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 the doo-wop group The Coasters. Enjoy!
The Coasters - Searchin'
“The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking.”
-- Terry Pratchett
News and Opinion
Obama administration seeking $500m to train 'moderate' Syrian rebels
The Obama administration has proposed escalating US involvement in the Syrian civil war, asking Congress for $500m for the US military to train and equip "moderate" Syrian rebels.
The request to Congress on Thursday, heralded by Barack Obama's vow, made during a speech at West Point military academy, to step up assistance to a beleaguered Syrian force, comes as the administration searches for effective alternatives to the jihadist army that has carved out massive swaths of Syria and Iraq for an Islamic state.
Previously, US aid to the Syrian opposition that is fighting dictator Bashar al-Assad focused on non-lethal provisioning, while the Central Intelligence Agency focused on sending small arms and missiles to what the US calls the "vetted" Syrian moderates. Yet the Gulf Arab states have established an arms pipeline giving a substantive military edge to jihadist groups fighting Assad and one another. ...
[A] long-delayed war funding package, known for years as the Overseas Contingency Fund and before that a "supplemental", includes $5bn for the administration's heavily promoted Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund.
Some $1.5bn of that would go into a "regional stabilization initiative" for Syrian neighbors Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq.
Obama Doubles Down On Failure - Asks Congress for Another $500 Million for Syria Rebels
Having thrown hundreds of millions of dollars at the various “moderate” Syrian rebel factions, the US has very little to show for it, as not only have groups like ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra long surpassed the moderates as the dominant rebel faction, but ISIS appears to be on the cusp of forming its own country, carved out of Iraq and Syria.
Still, President Obama sees no reason to try something new, and is doubling down with a request to Congress for another $500 million for Syrian rebel funding, aiming at both training and equipment for the factions. ...
The moderate groups like the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are in shambles, and US aid seems to accomplish little but postpone the inevitable collapse of the group, which controls no meaningful territory and is at this point more of a rebellion inside ISIS territory than what remains of Syria itself.
'Kurds see golden opportunity to announce their independence from Iraq'
Iraq's top Shia cleric presses politicians to agree on new PM by Tuesday
Iraq's top Shia cleric has called on political blocs to agree on the next prime minister before the newly elected parliament sits next week, stepping up pressure on politicians to set aside their differences and form an inclusive government in the face of Sunni militants who have seized large swaths of territory.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, speaking through a representative, told worshippers in a Friday sermon at the holy city of Karbala that choosing a new leadership before parliament meets on Tuesday would be a "prelude to the political solution that everyone seeks at the present". As well as a prime minister, Iraq also needs a president and parliamentary speaker.
Armed U.S. Drones Start Flights Over Iraq
[A] Pentagon official in Washington said armed Predator drone patrols had started flying over Baghdad, an operation meant to offer added protection to the first American military assessment teams that are fanning out in and around Baghdad to help the Iraqi military combat the insurgents.
The Predators, equipped with Hellfire missiles, will augment about 40 unarmed reconnaissance flights that a combination of manned and unmanned American aircraft are flying over Iraq each day. The armed drones departed from an air base in Kuwait, the Pentagon official said. ...
Any drone strike now would require Mr. Obama’s personal approval, two senior Pentagon officials said, and would most likely be conducted only to defend American advisers. A Pentagon spokesman said on Thursday that 90 more advisers had arrived in Iraq, bringing the total there to 180. Half will be assigned to assessment units and half to the Joint Operations Center in Baghdad. The commander of the Iraq mission, the spokesman added, will be Maj. Gen. Dana J.H. Pittard of the Army.
Is Russia Replacing US in Iraq?
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Thursday told BBC Arabic that he was buying used fighter jets from the Russian Federation and from Belorussia. He said it had been a huge mistake to depend on the US for arms purchases, since the US arms pipeline is extremely slow and F-16 fighter jets ordered some time ago still have not arrived.
Al-Maliki was likely also reacting to the attempt of US President Barack Obama to strong arm him into resigning from his office in favor of a national salvation government.
Al-Maliki is widely blamed for the debacle of the past few weeks, in which he has lost a third of his country to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Al-Maliki’s stubborn sectarianism and inability to work with Sunni Arabs pushed them over the edge.
