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 evening's music features Bessie Smith. Enjoy!
Bessie Smith - I'm Wild About That Thing
"Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed — and no republic can survive. [...] And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment — the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution — not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply "give the public what it wants" — but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion. This means greater coverage and analysis of international news — for it is no longer far away and foreign but close at hand and local. It means greater attention to improved understanding of the news as well as improved transmission. And it means, finally, that government at all levels, must meet its obligation to provide you with the fullest possible information outside the narrowest limits of national security."
-- John F. Kennedy
News and Opinion
AP Monitoring Raises Fears of Government Overreach: How Far Will Obama Go to Crack Down on Leaks?
Eric Holder’s abdication
As the nation’s top law enforcement official, Eric Holder is privy to all kinds of sensitive information. But he seems to be proud of how little he knows.
Why didn’t his Justice Department inform the Associated Press, as the law requires, before pawing through reporters’ phone records?
“I do not know,” the attorney general told the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday afternoon, “why that was or was not done. I simply don’t have a factual basis to answer that question.”
Why didn’t the DOJ seek the AP’s cooperation, as the law also requires, before issuing subpoenas?
“I don’t know what happened there,” Holder replied. “I was recused from the case.” ...
On and on Holder went: “I don’t know. I don’t know. . . . I would not want to reveal what I know. . . . I don’t know why that didn’t happen. . . . I know nothing, so I’m not in a position really to answer.”
Holder seemed to regard this ignorance as a shield protecting him and the Justice Department from all criticism of the Obama administration’s assault on press freedoms. But his claim that his “recusal” from the case exempted him from all discussion of the matter didn’t fly with Republicans or Democrats on the committee, who justifiably saw his recusal as more of an abdication.
The major sea change in media discussions of Obama and civil liberties
Due to the controversies over the IRS and (especially) the DOJ's attack on AP's news gathering process, media outlets have suddenly decided that President Obama has a very poor record on civil liberties, transparency, press freedoms, and a whole variety of other issues on which he based his first campaign. ...
But there are a few people excusing or outright defending the DOJ here: namely, some progressive blogs and media outlets. They are about the only ones willing to defend this sweeping attempt to get the phone records of AP journalists.
As I noted yesterday, TPM's Josh Marshall - who fancies himself an edgy insurgent against mainstream media complacency as he spends day after day defending the US government's most powerful officials - printed an anonymous email accusing AP of engineering a "smear of Justice". Worse, Media Matters this morning posted "talking points" designed to defend the DOJ in the AP matter that easily could have come directly from the White House and which sounded like Alberto Gonzales, arguing that "if the press compromised active counter-terror operations for a story that only tipped off the terrorists, that sounds like it should be investigated" and that "it was not acceptable when the Bush Administration exposed Valerie Plame working undercover to stop terrorists from attacking us. It is not acceptable when anonymous sources do it either." It also sought to blame Republicans for defeating a bill to protect journalists without mentioning that Obama, once he became president, reversed his position on such bills and helped to defeat it. Meanwhile, the only outright, spirited, unqualified defense of the DOJ's conduct toward AP that I've seen comes from a Media Matters employee and "liberal" blogger. ...
This is such an under-appreciated but crucial aspect of the Obama legacy. Recall back in 2008 that the CIA prepared a secret report (subsequently leaked to WikiLeaks) that presciently noted that the election of Barack Obama would be the most effective way to stem the tide of antiwar sentiment in western Europe, because it would put a pleasant, happy, progressive face on those wars and thus convert large numbers of Obama supporters from war opponents into war supporters. That, of course, is exactly what happened: not just in the realm of militarism but civil liberties and a whole variety of other issues.
AP Surveillance: 'Govts taking our rights away, not Al-Qaeda'
Dept. of Homeland Security Forced to Release List of Keywords Used to Monitor Social Networking Sites
If you are thinking about tweeting about clouds, pork, exercise or even Mexico, think again. Doing so may result in a closer look by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
In a story appearing earlier today on the U.K’s Daily Mail website, it was reported that the DHS has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor various social networking sites. The list provides a glimpse into what DHS describes as “signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.”
The list was posted by the Electronic Privacy Information Center who filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act, before suing to obtain the release of the documents. The documents were part of the department’s 2011 ’Analyst’s Desktop Binder‘ used by workers at their National Operations Center which instructs workers to identify ‘media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities’.
[List of keywords here]
100 Days of Hunger Strike: US no closer to Gitmo shutdown
Liberal House Democrats slam ‘cruel and harmful’ cuts to school meals for poor children
Several Democrats took to the House floor on Wednesday to denounce large cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as the Food Stamp Program.
Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) described the proposed cuts as “cruel and harmful” because it would “increase hunger in America.” Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) said the “morally wrong” $21 billion cut would hurt the U.S. economy along with low-income families.
