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 zydeco musician Chubby Carrier. Enjoy!
Chubby Carrier - Ain't no party like a Chubby party
“In dictatorships, it’s common for political insiders to hinder or even silence non-establishment challengers. To do that in America , which supposedly champions open elections, is outrageous and intolerable. But that is just what the Commission on Presidential Debates has done."
- Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel editorial
News and Opinion
Jack-booted Thugs On Horseback Attack Veterans Peacefully Protesting at Presidential Debates
Green Party Candidates Arrested Outside Presidential Debate - Presidential candidate Jill Stein and running mate Cheri Honkala barred from attending then arrested
Green Party presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein and her vice presidential running mate Cheri Honkala were arrested Tuesday outside the venue at Hofstra Unviersity where President Obama and Republican challeger Mitt Romney later met for their nationally televised debate.
According to the Stein-Honkala campaign, the progressively-minded candidates will be on an estimated 85% of state ballots in the upcoming election. Yet because of agreements made by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD)—created and controlled by the the dominant Republican and Democratic parties—they have been barred from participating in any of the presidential debates.
Mid-afternoon Tuesday, Stein and Honkala walked with supporters toward the Hofstra campus where they were met by three ranks of police officers in uniform and plainclothes. Unable to gain access to the hall or the large national press pool gathered inside, the Green Party candidates held an impromptu press conference in which Dr. Stein called the CPD debate a "mockumentary," saying that, "We are here to bring the courage of those excluded from our politics to this mock debate, this mockery of democracy."
Presidential Debate #2: No Serious Solutions Offered
Sanders: Proposed Social Security Cuts 'Morally Grotesque' - Cuts to hit oldest, poorest beneficiaries
US Senator Bernie Sanders said Tuesday that a "draconian" proposal to chain the cost-of-living increase to the Consumer Price Index is "not only morally grotesque, it is extremely bad economics." ...
The Simpson-Bowles Plan would chain the COLA to the Department of Labor's CPI. That would reduce Social Security checks by 3 percent over 10 years and 9 percent over 30 years—even as the cost of living for the elderly may actually increase, said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center of Economic and Policy Research.
The average senior who retires at age 65 would see their Social Security benefits cut by about $560 a year when they reach 75 and by about $1,000 a year once they turn 85. At the beginning of 2012, the average Social Security benefit for a retired worker was $14,760 per year, according to Sanders.
“The idea of balancing the budget on the backs of some of the most vulnerable people in our country—the elderly, orphans, widows and disabled veterans—is not only morally grotesque, it is extremely bad economics," Sanders said.
Bill Black and Glen Ford on Presidential Debate #2
Negotiations to extend U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan starting soon
Despite statements by Vice President Joe Biden, the State Department is about to begin formal negotiations over the extension of U.S. troops past 2014, a top State Department official said Tuesday.
Last week, U.S. and Afghan negotiators met in Kabul to talk about the Bilateral Security Agreement that will govern the extension of U.S. troops past 2014, when President Barack Obama said the combat mission in Afghanistan will end and the U.S. will complete the transition of the entire country to Afghan government control.
Also last week, Biden told Americans during his Oct. 11 debate with Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan that U.S. troops were leaving Afghanistan by 2014.
In May, Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement that promised an ongoing U.S. commitment to Afghanistan through 2024. ... Some U.S. military officials have said the plan is to keep 25,000 American troops in Afghanistan past 2014, but Grossman insisted that there is no number yet and the 25,000 figure quoted in reports is speculative.
Children Under Attack in Pakistan and Afghanistan
Six children were attacked in Afghanistan and Pakistan this past week. Three of them, teenaged girls on a school bus in Peshawar, in the tribal region of western Pakistan, were shot and gravely wounded by two Taliban gunmen who were after Malala Yousufzai, a 14-year-old girl who has been bravely demanding the right of girls to an education. ... The other three children were not so lucky. They were killed Sunday in an aerial attack by a US aircraft in the the Nawa district of Helmand Province in Afghanistan, not so far from Pakistan. The attack, described by the military as a “precision strike,” was reportedly aimed at several Taliban fighters who were allegedly planting an IED in the road, but the strike also killed three children, Borjan, 12; Sardar Wali, 10; and Khan Bibi, 8, all from one family, who were right nearby collecting dung for fuel. ...
The American media have been awash in coverage of the attack on the three Pakistani girls, and on the fate of the courageous girl’s education advocate, young Malala.
Not so the deaths of the three Afghan kids. They didn’t even merit their own article in the nation’s leading newspaper, The New York Times, which simply inserted a couple of paragraphs concerning their deaths near the end of an article about so-called “green-on-blue killings” of US troops by their supposed Afghan Army allies (two Americans were killed in one such attack on Saturday).
The contrast between the two attacks on children is even greater when it comes to the response in the two countries, Pakistan and the US. In Pakistan, after the attack on Malala and her two classmates, tens of thousands of Pakistanis turned out in demonstrations to protest the actions of the Taliban fanatics and to demand that they be caught and punished . ... Meanwhile, in the US, most people don’t even know that their own military just blew away three young Afghan children.