Al-Maliki’s narrative is rather different. He maintains that his troops in the north and west lacked close air support because of American foot-dragging on weapons already paid for. Al-Maliki maintains that the jets can be in Iraq withing 3 days, and can be deployed in bombing raids on ISIS positions in the north.
Al-Maliki also portrays the idea of a unity government as anti-democratic, since it sets aside such issues as which party won the most seats.
Determined to stay as prime minister for another four years, al-Maliki is seeking to accomplish several things at once. He wants to do an end run around Obama so as to avoid succumbing to American pressure to resign. He wants to impress Iraqi parliamentarians with his external contacts such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, so that they might support a third term for him. And practically speaking he wants to adopt the Syrian Baath’s model of dealing with ISIS, which is to bomb them intensively, both aerially and by artillery, even at the risk of extensively damaging the local urban environment and killing and making refugees of millions. That he is even talking about this strategy publicly is probably meant as a threat with which to menace Mosul.
Israel tells U.S. Kurdish independence is 'foregone conclusion'
Israel told the United States on Thursday Kurdish independence in northern Iraq was a "foregone conclusion" and Israeli experts predicted the Jewish state would be quick to recognise a Kurdish state, should it emerge.
Israel has maintained discreet military, intelligence and business ties with the Kurds since the 1960s, seeing in the minority ethnic group a buffer against shared Arab adversaries.
The Kurds have seized on recent sectarian chaos in Iraq to expand their autonomous northern territory to include Kirkuk, which sits on vast oil deposits that could make the independent state many dream of economically viable.
Washington wants Iraq's crumbling unity restored. On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Iraqi Kurdish leaders and urged them to seek political integration with Baghdad. ...
Israel last Friday took its first delivery of the disputed crude from Iraqi Kurdistan's new pipeline. The United States disapproves of such go-it-alone Kurdish exports.
You’re paying more for gasoline because Wall Street speculators are bidding up prices
[Gasoline] prices tend to spike around Memorial Day, when increased demand cuts against a limited supply as refiners convert from winter fuels to summer blends. But by the middle of June, gasoline inventories are up and prices typically retreat.
This year, they haven’t.
The reason why refutes the commonly held view that deteriorating political conditions in Iraq haven’t had much effect on gasoline prices. They have.
Despite no apparent hit to Iraqi crude production, and near-record levels of U.S. oil production, fears about the Middle East conflict have allowed financial speculators to bid up oil prices _ another contributing factor to high gasoline prices. ...
Speculative trading on the violence in Iraq is keeping oil prices about $4 a barrel higher than they would be otherwise, said Andrew Lipow, president of the Houston consultancy Lipow Oil Associates.
And that’s affecting consumers. Gasoline prices on Wednesday averaged $3.68 for a gallon of regular unleaded, up slightly up from $3.66 a gallon a month ago and more than 13 cents a gallon higher than at the same time last year.
If you assume that gasoline would revert back to about last year’s June price and add the recent jump, prices are about 15 cents a gallon higher than they should be.
In a car with a 15-gallon tank, that’s $2.25 more per fill-up.
Multiply that by at least 212 million American motorists and you’re talking real money: If every American motorist filled up this week, they’d collectively be paying $477 million more than they did in the same week last year.
[Enjoy paying your Goldman Sachs tax this summer! - js]
Vladimir Putin's adviser calls Ukrainian president a 'Nazi' as EU deal signed
A senior adviser to Vladimir Putin has called the Ukranian president a "Nazi" as Ukraine signed an association with the European Union.
While mainly an economic deal to set up a free-trade zone between the EU and three former Soviet republics – Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova – the agreement has political and strategic ramifications, and it was former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych's U-turn over signing it at the end of last year that led to his ousting in a popular revolt.
Sergei Glazyev, an adviser to Putin, told the BBC before the signing that "Europe is trying to push Ukraine to sign this agreement by force" and said Petro Poroshenko, the president, lacked the legitimacy to make the deal.
"They organised [a] military coup in Ukraine; they helped Nazis to come to power. This Nazi government is bombing the largest region in Ukraine." He said he "of course" believed the Ukrainian president was a Nazi.
