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 Chicago guitarist, harmonical player and singer Louis Myers, a member of the Aces, one of Chicago's classic blues bands. Enjoy!
Louis Myers & The Aces - Sweet Home Chicago
“American humorist Kin Hubbard said , "It ain't no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be". The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?"
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue... Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times.
-- Kurt Vonnegut
News and Opinion
The 6,000-Page Report on CIA Torture Has Now Been Suppressed for 1 Year
It cost $40 million to produce, documents serious wrongdoing, and doesn't threaten national security. Team Obama won't release it.
One year ago today, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to adopt a 6,000-page report on the CIA rendition, detention, and interrogation program that led to torture. Its contents include details on each prisoner in CIA custody, the conditions of their confinement, whether they were tortured, the intelligence they provided, and the degree to which the CIA lied about its behavior to overseers. Senator Dianne Feinstein declared it one of the most significant oversight efforts in American history, noting that it contains "startling details" and raises "critical questions." But all these months later, the report is still being suppressed.
The Obama Administration has no valid reason to suppress the report. Its contents do not threaten national security, as evidenced by the fact that numerous figures who normally defer to the national-security state want it released with minor redactions. The most prominent of all is Vice President Joe Biden.
Another is Senator John McCain.
"What I have learned confirms for me what I have always believed and insisted to be true—that the cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of prisoners is not only wrong in principle and a stain on our country’s conscience, but also an ineffective and unreliable means of gathering intelligence," he said in a statement. "... It is therefore my hope that this Committee will take whatever steps necessary to finalize and declassify this report, so that all Americans can see the record for themselves, which I believe will finally close this painful chapter for our country."
Judge: NSA phone program likely unconstitutional
A federal judge ruled Monday that the National Security Agency program which collects information on nearly all telephone calls made to, from or within the United States is likely unconstitutional.
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon found that the program appears to violate the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. He also said the Justice Department had failed to demonstrate that collecting the information had helped to head off terrorist attacks.
Acting on a lawsuit brought by conservative legal activist Larry Klayman, Leon issued a preliminary injunction barring the NSA from collecting so-called metadata pertaining to the Verizon accounts of Klayman and one of his clients. However, the judge stayed the order to allow for an appeal.
“I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying it and analyzing it without judicial approval,” wrote Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush.
White House to preserve controversial policy on NSA, Cyber Command leadership
The Obama administration has decided to preserve a controversial arrangement under which a single military official is permitted to direct both the National Security Agency and the military’s cyberwarfare command despite an external review panel’s recommendation against doing so, according to U.S. officials.
The decision by President Obama comes amid signs that the White House is not inclined to place significant new restraints on the NSA’s activities and favors maintaining an agency program that collects data on virtually all phone calls of Americans, although it is likely to impose additional privacy-protection measures. ...
The announcement comes as an external panel appointed by Obama to review U.S. surveillance policies submitted its report on Friday. According to some U.S. officials, the panel was expected to recommend that the NSA-Cyber Command leadership be split and that the agency’s phone program be modified by having the phone companies or a third party hold the records, not the NSA.
By cracking cellphone code, NSA has capacity for decoding private conversations
The cellphone encryption technology used most widely across the world can be easily defeated by the National Security Agency, an internal document shows, giving the agency the means to decode most of the billions of calls and texts that travel over public airwaves every day.
While the military and law enforcement agencies long have been able to hack into individual cellphones, the NSA’s capability appears to be far more sweeping because of the agency’s global signals collection operation. The agency’s ability to crack encryption used by the majority of cellphones in the world offers it wide-ranging powers to listen in on private conversations.
U.S. law prohibits the NSA from collecting the content of conversations between Americans without a court order. But experts say that if the NSA has developed the capacity to easily decode encrypted cellphone conversations, then other nations likely can do the same through their own intelligence services, potentially to Americans’ calls, as well.
Encryption experts have complained for years that the most commonly used technology, known as A5/1, is vulnerable and have urged providers to upgrade to newer systems that are much harder to crack. Most companies worldwide have not done so, even as controversy has intensified in recent months over NSA collection of cellphone traffic, including of such world leaders as German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
NSA considers amnesty for Snowden if he stops leaks
Senior National Security Agency officials in the United States say they’ve considered making a deal with former contractor Edward Snowden that would give amnesty to the leaker charged with espionage if he stops disclosing secret documents.
Both the director of the NSA and the government official in charge of the agency’s Snowden task force tell CBS News that they’ve considered the possibility of cutting a deal with the 30-year-old former contractor, who fled the US for Hong Kong earlier this year with a trove of top-secret documents. ...