Civil Liberties Tour Ohio State
Conviction against bin Laden's driver (Hamdan) quashed
Thousands protest in Portugal over 2013 budget
Half of all wetlands ‘destroyed since 1900,’ threatening human welfare
An alarming 50 percent of the world’s wetlands have been destroyed in the last 100 years, threatening human welfare at a time of increasing water scarcity, a new report said. ...
The report, compiled by an ongoing research project entitled TEEB, or The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, said coastal wetland losses in some regions, including Asia, have been happening at a rate of 1.6 percent per year.
“Taking mangroves as an example, 20 per cent (3.6 million hectares) of total coverage has been lost since 1980, with recent rates of loss of up to one percent per year,” said the report released Tuesday.
World's biggest geoengineering experiment 'violates' UN rules
A controversial American businessman dumped around 100 tonnes of iron sulphate into the Pacific Ocean as part of a geoengineering scheme off the west coast of Canada in July, a Guardian investigation can reveal.
Lawyers, environmentalists and civil society groups are calling it a "blatant violation" of two international moratoria and the news is likely to spark outrage at a United Nations environmental summit taking place in India this week.
Satellite images appear to confirm the claim by Californian Russ George that the iron has spawned an artificial plankton bloom as large as 10,000 square kilometres. The intention is for the plankton to absorb carbon dioxide and then sink to the ocean bed – a geoengineering technique known as ocean fertilisation that he hopes will net lucrative carbon credits. ...
Scientists are debating whether iron fertilisation can lock carbon into the deep ocean over the long term, and have raised concerns that it can irreparably harm ocean ecosystems, produce toxic tides and lifeless waters, and worsen ocean acidification and global warming.
Canadian government 'knew of plans to dump iron into the Pacific'
As controversy mounts over the Guardian's revelations that an American businessman conducted a massive ocean fertilisation test, dumping around 100 tonnes of iron sulphate off Canada's coast, it has emerged the Canadian government may have known about the geoengineering scheme and not stopped it. ...
In an interview with Canadian radio, John Disney said: "I've been in touch with many departments within the federal ministry. All I'm saying is that everyone from the Canadian Revenue Agency down to the National Research Council and Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Environment Canada – these people, they've all known about this."
The Guardian has seen government correspondence which indicates that Environment Canada officers met with Disney's company in June and expressed their misgiving about any ocean fertilisation going forward, but appear to not have taken further action. ...
Russ George, a colleague of Disney's, told the Guardian: "Canadian government people have been helping us. We've had workshops run where we've been taught how to use satellites resources by the Canadian space agency. [The government] is trying to 'cost-share' with us on certain aspects of the project. And we are expecting lots more support as we go forward."
Tar Sands Pipeline Blockade Grows as Company Lashes Out
Campaigners with the Tar Sands Blockade—who have been maintaining tree sits and engaging in civil disobedience against the southern portion of TransCanada's tar sands pipeline in east Texas since last month—celebrated what they called their "biggest day of action yet" on Monday.
As the Winnsboro, Texas tree blockade entered its fourth week, over 50 new supporters broke through police lines in order to bring fresh supplies, including food and water, to the tree-sitters. Despite a newly-expanded "Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP)" injunction served to the protesters by local law enforcement agencies, the anti-pipeline activists risked arrest in large numbers. ...
Ten days ago, a group of over thirty national and international environmental groups, voiced their support for the relatively small group of protesters in east Texas, saying: "If we are determined to prevent the pursuit of extreme energy from destroying our communities, natural systems and climate, then peaceful, yet confrontational, protests like the Tar Sands Blockade are necessary actions for change."
Following Monday's day of action, in which eight of their members were arrested, a statement from Tar Sand Blockade said: "Today’s defiant walk-on protest is the largest in the history of protests surrounding Keystone XL construction and sends a clear signal that we will not be deterred by SLAPP suits and other legal threats to limit our civil liberties."
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou Inches From Jail So CIA Can Protect Torture Kingpin Thomas Fletcher
A Little Night Music
Chubby Carrier - Shake it
Chubby Carrier - Who Stole the Hot Sauce?
Chubby Carrier - The Cisco Kid
Chubby Carrier and the Bayou Swamp Band - Blue Runner
Chubby Carrier and the Bayou Swamp Band - Jolie Blon
Chubby Carrier & The Bayou Swamp Band - Zydeco Junkie
Chubby Carrier at the Ritzville Blues Festival
Chubby Carrier - Watch that dog
Chubby Carrier and the Bayou Swamp Band - The Way I Feel
Chubby Carrier and the Bayou Swamp Band - Jambalaya
Chubby Carrier - We make a good gumbo
Chubby Carrier & The Bayou Swamp Band - Jalapeno Lena
Chubby Carrier @ Louisiana Music Factory
Chubby Carrier - Rock Me Baby
Chubby Carrier - Dance All Night (Stay A Little Longer)
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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