The association deal – which Poroshenko signed in Brussels on Friday – does not guarantee eventual EU membership, but is seen both in the countries themselves and in Moscow as a major step westwards. It contains measures to synchronise economies with EU nations, as well as improve the rule of law and human rights.
What truce? Kiev 'National Guard' lose 20 in attack on Slavyansk during ceasefire
Ukraine extends ceasefire by 12 hours
Ukraine's national security council has extended Kiev's ceasefire in the east of the country by 12 hours in an apparent attempt to jump-start negotiations.
The ceasefire, announced by President Petro Poroshenko one week ago, was due to end at 10am on Friday, but the deadline was moved to 10pm after the tentative truce broke down this week. ...
In an apparent gesture of goodwill in the small hours of Friday morning, rebels released four observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) who had been held at an unknown location in the neighbouring Lugansk region for 31 days. ...
The United Nations high commissioner for refugees said on Friday that 110,000 people had fled from Ukraine to Russia this year, 9,500 of whom had sought refugee status, lending credence to Russian claims of an exodus across the border. The UN reported this week that at least 423 civilians and fighters had been killed in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The national security council said five Ukrainian servicemen had been killed on Thursday as fighting in the east continued.
Journalist Allan Nairn Threatened for Exposing Indonesian Pres. Candidate’s Role in Mass Killings
Increased US drone use 'may create slippery slope to wider war', report says
A new report written by former Obama administration officials and military officers warns that the US reliance on drone strikes for counter-terrorism "risks increasing instability and escalating conflicts".
The report, released on Thursday from the Stimson Center, does not reject drone strikes and is notable primarily for its authors, almost all of whom have served in senior government, military and intelligence posts. ...
While most thinktank reports command little attention in Washington, the Stimson Center report, released Thursday, indicates a shift in elite consensus in national security circles around drones. It challenges some of the central premises behind the embrace of drone strikes – typically that they provide an asset for killing suspected terrorists in remote or diplomatically inaccessible terrain, short of a potentially costly raid or even outright invasion.
Yet the Stimson Center report, spearheaded by retired General John Abizaid and former Pentagon official Rosa Brooks, portrays drone strikes as a potential facilitator of perpetual war, rather than the alternative to it that the Obama administration contends.
"The increasing use of lethal UAVs may create a slippery slope leading to continual or wider war," the report warns, lending official recognition to a point made for years by leftwing critics of Obama's drone attacks. ...
Echoing a criticism from United Nations drone investigator Ben Emmerson, the report finds that "despite the undoubted good faith of US decision-makers, it would be difficult to conclude that US targeted strikes are consistent with core rule of law norms."
PRISM, Local Edition: NY DA Employs 381 Secret Orders to Gather Complete Digital Dossiers from Facebook
Unfortunately, it appears that the lure of bulk surveillance is not just a temptation for the federal government. Last summer, about a month after new leaks exposed the NSA’s bulk content PRISM program, Cyrus Vance, Jr., the District Attorney for Manhattan, decided to go secretly fishing through 381 Facebook accounts, and wanted to ensure no one was allowed to stop him.
The DA was looking for evidence of disability fraud, and saw Facebook as a treasure trove. Many people put their lives online, sharing their daily ups and downs with a steady stream of photos, comments, and wall posts to friends and family. Perhaps some of them, after claiming a disability, would post a windsurfing selfie or write about their marathon training, and evidence their fraud.
So the DA put together nearly 400 search warrants, which ordered Facebook to provide near total access to the accounts, and gagged the social media giant from informing the users. Facebook reports that this "unprecedented request is by far the largest we’ve ever received—by a magnitude of more than ten." According to Facebook's appeals brief, the targets included a cross-section of America “from high schoolers to grandparents, … electricians, school teachers, and members of our armed services.”
Facebook's brief explains that the warrants sought “information that cannot possibly be relevant to the crimes the Government presumably continues to investigate,” including what “Group” people belong to (and who else is in that group), chat messages, private messages, friends list (including removed friends) and even past and future events. And indeed, for the vast majority of the target, the information was not relevant to any crime. Only 62 people were ultimately charged.
Sometimes “come back with a warrant” is not enough. The warrant must also conform to constitutional limitations, narrowly seeking evidence of a crime with particularity, based on probable cause.