Glenn Greenwald, the American journalist who met with Snowden in Hong Kong and has reported on the pilfered files in the months since, previously said his source passed him upwards of 20,000 classified documents, according to a Reuters report in August. Gen. Alexander said during an event in Baltimore last month that the total number of stolen files could include as many as 200,000 NSA documents, and CBS News reports this week that Snowden “is believed to still have access to 1.5 million classified documents he has not leaked.”
NSA Officials Still Baffled by Extent of Snowden Leak
Officials have admitted that they may never know the full extent of the information downloaded by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the leak of which has sent the international community into a tailspin over the extent of U.S. government spying.
The NSA facility in Hawaii where Snowden worked "was not equipped with up-to-date software that allows the spy agency to monitor which corners of its vast computer landscape its employees are navigating at any given time," the New York Times reported Saturday. ...
“They’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of man-hours trying to reconstruct everything he has gotten, and they still don’t know all of what he took,” said a senior administration official.
Facebook wants to know why you didn’t publish that status update you started writing.
We spend a lot of time thinking about what to post on Facebook. Should you argue that political point your high school friend made? Do your friends really want to see yet another photo of your cat (or baby)? Most of us have, at one time or another, started writing something and then, probably wisely, changed our minds.
Unfortunately, the code that powers Facebook still knows what you typed—even if you decide not to publish it. It turns out that the things you explicitly choose not to share aren't entirely private. ... To collect the text you type, Facebook sends code to your browser. That code automatically analyzes what you type into any text box and reports metadata back to Facebook.
Storing text as you type isn't uncommon on other websites. For example, if you use Gmail, your draft messages are automatically saved as you type them. Even if you close the browser without saving, you can usually find a (nearly) complete copy of the email you were typing in your Drafts folder. Facebook is using essentially the same technology here. The difference is that Google is saving your messages to help you. Facebook users don't expect their unposted thoughts to be collected, nor do they benefit from it.
It is not clear to the average reader how this data collection is covered by Facebook's privacy policy. In Facebook’s Data Use Policy, under a section called "Information we receive and how it is used," it’s made clear that the company collects information you choose to share or when you "view or otherwise interact with things.” But nothing suggests that it collects content you explicitly don’t share. Typing and deleting text in a box could be considered a type of interaction, but I suspect very few of us would expect that data to be saved. When I reached out to Facebook, a representative told me that the company believes this self-censorship is a type of interaction covered by the policy.
"Makes Absolutely No Sense": David Cay Johnston on Budget Deal That Helps Billionaires, Not the Poor
Can't Touch This - Nobody Messes With The Pentagon Budget
Until Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) rode to the rescue this week, Pentagon brass and their allies had been issuing dire warnings about the nation's military readiness: The armed services were being decimated, they said, by sequestration—the automatic budget cuts that were set to trim $1 trillion from the Pentagon budget over the next decade. "It's one thing for the Pentagon to go on a diet. It's another for the Pentagon to wear a straitjacket while dieting," grumbled Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.). The message got through: The House overwhelmingly approved the Ryan-Murray plan just two days after it was introduced.
But now, the Pentagon has once more gotten a reprieve from the budget ax: Under Murray and Ryan's congressional budget deal, the Pentagon will get an additional $32 billion, or 4.4 percent, in 2014, leaving its base budget at a higher level than in 2005 and 2006. (The Department of Defense expects its total 2014 budget, including supplemental war funding, to be more than $600 billion.)
Before the budget deal, some critics of defense spending had been ready to accept sequestration as the blunt, imperfect tool that might force the military to shed some of the bulk it acquired while fighting two of the longest and most expensive wars in our history. Even with the sequester in place, the Pentagon's base budget was set to remain well above pre-9/11 levels for the next decade, and the military would have taken a far smaller haircut than it did after Vietnam and the Cold War wound down.
Voicing the People's Anger, Yemen Parliament Calls for Drone Ban
In its most assertive rebuke yet to its own president and the U.S. government, the Yemen Parliament on Sunday demanded an end to U.S. drone bombings in the country just days after a missile strike on a wedding party killed at least fifteen people and left many more wounded.
"Members of parliament voted to stop what drones are doing in Yemeni airspace, stressing the importance of preserving innocent civilian lives against any attack and maintaining Yemeni sovereignty," the state news agency SABA reported.
Though the nearly unanimous vote is considered "non-binding" under Yemeni law, a government official told CNN that the legislative move should be seen as "a strong warning" to Yemeni President Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi.
"The Yemeni public is angered by the drone strikes," said the official, who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity because he's not authorized to talk to reporters. "The people's representatives reflected on the tone of the streets."
