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!
Tonight's music features the soulful blues of Otis Clay and O.V. Wright. Enjoy!
Otis Clay w/the Bo-Keys - Got To Get Back
"Fundamentalists long for the return of a more moral America, an America that may never have been. All around them they see what they perceive as declining morality and spirituality. They reason that if humans share ancestry with the other animals, we have no reason to behave as anything other than animals. This view neglects the fact that humans are the only known animals with the ability to contemplate the consequences of their own actions. It also fails to recognize that there is a great deal of good in the world, the nightly news notwithstanding. Crime existed long before the theory of evolution, even before the writing of the Bible, and biologists do not like crime any more than the creationists do. Evolutionary theory is not a license to run amok, and neither is a belief in the literal interpretation of the Bible a guarantor of moral behavior."
-- Tim Berra
News
Lawrence Wilkerson: Failures of Obama administration opened door to far right revival
I'm told, Paul, that 48 percent—48 percent—I hope this is wrong—48 percent of the Congress believes that God created the world, that evolution had nothing to do with it, and that what God created has happened in the last 10,000 years. You think about that for a minute.
Protesters March in Tampa Against GOP Convention
Twitter argues fourth amendment defence over judge's Occupy order
Twitter has lodged an appeal against a New York judge's decision that it must hand over detailed information related to an Occupy Wall Street protester charged with disorderly conduct.
In July, Twitter was ordered to hand over almost three months' worth of messages and other details related to the account of activist Malcolm Harris. Harris was among the hundreds of protesters accused of disorderly conduct during a protest on Brooklyn bridge last October.
Prosecutors have argued that Harris's tweets show he knew he should not have been on the bridge. He has filed his own appeal, arguing that the judge's ruling would hand over details of where he was and who he spoke to, as well as his tweets, and falls "so far outside the realm of a legitimate ruling that we are entitled to a pre-trial appeal".
Twitter has argued that the posts belonged to Harris and, as such, it would be violating his fourth amendment right against unreasonable searches if it were to disclose the communications without first receiving a search warrant.
U.S. consumer confidence plunges in August
US consumer confidence plunged in August to its lowest level in nine months, reflecting rising concerns over business and job prospects across the country, the Conference Board said Tuesday.
The board’s consumer confidence index dropped to 60.6 from 65.4 in July, though still well above the 45.2 index level of August 2011.
“A more pessimistic outlook was the primary reason for this month’s decline in confidence,” said Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board’s economic indicators.
Rachel Corrie ruling ‘deeply troubling’, says her family
Corrie was killed on 16 March 2003, crushed under an Israeli military bulldozer while trying to obstruct the demolition of a Palestinian home in Rafah, on the Gaza-Egypt border. ...
The lawsuit, filed by Corrie’s parents, Cindy and Craig, of Olympia, Washington state, accused the Israeli military of either unlawfully or intentionally killing Rachel or of gross negligence. The family had claimed a symbolic $1 (63p) in damages and legal expenses.
The judge said no damages were liable, but the family’s court costs would be waived. ...
Last week, the US ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, told the Corrie family that Washington remained dissatisfied with the the inquiry. Hussein Abu Hussein, the family’s lawyer, said: “This verdict is yet another example of where impunity has prevailed over accountability and fairness. Rachel Corrie was killed while non-violently protesting home demolitions and injustice in Gaza, and today, this court has given its stamp of approval to flawed and illegal practices that failed to protect civilian life."
No criminal charges to be laid against U.S. soldiers for burning Koran and urinating on corpses in Afghanistan
The U.S. is not laying criminal charges against soldiers responsible for burning Korans and Marines who urinated on enemy soldiers, a move that could alienate their Afghan allies at a time when “insider attacks” are on the rise.
Discipline against a Navy sailor in the Koran burnings was dismissed. The Marine Corps will announce discipline against other Marines in the urination case later.
Exact punishments were not disclosed. Administrative punishments can range from demotions to extra duty to a letter on their file.
U.S. arms sales nearly triple in 2011, researchers say
US arms transfers to other countries nearly tripled last year to $66.3 billion, giving America a market share of nearly 80 percent, government researchers said Monday.