The cuts to SNAP would remove about 2 million people from the program, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Additionally, roughly 210,000 children would lose access to free school meals.
Obama Student Loan Policy Reaping $51 Billion Profit
The Obama administration is forecast to turn a record $51 billion profit this year from student loan borrowers, a sum greater than the earnings of the nation's most profitable companies and roughly equal to the combined net income of the four largest U.S. banks by assets.
Figures made public Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office show that the nonpartisan agency increased its 2013 fiscal year profit forecast for the Department of Education by 43 percent to $50.6 billion from its February estimate of $35.5 billion.
Exxon Mobil Corp., the nation's most profitable company, reported $44.9 billion in net income last year. Apple Inc. recorded a $41.7 billion profit in its 2012 fiscal year, which ended in September, while Chevron Corp. reported $26.2 billion in earnings last year. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo reported a combined $51.9 billion in profit last year.
The estimated increase in the Education Department's earnings from student borrowers and their families may cause a political firestorm in Washington, where members of Congress and Obama administration officials thus far have appeared content to allow students to line government coffers.
Systemic Malfunctioning of the Labor and Financial Markets
Hat tip cosmic debris:
Big Banks Get Break in Rules
Under pressure from Wall Street lobbyists, federal regulators have agreed to soften a rule intended to rein in the banking industry’s domination of a risky market.
The changes to the rule, which will be announced on Thursday, could effectively empower a few big banks to continue controlling the derivatives market, a main culprit in the financial crisis. ...
In the aftermath of the crisis, regulators initially planned to force asset managers like Vanguard and Pimco to contact at least five banks when seeking a price for a derivatives contract, a requirement intended to bolster competition among the banks. Now, according to officials briefed on the matter, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has agreed to lower the standard to two banks.
But critics worry that the banks gained enough flexibility under the plan that it hews too closely to the “precrisis status.”
“The rule is really on the edge of returning to the old, opaque way of doing business,” said Marcus Stanley, the policy director of Americans for Financial Reform, a group that supports new rules for Wall Street.
Everything Is Rigged, Continued: European Commission Raids Oil Companies in Price-Fixing Probe
According to numerous reports, the European Commission regulators yesterday raided the offices of oil companies in London, the Netherlands and Norway as part of an investigation into possible price-rigging in the oil markets. The targeted companies include BP, Shell and the Norweigan company Statoil. The Guardian explains that officials believe that oil companies colluded to manipulate pricing data:
The commission said the alleged price collusion, which may have been going on since 2002, could have had a "huge impact" on the price of petrol at the pumps "potentially harming final consumers".
Lord Oakeshott, former Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said the alleged rigging of oil prices was "as serious as rigging Libor" – which led to banks being fined hundreds of millions of pounds.
The inquiry also involves Platts, the world's largest oil price reporting agency. The concept here is very similar to both the LIBOR scandal, which involved banks manipulating the benchmark rates for interest rates, and to the possible rigging of interest rate swap prices through the manipulation of ISDAfix, the benchmark rate for those instruments, which is also the subject of a regulatory probe. ...
The story is obviously hugely significant in its own right, just as the LIBOR story was. But both are even more unpleasant in conjunction with each other, and the other price-fixing scandals that have cropped up in the financial markets in the last year or two. We've had other price-fixing scandals involving gas in the U.K. and here in the U.S., just a few weeks ago, it came out that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) concluded that JPMorgan Chase used "manipulative schemes" to tinker with energy prices in Michigan and California.
How Drug Companies Keep Medicine Out of Reach
For almost a decade, the United States has been standing in the way of an idea that could lead to cures for some of the world's most devastating illnesses. The class of maladies is known as neglected diseases, and they almost exclusively affect those in the developing world. The same idea, if realized, might also be used in more affluent nations to goad the pharmaceutical industry into producing critical innovations that the free market has yet to produce - things like new antibiotics, which are likely to be used judiciously, and are unlikely to be wildly profitable.
But the idea, which advocates have outlined as a treaty, and which will have its fate decided next week at the World Health Organization (WHO) where it has languished for years amid bureaucratic tumult, is "good enough to be dangerous," in the words of one person close to the negotiations. It has thus drawn the fierce opposition of those who benefit most from the status quo, the pharmaceutical giants and the nations that claim them.
"It's a precedent. It's a competing paradigm," Jamie Love, 63, the director of Knowledge Ecology International, a progressive group agitating in favor of the idea, told me. "And the Obama administration, instead of wrapping its arms around it and trying to breathe some life into the future so we don't have $200,000 drugs, is killing it."
Bill Gates, speaking to the Royal Academy of Engineers in London last March, managed to capture the problem that Love's idea would be leveled against: "Our priorities are tilted by marketplace imperatives," Gates said. "The malaria vaccine, in humanist terms, is the biggest need, but it gets virtually no funding. If you are working on male baldness or the other things you get an order of magnitude more researching funding because of the voice in the marketplace."