Germany dumps Verizon for government work over NSA fears
The German government is ditching Verizon as its network infrastructure provider, and it’s citing Edward Snowden’s revelations about NSA surveillance as a reason.
The aftermath of the Snowden leaks has seen China institute heavy vetting of U.S. equipment and Brazil cancel big orders of U.S. military kit. However, despite the fact that the bugging of Chancellor Angela Merkel provided a major diplomatic upset, until now Germany’s response has been more bark than bite.
No longer. In a statement on Thursday, the German ministry of the interior said it would let its existing contract with Verizon expire as it tries to provide “an infrastructure with an increased level of security.” Verizon currently manages Germany’s federal administrative infrastructure, through a contract that will run out in 2015.
The statement cited the increasing prevalence of malware and other hacking threats, and it also explicitly called out the links – exposed by “the NSA affair” – between foreign intelligence agencies and private firms.
Is The Government Keeping You Poor? Russell Brand The Trews
Red Cross: How We Spent Hurricane Sandy Relief Money Is a ‘Trade Secret’
Just how badly does the American Red Cross want to keep secret how it raised and spent over $300 million after Hurricane Sandy?
The charity has hired a fancy law firm to fight a public request we filed with New York state, arguing that information about its Sandy activities is a "trade secret."
The Red Cross' "trade secret" argument has persuaded the state to redact some material, though it's not clear yet how much since the documents haven't yet been released.
As we've reported, the Red Cross releases few details about how it spends money after big disasters. That makes it difficult to figure out whether donor dollars are well spent.
The Red Cross did give some information about Sandy spending to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who had been investigating the charity. But the Red Cross declined our request to disclose the details.
So we filed a public records request for the information the Red Cross provided to the attorney general's office.
That's where the law firm Gibson Dunn comes in.
An attorney from the firm's New York office appealed to the attorney general to block disclosure of some of the Sandy information, citing the state Freedom of Information Law's trade secret exemption.
Occupy Protesters Arrested For Satirizing Police Repression Reach $22,000 Settlement
NEW YORK -- Two Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested in May 2012 over a piece of street theater meant to satirize the New York Police Department have reached a $22,000 settlement with New York City, they announced on Tuesday.
Bicycling activists Keegan Stephan and Barbara Ross were arrested as they were protesting the NYPD's practice of arresting Occupy Wall Street demonstrators who filmed the police at work. Dressed as comic exaggerations of cops, they were melodramatically ordering fellow bicyclists with the cycling collective Time's Up! to stop filming them. ...
The joke went downhill when actual police officers showed up. Initially, Stephan and Ross were told they were being arrested for impersonating police officers. The charges against them were later downgraded to reckless endangerment and eventually dropped. ...
Stephan and Ross sued the city for false arrest. They received the monetary offer in March.
Teachers to Gates Foundation: Stop Pushing Corporate Education Reform
A group of teachers is holding a rally Thursday evening in Seattle to denounce education reform measures they say have been an attack on public education and let corporate interests and high-stakes testing trump real student learning.
The target of their protest: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, whom the teachers say has used its monetary power to push corporate reforms and is symbolic of measures—like Common Core Standards and over-testing—that don't let educators be the decision makers of education policies. ...
Julianna Dauble, full-time teacher in Renton, Washington and organizer of the action, told Common Dreams that the Gates Foundation "bought us Common Core," in addition to promoting other things like charter schools, increased testing and Race to the Top, without a democratic process that involves consulting teachers.
It's been a "test-teaching regime" Dauble said, where teachers "have been strangled."
Gates has been pushing "magical, silver bullets" to solve problems in education but leave them "unable to be critical thinkers, problem solvers, and not at all certain where they fit in the world. " The increased testing has just "purchased a lot more for work teacher," but has failed to meet the whole needs of the child, Dauble continued, adding that "teachers don't value the test results."
Why Did Economy Shrink So Dramatically During the First Quarter of 2014?
WORONCZUK: So let's talk about the recent figures that were released by the U.S. Commerce Department that showed the U.S. economy contracted by 2.9 percent in the first quarter of this year. Give us some context for this number.
POLLIN: It's a massive contraction. You know, we're talking about roughly a 3 percent decline in GDP growth in one quarter. That is greater than the decline that occurred in the entire recession of 2001 and in the entire recession of 1970. So this is, you know, a huge number.
