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 Texas musician Doug Sahm. Enjoy!
Doug Sahm - She's About A Mover
“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
-- C.S. Lewis
News and Opinion
Dennis Kucinich on the "Fiscal Cliff": Why Are We Sacrificing American Jobs for Corporate Profits?
Congress Almost Certain To Blow Unemployment Deadline
The U.S. House of Representatives will convene on Sunday in a last-minute effort to avoid the steep spending cuts and tax cuts scheduled to take effect at the end of the year. But Sunday will already be too late for long-term unemployment insurance, which will almost certainly lapse on Saturday thanks to congressional inaction.
According to the National Employment Law Project, a worker advocacy group, more than 2 million Americans will stop receiving benefits after Dec. 29, when the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation program will cease to exist.
"The 11th hour has arrived," NELP director Christine Owens said in a statement on Thursday. "Other consequences of going over the fiscal cliff won’t be felt for some time, but losing Emergency Unemployment Compensation will deliver an immediate and severe blow to people who are already down."
Fiscal Cliff: Going Nuclear and the Grand Betrayal
Senate Votes to Extend Sweeping Bush Era Surveillance Powers
Even modest attempts to reign in domestic spying law fail as Senators defend sweeping powers for NSA
The US Senate on Friday voted to reauthorize the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, an spying bill that critics say violates the Fourth Amendment and gives vast, unchecked surveillance authority to the government.
The move extends powers of the National Security Agency to conduct surveillance of Americans’ international emails and phone calls.
The FISA Amendments Act Reauthorization Act (H.R. 5949), passed on a 73-23 vote.
“It’s a tragic irony that FISA, once passed to protect Americans from warrantless government surveillance, has mutated into its polar opposite due to the FISA Amendments Act,” said Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel at the ACLU. “The Bush administration’s program of warrantless wiretapping, once considered a radical threat to the Fourth Amendment, has become institutionalized for another five years.”
Obama Administration Seeks to Strengthen Rupert Murdoch
Earlier this year, Obama Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski proposed relaxing media ownership rules to allow Rupert Murdoch to buy the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. It’s not something you’ll see discussed much, because Republicans like the fact that Murdoch is going to get more power, while Democrats don’t want to admit that Obama is helping the person framed as their arch-nemesis. This is part of a larger pattern – media consolidation is one of the many structural problems that Obama promised to deal with. And indeed, this is the real arena where the battle over free speech is being fought. Corporate control over our communications infrastructure is the free speech question of our time. ...
Of course, as is consistent with Obama’s main policy arc, after winning, Obama neutralized the reform groups and quickly reverted to a model of policymaking that is slightly more pro-corporate than Bush’s. He appointed Genachowski, a law school classmate known as an intellectual and moral lightweight, to run the FCC, and ensured that Larry Summers in the White House would sideline any attempts to fight against media and telecom barons. Here’s the predictable outcome, in a Free Press filing.
There has been “a nearly 20 percent decline in the level of minority ownership since 2006, and a net loss of six minority-owned stations since the Commission last collected data in October 2011. In a nation where African Americans comprise 13 percent of the population, there are only 5 African American-owned full-power commercial TV stations, just 0.4 percent of the total. This is a 76 percent decline in just 6 years.
In other words, the record of the Obama administration and corporate free speech is terrible, with one significant exception, when the administration blocked the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile. This horrific record is largely because of the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski, a man who has managed to take a position renowned for corruption and somehow manage to make his predecessors look noble. Not only is he roundly despised by most consumer advocates, who consider him the worst FCC Chairman in history, but he’s also thought of as weak, stupid, and feckless by the corporate sector. ... Corporate control over our communications infrastructure is the free speech question of our time. When Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder refuses to investigate Rupert Murdoch’s company for bribery in the phone hacking scandal, and Obama’s FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski works to help Rupert Murdoch’s company buy more media assets, and the number of broadcast media outlets owned by minorities continues to decline, it’s clear we have a free speech problem.
Have US police forces become too militarised?
NYPD sued in record numbers
It’s another red-letter year for New York’s boys in blue: the New York Police Department has spent $185 million to settle lawsuits filed during fiscal year 2011.
In all, 8,882 suits were filed against the NYPD during the last fiscal year, an increase of 10 percent from the year prior. That tally also sets the record for the most claims against a single police agency filed during the last fiscal year.
The news comes upon the release of a report from New York Comptroller John Liu, who analyzed settlements paid by the city between July 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011. The New York Daily News reports that figures for fiscal year 2012 have not yet been made public.
Although the amount of claims against the NYPD has only increased by 10 percent, the total monetary pay out issued by the city surged by roughly 35 percent. In the year prior, the total pay out for suits against the NYPD amounted to only $137.3 million.
Outgoing Rep. Dennis Kucinich: With 2 Parties Failing U.S., It’s on Us to Build a "Culture of Peace"
French share their way through recession
Occupy Year In Review
Top Obama Environmental Official Departs “Frustrated” Over Pipeline, Inaction On Climate
President Obama's chief environmental official departed in part over her opposition to a controversial plan to pipe oil from Canadian tar sands to Texas refineries, two sources familiar with the situation told BuzzFeed Thursday.
Environmental Protection Administration Administrator Lisa Jackson, who had served as New Jersey's top environmental official, had been handed a far less ambitious agenda on issues surrounding climate change after opposition from states reliant on burning coal for electricity proved a damaging political issue for Democrats in 2010. The pipeline project, bitterly opposed by environmental activists, was one of environmentalists' largest disappointments.
Jackson "left as a matter of conscience," said Jeff Tittel, the director of New Jersey's Sierra Club chapter and a longtime friend of Jackson's. The EPA Administrator "has too much principle to support [the pipeline], between the climate impacts of it and the water quality impacts of it." ...
"If the president comes out for it, she would be expected to support it," said Tittel. "Whether they told her or not, that's how it works. She was the person who pushed the hardest for the moratorium on the pipeline and now she's leaving."
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
Local skirmishes for equality
Fiscal insanity – cutting the deficit only to get a larger one
Why Lisa Jackson is leaving the EPA: the Keystone XL pipeline
A Little Night Music
Doug Sahm - Reconsider baby
Doug Sahm - "Medley" (Crazy Baby, One Night, Sometimes, Wasted Days & Wasted Nights)
Doug Sahm - Dealers Blues
The Amos Garrett, Doug Sahm, Gene Taylor Band - Don't tell me
Jerry Garcia, Leon Russel + Doug Sahm - Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry
Doug Sahm - Hello Josephine, I'm a Fool to Care and Something To Remember You By
Amos Garrett Doug Sahm Gene Taylor - Teardrops On Your Letter
Doug Sahm - Buzz buzz buzz
Doug Sahm & The Spirits - Baby, What's On Your Mind
Doug Sahm - Ain't nothing wrong with you baby (T-Bone Shuffle)
The Amos Garrett Doug Sahm Gene Taylor Band- Sleepwalk
Doug Sahm - Next time you see me
Texas Tornados - Guacamole
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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