Help Obama Kickstart World War III!
Politifact ‘Lie of the Year’ prize goes to Obama
It’s probably not the kind of recognition he wanted to receive, but President Barack Obama has been awarded PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year” for 2013.
The infamous prize, handed out annually by the fact-checking website PolitiFact, was given to Obama because of his statements claiming that Americans would be able to keep their health insurance under the Affordable Care Act if they liked their plan.
“If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,” Obama said on numerous occasions over the years. Soon after cancellation notices began arriving in American mailboxes this fall – more than four million people have seen their coverage cancelled at this point, largely due to the fact that their coverage did not reach the ACA’s minimum requirements – Obama denied that such a promise was made, saying he actually meant that plans could be kept only if they hadn’t changed since the health care law was passed.
Obama’s explanation didn’t pass muster, however, especially since he’d been captured on video promising that health care plans would stay in place at least two dozen times. Facing public backlash, Obama apologized and unveiled a one-year plan to allow insurers keep selling existing plans that are about to be cancelled.
A Buddy of Big Banks May Wind Up Watchdogging Wall Street
The Obama Administration is close to nominating Sharon Bowen, a Wall Street securities lawyer, to become one of five commissioners on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), according to multiple sources who have learned of the nomination. Bowen would replace outgoing commissioner Bart Chilton, an outspoken voice for tougher regulation; he was instrumental in beating back bank lobbyists and writing unexpectedly robust rules for derivatives and restricting proprietary trading. But advocates for tighter rules on Wall Street, who are working on the nomination and requested anonymity, expressed concern to The New Republic that Bowen, a partner in the New York office of Latham & Watkins, which has represented several big financial institutions, has little background in derivatives, commodities or agricultural markets—the core subjects of CFTC regulation—and no track record for reform. Her nomination, combined with the replacement of Chairman Gary Gensler by another securities lawyer without significant derivatives expertise, Timothy Massad, would put two “blank slates,” as one source put it, in charge of a commission that has acquired massive new responsibilities under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law for policing derivatives trading. ...
There is recent precedent for nominees to the CFTC without major qualifications, and it didn’t work out well for reformers. Mark Wetjen, the only holdover Democrat on the commission, was a staffer for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid similarly lacking in significant financial expertise when he was nominated to serve as commissioner in 2011. Since that time, Wetjen has proven an asset to Wall Street on the commission, time and again working to weaken or delay rules in ways favorable to the banks. For example, he forced changes to rules to make all bids in derivatives trades public before the transaction, as well as rules governing CFTC authority on overseas trades. Given the complexity of the issues involved, reform groups worry that a CFTC with Democrats Massad, Bowen, and Wetjen—two Wall Street securities lawyers and an ex-Hill staffer with a pro-industry record—will allow lobbyists to run roughshod over the commission, without an informed in-house advocate to push back. “When a derivatives dealer comes in with a complicated argument, there will be nobody to call B.S.,” said one source.
New Obama Adviser Brings Corporate Ties
The defense contractor Northrop Grumman gave money to the left-leaning Center for American Progress, founded by John D. Podesta, as the nonprofit group at times bemoaned what it called the harmful impact of major reductions in Pentagon spending.
Pacific Gas and Electric sent in a donation as Mr. Podesta championed government incentives to promote solar energy and other renewable sources that the California company buys more of than nearly any other utility.
The pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly was also a donor because of what it said was the Center for American Progress’s advocacy for patients’ rights — and just as the debate heated up in Washington over potential cuts to the Medicare program that covers Lilly’s most profitable drugs.
Mr. Podesta, named a senior adviser to President Obama, is not currently a lobbyist and therefore does not have to worry about the Obama administration’s self-imposed ban on hiring lobbyists to administration jobs. But he will nonetheless arrive at the White House after having run an organization that has taken millions of dollars in corporate donations in recent years and has its own team of lobbyists who have pushed an agenda that sometimes echoes the interests of these corporate supporters.
'Spiral of Rebellion' Sweeps Italy
Pitchfork movement organizers vow 'peaceful invasion' of Rome until ruling regime steps down
Marking the sixth day of relentless blockades, occupations and mass demonstrations that many warn may set off "a spiral of rebellion" across Europe, protesters—marching under the banner of the 'Pitchfork' movement—gathered Saturday in Rome, Turin and Venice, Italy.
"Activists wearing Italian flag masks and white nooses around their necks rallied outside the European Commission's office in Rome and took down a European flag outside before being chased off by police," AFP reports.
According to the report, police violence against protesters persisted across Italy. In Venice, police fired tear gas at protesters outside the city's train station and in the northern Italy city of Turin—the epicenter of the latest wave of anti-austerity revolt—students paint bombs were met with force.