Now, the number is being generally dismissed as having been a blip due to two factors, one being the severe winter in the first three months of 2014 in the Northeast, which I experienced, I must say, and the other being the rollout of Obamacare and the disruptions caused by the way that that was rolled out badly, given that the share of health care in the economy is 17 percent. So when something is disrupted there, that is going to weaken the level of GDP, which is the level of activity in the economy. So on the one hand, we do have these explanations.
On the other hand, we have to keep in mind that, you know, you can't just call it a blip. It by itself constitutes the equivalent of a recession if it were to go on another few months.
WORONCZUK: So if I turn on CNN, it will tell me as well that this is a temporary freak event, and like you said, that it was triggered by a harsh winter. And, I mean, they say not to worry about this, because if you look at job creation in the past few months, that there have been more people hired. So is that the case? Or, like, what would you say are the structural problems that are driving the decline here?
POLLIN: Well, all of the above, really. The fact is that the severity of the downturn was probably not consistent with the longer-term trajectory that the economy is on. The economy is on broadly something like a recovery. But now we have to put that in context. The Great Recession ended officially five years ago, at the end of June 2009. So we're at the end of June 2014--the recession ended officially five years ago. However, the recovery from the recession has been a weak all along, not just the last quarter. So it wasn't just a blip.
What happened in the last quarter was broadly consistent with the weakness of the recovery, just to give some evidence on that. In the previous eight recessions that the U.S. has had since World War II, you see strong recoveries after the recession ends, so that, say, three months after the recession ends, the economy is growing on average at about four and a half percent a year. That's positive four and half percent growth on average. In this recession, after the recession ends in 2009, average growth has only been 2.3 percent--half the rate of improvement that we've seen in the eight previous recessions. So we could say that this massive one-quarter contraction was a blip, but it wasn't just a blip, because it comes amid a very weak recovery that's been going on now for five years.
"Counter-Revolution of 1776": Was U.S. Independence War a Conservative Revolt in Favor of Slavery?
Teenie Hodges, Soul Guitarist and Songwriter, Dies at 68
Teenie Hodges, a guitarist and songwriter whose lithe touch on songs by Al Green and others helped shape the sound of Memphis soul in the 1970s, died on Sunday in Dallas. He was 68.
The cause was complications of emphysema, his daughter Sheila said.
Along with his brothers Leroy, on bass guitar, and Charles, on organ, Mr. Hodges was part of the celebrated house band at Hi Records in Memphis starting in the late ’60s. Distinguishing themselves from the raw style of Stax, the city’s pre-eminent soul label at the time, Hi and the producer Willie Mitchell developed a jazzier and more languid approach that still had grit and rhythmic punch.
Mr. Hodges was crucial to that sound. His warm, loosely strummed chords and gently strutting funk on Mr. Green’s classic songs like “Let’s Stay Together” and “Tired of Being Alone” made him a connoisseur’s favorite, and helped establish the Hi players as one of the premier studio teams in R&B, on par with the Funk Brothers at Motown, Stax’s regular group and the players at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala.
Congressman Cohen Pays Tribute to Admired Memphis Musician Teenie Hodges
The Evening Greens
Obama loosens 4-decade ban on crude oil exports
From the mouths of the Wall Street Journal (subscr. may be required), we learn that Obama, via his administration, which we pay him to control, has opened the door to international sales of unrefined American oil for the first time since the Arab Oil Embargo of the 1970s:
U.S. Ruling Loosens Four-Decade Ban On Oil Exports
Shipments of Unrefined American Oil Could Begin as Early as August
The Obama administration cleared the way for the first exports of unrefined American oil in nearly four decades, allowing energy companies to start chipping away at the longtime ban on selling U.S. oil abroad.
In separate rulings that haven’t been announced, the Commerce Department gave Pioneer Natural Resources Co. and Enterprise Products Partners LP permission to ship a type of ultralight oil known as condensate to foreign buyers. The buyers could turn the oil into gasoline, jet fuel and diesel.
The shipments could begin as soon as August and are likely to be small, people familiar with the matter said. It isn’t clear how much oil the two companies are allowed to export under the rulings, which were issued since the start of this year. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security approved the moves using a process known as a private ruling.
