warrant that this place can be searched, you can seize anybody — you can seize not only anybody there in order to protect the police, but anybody connected with the place,” Justice Antonin Scalia told Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Wall.
“And that is so contrary to what seems to me the theory of the Fourth Amendment that I am very reluctant to extend our cases any further than they already exist.”
Sonia Sotomayor, with the liberal wing of the court, was also reluctant to authorize arrests “merely for purposes of investigation without any reasonable suspicion.”
Greek Parliament Approves Contentious Law to Expand Privatization
Avoiding Post-Sandy Disaster Capitalism: On Rebuilding the Right Way
From Katrina and Isaac to Irene to Sandy, severe weather events are becoming a constant feature of our lives. And they're leaving in their wake too many lessons of the wrong way to rebuild. It even has a name: disaster capitalism. Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine and many other journalists have documented how developers and their political allies have used disasters like Katrina as a chance to funnel billions in public dollars into private pockets, to push conservative economic agendas, and to leave low-income people stranded -- literally locked out of reconstruction jobs in the communities they once called home.
We can't let the same happen in Sandy's wake.
Right now, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is calling for multi-billion-dollar infrastructure projects to protect New York from hurricane flooding in the future. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie -- previously no friend of infrastructure investment -- is pledging that every corner of New Jersey will be rebuilt.
The question is how to rebuild in a way that not only makes Sandy's victims whole, but provides jobs and opportunity for those who need it most, makes our communities stronger and more secure than they were before the storm, and begins to address the disaster of climate change that's fueling the storms.
Canadian oilsands crippled by soaring costs, memo says
A confidential government memorandum obtained by CBC News warns that soaring costs of developing the Alberta oilsands could put the brakes on the massive project, stalling one of the main engines of the Canadian economy.
The booming oilsands industry supports tens of thousands of Canadian jobs, and pumps billions of dollars a year into the national economy.
The memo written by Mark Corey, one of the highest-ranking officials in the federal Department of Natural Resources, warns that if the current trend of spiralling labour and other costs continues, investors may start to turn off the tap on the massive amounts of money needed to develop the oilsands.
"Although current crude prices promote oilsands development, ever-increasing capital and operating costs could make this price insufficient to support oilsands development at forecast levels," Corey writes.
Outrage as Antarctic ocean sanctuary talks end in failure
Conservation groups expressed outrage after resistance led by China and Russia stymied efforts to carve out new marine sanctuaries and protect thousands of species across Antarctica.
Hopes were high that a reserve covering 1.6 million square kilometres (640,000 square miles) would be green-lighted for the pristine Ross Sea, the world’s most intact marine ecosystem.
Nations led by Australia and the European Union also wanted 1.9 million square kilometres of critical coastal area in the East Antarctic safeguarded.
But two-week-long talks at the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), made up of 24 countries and the European Union, at Hobart in Australia ended without resolution.
Instead, CCAMLR will hold an intercessional meeting in Germany in July after China, Russia and Ukraine raised concerns about fishing restrictions which saw the talks fail, officials said.
Ravaged Staten Island: Torn Apart, Comes Together
A full four days after Hurricane Sandy ripped through New York City, residents on battered Staten Island have emerged as the most heavily impacted by the destruction. What's worse, the battered residents of the mostly blue-collar workers islands, now charge they've been severely neglected by emergency services in the storm's immediate aftermath.
"Of the 40 deaths attributed to the Sandy in New York City, 19 of them were on Staten Island," reports The Atlantic Wire, "and that number could rise as police continue to search homes for survivors and victims." ...
But tensions are growing on the low-lying and relatively low-income Staten Island as despair over the destruction turned to anger about the poor response.
New Yorkers Line Up for Food
Death toll nears 100 as Hurricane Sandy’s wrath lingers
A grim routine set in Friday as superstorm Sandy’s US victims struggled to adjust to gas lines, power outages and temporary housing while the death toll from the monster cyclone approached 100. ...
At least 92 people have now been reported dead across the 15 states hit by Monday night’s unprecedented storm ... while some economists have estimated the disaster will cost up to $50 billion.
More bodies are being found as police and firefighters continue “their lifesaving mission, going block-by-block and door-to-door in the areas devastated by the hurricane,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday.
Why Everything Sucks Now
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
365 Days Ago, a Revolution Was About to Take Place.
Hurricane Sandy and the Myth of the Big Government-vs.-Small-Government Debate
How the Washington Post Strips Casualties From Drone data
A Little Night Music
Meade Lux Lewis - Low Down Dog
Meade Lux Lewis - Honky Tonk Train Blues
Meade Lux Lewis - Whistlin' Blues
Meade Lux Lewis - Cow Cow Blues
Meade 'Lux' Lewis - Don't Put That Thing in Me
Meade Lux Lewis - Bear Cat Crawl
Meade Lux Lewis - The Boogie Tidal
Meade "Lux" Lewis- Chicago Flyer
Meade Lux Lewis - Tell Your Story
Meade Lux Lewis - Roll 'em
Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis - Twos And Fews
Albert Ammons & Meade Lux Lewis - The Sheik of Araby
Meade Lux Lewis - Yancey's Pride
Meade Lux Lewis - Melancholy Blues
Remember when progressive debate was about our values and not about a "progressive" candidate? Remember when progressive websites championed progressive values and didn't tell progressives to shut up about values so that "progressive" candidates can get elected?
Come to where the debate is not constrained by oaths of fealty to persons or parties.
Come to where the pie is served in a variety of flavors.
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." ~ Noam Chomsky
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