The Congressional Research Service said the US figure for 2011 was the largest for a single year in the history of the arms export program.
Wildfires burn in Serbia
Doctors fight “gag orders” over fracking chemicals
Under a new Pennsylvania law, natural gas companies must tell physicians the substances patients might have come into contact with. But doctors must sign confidentiality agreements promising they will use the information only for those patients’ treatment.
Some doctors say the agreements amount to gag orders that interfere with their ability to treat patients and to share information freely with colleagues and medical researchers. The conflict has led to a legal challenge by Pennsylvania nephrologist Alfonso Rodriguez, MD, against the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection. He claims that the law’s doctor-contract provision is vague and violates physicians’ First Amendment rights.
The issue is not limited to Pennsylvania. Across the nation, doctors are being drawn into the controversy over induced hydraulic fracturing, more commonly called fracking.
Along with the Arctic Ice, The Rich World's Smugness Will Melt - The belief that Europe and America will be hit least by climate change is in ruins. Yet all we do is try to profit from disaster
What we are seeing, here and now, is the transformation of the atmospheric physics of this planet. Three weeks before the likely minimum, the melting of Arctic sea ice has already broken the record set in 2007. The daily rate of loss is now 50% higher than it was that year. ... The Arctic has been warming roughly twice as quickly as the rest of the northern hemisphere. This is partly because climate breakdown there is self-perpetuating. As the ice melts, for example, exposing the darker sea beneath, heat that would previously have been reflected back into space is absorbed.
Our governments do nothing. Having abandoned any pretence of responding to the environmental crisis during the Earth summit in June, now they stare stupidly as the ice on which we stand dissolves. Nothing – or worse than nothing. Their one unequivocal response to the melting has been to facilitate the capture of the oil and fish it exposes.
The companies that caused this disaster are scrambling to profit from it. On Sunday Shell requested an extension to its exploratory drilling period in the Chukchi Sea, off the north-west coast of Alaska. This would push its operations hard against the moment when the ice re-forms and any spills they cause are locked in. The Russian oil company Gazprom is using the great melt to try to drill in the Pechora Sea, north-east of Murmansk. After turning its Arctic lands in the Komi republic into the Niger delta of the north (repeated oil spills are left unremediated in the tundra), Russia wants to extend this industry into one of the world's most fragile ecosystems, where ice, storms and darkness make decontamination almost impossible.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
Top Economists: Iceland Did It Right … And Everyone Else Is Doing It Wrong
Prison, Drug War Spending Rockets While Higher Education Funding Declines
Iran Call for Nuclear Abolition by 2025 is Unreported by New York Times
A Little Night Music
O.V. Wright - I'm into something, I can't shake loose
Otis Clay - I Can Take You To Heaven Tonight
O.V. Wright - I'd Rather Be Blind, Crippled, and Crazy
Otis Clay - Trying to live my life without you
O.V. Wright - Ace of Spades
Otis Clay - A Nickel And A Nail
O.V. Wright - A Nickel And A Nail
http://www.youtube.com/...
Otis Clay - (live w/interview)
OV Wright - Eight men four women
Otis Clay - Turn Back The Hands of Time
OV Wright - That's How Strong My Love Is
Otis Clay - Since I've Been Loving You
OV wright - I'll take care of you
Otis Clay - Brand New Thing
O.V. Wright - You're gonna make me cry
Otis Clay - Hard Working Woman
O.V. Wright -Drowning On Dry Land
Otis Clay - Pouring Water on a Drowning Man
OV Wright - Your good thing is about to end
Otis Clay - Piece Of My Heart
Otis Clay - That's How It Is (When You're In Love)
Otis Clay - I Don't Know What To Do
Otis Clay - Got to find a way
Otis Clay - Leave me and my woman alone
Otis Clay - Three Is A Crowd
Good Lovin' - Otis Clay
Otis Clay - I Testify
We are ready for some serious change. We are ready to take up the tools of a free and analytic press to peacefully undermine the stranglehold of the kleptocrats on our battered democracy. We are ready to expose and publicize their greed, lies and illegal machinations and hold their enablers in government and the media to account. Are you in?
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
~ Margaret Mead
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