For now, the rulings apply narrowly to the two companies, which said they sought permission to export processed condensate from south Texas’ Eagle Ford Shale formation. The government’s approval is likely to encourage similar requests from other companies, and the Commerce Department is working on industrywide guidelines that could make it even easier for companies to sell U.S. oil abroad.
In a statement Tuesday night, the Commerce Department said there has been “no change in policy on crude oil exports.”
“No change in policy”? Right. Who do you trust, the Commerce Department or your lying eyes? Trust me; as the article points out, the floodgates for these applications will open wide.
On N.C.’s Outer Banks, scary climate-change predictions prompt a change of forecast
NAGS HEAD, N.C. — The dangers of climate change were revealed to Willo Kelly in a government conference room in the summer of 2011. By the end of the century, state officials said, the ocean would be 39 inches higher and her home on the Outer Banks would be swamped.
The state had detailed maps to illustrate this claim and was developing a Web site where people could check by street address to see if their property was doomed. There was no talk of salvation, no plan to hold back the tide. The 39-inch forecast was “a death sentence,” Kelly said, “for ever trying to sell your house.”
So Kelly, a lobbyist for Realtors and home builders on the Outer Banks, resolved to prove the forecast wrong. And thus began one of the nation’s most notorious battles over climate change.
Coastal residents joined forces with climate skeptics to attack the science of global warming and persuade North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature to deep-six the 39-inch projection, which had been advanced under the outgoing Democratic governor. Now, the state is working on a new forecast that will look only 30 years out and therefore show the seas rising by no more than eight inches.
This is wonderful news in a number of ways:
Win for 'Rightful Stewards of the Land': Canadian Court Sides With First Nations
Ruling marks first time Canadian Supreme Court grants aboriginal land title
In a landmark ruling on Thursday with potential implications for the planned Northern Gateway pipeline, Canada's Supreme Court unanimously granted an aboriginal land title to the Tsilhqot'in First Nation, giving them claim to more than 1,700 square kilometers in British Columbia.
"British Columbia breached its duty to consult owed to the Tsilhqot'in through its land use planning and forestry authorizations," the 81-page decision (pdf) states. ...
The decision rejected the narrow view of what qualified for protection under aboriginal rights from a 2012 ruling by the B.C. Court of Appeal. While the lower court had said aboriginal groups must be able to prove intensive historical use of a specific site, Thursday's decision accepts a broader set of criteria particularly important for the Tsilhqot'in, a historically "semi-nomadic" people. Indigenous groups must now prove a looser definition of occupation, continuity of habitation on the land, and exclusivity in an area in order to be granted a title.
"It only took 150 years, but we look forward to a much brighter future," said Chief Phillip. "This without question will establish a solid platform for genuine reconciliation to take place in British Columbia."
The ruling will potentially apply to any lands in the country that were never ceded to the crown, including lands which the Northern Gateway pipeline is slated to run through, and many others that have been the sites of development and resource extraction.
“They are the rightful stewards of their lands, and should be the ones to decide if and how they are developed,” said Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, which intervened in the case in support of the Tsilhqot'in, in a statement released by the group.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
All of those people bloviating about how Snowden should have gone through channels should be forced to read this:
CIA Whistleblower Goes Through Channels, Gets Nowhere
Neocons coming home to the Democratic Party
NYT Revamps Its False Ukraine Narrative
U.S. drought could spark economic water warfare
Reclaiming Our History
Stiglitz: From "The Myth of America's Golden Age" to Geithner's, Summers' and Obama's "Culpability"
The global liquidity trap and asset grab
A Little Night Music
The Coasters - Young Blood
The Coasters - Let's Go Get Stoned
The Coasters - Poison Ivy
Robins - Smokey Joe's Cafe
The Coasters - Yakety Yak
The Coasters - I'm A Hog For You Baby
The Coasters - Along Came Jones
The Coasters - Love Potion Number Nine
The Coasters - Down in Mexico
The Coasters - Shoppin' For Clothes
The Coasters - Little Egypt
The Coasters - That Is Rock & Roll
The Coasters - Dance
The Coasters - Bad Blood
The Coasters - The Shadow Knows
The Coasters - Down Home Girl
The Coasters - Idol With The Golden Head
The Coasters - Wild One
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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