"There are millions of us and we are growing by the hour," said Danilo Calvani, a farmer who has emerged as one of the protest leaders. "This government has to go."
"These protests show Italy's massive crisis of political representation," said Duncan McDonnell, a political scientist at the European University Institute in Florence. "These people don't feel that anyone's actually listening to them … It really shows how there are big sections of Italian society that don't feel represented by anyone – political parties, trade unions, interest groups or business."
Defiant Settlers: Spanish cave community threatened by profit hungry govt
'Stop lying': Uruguay president chides UN official over marijuana law
Uruguay’s president has accused the head of the UN’s International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) of lying and double standards, after the official claimed the country did not consult the anti-drug body before legalizing marijuana.
Earlier this week, Uruguay became the first country in the world to legalize both the sale and production of marijuana.
INCB chief Raymond Yans has slammed the “surprising” move, accusing the South American state of legalizing the drug without first discussing it with the UN organization.
Uruguay’s president, Jose Mujica, rejected the criticism on Friday, saying that he’s ready to discuss the law with anyone.
“Tell that old man to stop lying,” Mujica said in an interview with Uruguay’s Canal 4.
“Let him come to Uruguay and meet me whenever he wishes… Anybody can meet and talk to me, and whoever says he couldn't meet with me tells lies, blatant lies."
The Evening Greens
I'm so glad that Obama installed corporate-toady Moniz as Secretary of Energy. Gosh what a wonderful job he's doing to destroy the climate for us.
Energy Secretary: time to revisit US ban on crude exports
The US might reconsider its ban on crude oil exports. Speaking at the Platts Global Energy Outlook Forum in New York on Thursday, Energy Secretary Ernie Moniz explained that export ban dates from a period of oil embargoes and supply disruptions from the 1970s.
“Those restrictions on exports were born, as was the Department of Energy and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, on oil disruptions. There are lots of issues in the energy space that deserve some new analysis and examination in the context of what is now an energy world that is no longer like the 1970s,” said Moniz.
These remarks echo the growing calls from industry to open up American crude oil to the global oil market.
Taken together with natural gas, the US is awash in domestic fossil fuels that are largely stranded in North America, and is now in a position to reconsider its scarcity-based energy policies.
Refinery Report: New online tool tracks tar sands flows through North America
The amount of tar sands crude refined in the U.S. grew by over 40 percent between 2010 and 2012, from 1.15 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2010 to 1.65 million bpd in 2012. The number of U.S. refineries processing tar sands increased from 57 to 66.
Oil Change International has launched a new online tool today that tracks the flow of Canadian tar sands crude oil to North America’s refineries.
www.refineryreport.org enables users to discover how much tar sands crude is being processed at U.S. refineries and which Canadian refineries are regularly refining this dirty source of crude.
The data for U.S. refineries covers years 2010-2012 and a full analysis, ... gives details of which refining companies process the most tar sands feedstock, as well as a regional breakdown of tar sands flows. These estimates were made by cross referencing multiple data sources and we believe them to be the best publicly available estimates of tar sands refining at American refineries.
Keystone XL Pipeline Loses Support From U.S. Customer, Says Not Needed
Continental Resources, one of the companies that has committed to ship crude on TransCanada Corp's proposed Keystone XL pipeline, now says the controversial pipeline is no longer needed.
Continental has signed on to ship some 35,000 barrels of its own oil from the Bakken field of North Dakota on the 1,179-mile, $5.4-billion Keystone XL line. But construction of the pipeline has been delayed for years as TransCanada has sought regulatory approvals, and Continental has since turned to railroads to get its crude to oil refineries.
Harold Hamm, chief executive of the independent oil producer, told Reuters that his company and the U.S. oil industry in general are no longer counting on Keystone XL.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' is on hiatus.
Two Parties, One Game: Barack Obama's War on the Poor
Drone Nation
Airstrike in Yemen worst attack in over a year
Story of a Death Foretold
Simple Question About U.S. Troops in Afghanistan Stumps Officials
Tell Dems in Senate: Budget Deal "Makes Absolutely No Sense"
A Little Night Music
Louis Myers - Tell My Story Movin'
Louis Myers + Dave Myers ( The Aces) - The Aces Shuffle
Louis Myers - Short Haired Woman
Louis Myers - All My Love In Vain
Louis Myers + The Aces - Take a Little Walk with Me
Louis Myers + The Aces - That's Allright
Louis Myers & The Aces - Just Whaling
Louis Myers - I'm A Southern Man
Louis Myers & The Aces - Blues With A Feeling
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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