This fact -- that research-based pharmaceutical companies focus on the most lucrative products, rather than the most needed -- is particularly damning for the global poor, whose diseases will never be profitable enough to attract the industry.
Palestinians Mark 65th Anniversary of Nakba (Catastrophe of 1948)
Walmart refuses to join Bangladesh worker safety deal
Walmart has confirmed it will not sign up to a legally binding agreement on worker safety and building regulations in Bangladesh supported by retailers including H&M, Zara, Primark, Tesco, Sainsbury's, Marks and Spencer, Next, C&A and several others.
However, the US retail giant has created its own agreement, which it claims goes beyond the current accord that was drafted by labour groups and campaigners. ...
However, the Walmart deal is not legally binding, does not require the company to offer financial support for fire and safety regulations or blacklist factories unwilling to comply.
The agreement has been criticised by campaigners as a "business as usual" approach, which fails to address the core problems that led to the Rana Plaza factory collapse.
Sam Maher from Labour Behind the Label, said: "Walmart's so-called new programme is simply more of the same ineffective auditing that failed to prevent the Rana Plaza disaster, or the deaths of 112 workers at Tazreen, who were producing Walmart goods.
Faulkner County, Arkansas: ExxonMobil's "Sacrifice Zone" for Tar Sands Pipelines, Fracking
There are few better examples of a "sacrifice zone" for ExxonMobil and the fossil fuel industry at-large than Faulkner County, Arkansas and the counties surrounding it.
Six weeks have passed since a 22-foot gash in ExxonMobil's Pegasus tar sands Pipeline spilled over 500,000 gallons of heavy crude into the quaint neighborhood of Mayflower, AR, a township with a population of roughly 2,300 people. The air remains hazardous to breathe in, it emits a putrid strench, and the water in Lake Conway is still rife with tar sands crude.
These facts are well known.
Less known is the fact that Faulkner County - within which Mayflower sits - is a major "sacrifice zone" for ExxonMobil not only for its pipeline infrastructure, but also for the controversial hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") process. The Fayetteville Shale basin sits underneath Faulkner County.
ExxonMobil purchased XTO Energy for $41 billion in Dec. 2009 as a wholly-owned subsidiary. XTO owns 704,000 acres of land in 15 counties in Arkansas. Among them: Faulkner.
"Private Empire" ExxonMobil is now the defendant in a class action lawsuitfiled by the citizens of Mayflower claiming damages caused in their community by the ruptured Pegasus Pipeline. ExxonMobil's XTO subsidiary was also the subject of a class action lawsuit concerning damages caused by fracking in May 2011 and another regarding fracking waste injection wells in Oct. 2012.
Canada Vows Plunder in the Arctic
Speaking before an intergovernmental forum Wednesday on the future of the Arctic, Canadian officials vowed "unprecedented industrial development" of the pristine and fragile polar region.
The comments came as the North American country took over chairmanship of the Arctic Council during the group's biennial gathering in Sweden this week.
The circumpolar states—which hold full membership on the council and include Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States—are convening to "promote cooperation on environmental protection" and discuss such issues as oil and mineral exploitation, shipping, tourism and fishing in the northern region.
Shifting global temperatures and unprecedented melting in the polar region have "boosted international interest," AFP reports, "as melting ice opens up shipping routes and makes hitherto inaccessible mineral resources easier to exploit."
Big business eyes Iceland's Arctic treasures
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
The Obama administration is making the case for conservatism better than Mitt Romney ever did.
Obama's Newfound Support for Reporter Shield Law Meant to Distract From War on Information
Evolution for the hell of it: an emergency bailout for Planet Earth
A Little Night Music
Bessie Smith - Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out
Bessie Smith - St. Louis Blues
Bessie Smith - Baby Won't You Please Come Home
Bessie Smith - I need A Little Sugar In My bowl
Bessie Smith - Tain't Nobodys Business If I Do
Bessie Smith - I'm Down In The Dumps
Bessie Smith - Put It Right Here (Or Keep It Out Of There)
Bessie Smith - There'll Be A Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight
Bessie Smith - Mountain Top Blues
Bessie Smith - Trombone Cholly
Bessie Smith - Pickpocket Blues
Louis Armstrong & Bessie Smith - Nashville Women's Blues
Bessie Smith - House Rent Blues
Louis Armstrong & Bessie Smith (Cold In Hand Blues
Bessie Smith - Beale Street Mama
Bessie Smith - My Kitchen Man
It's National Pie Day!
The election is over, it's a new year and it's time to work on real change in new ways... and it's National Pie Day. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to tell you a little more about our new site and to start getting people signed up.
Come on over and sign up so that we can send you announcements about the site, the launch, and information about participating in our public beta testing.
Why is National Pie Day the perfect opportunity to tell you more about us? Well you'll see why very soon. So what are you waiting for?! Head on over now and be one of the first!
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