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 Texas bluesman Lightnin' Hopkins. Enjoy!
Lightnin Hopkins - Baby Please Dont Go
"Women are naturally helpless to exercise political positions. The natural order and the facts show us that man is the being for politics by excellence; the Scriptures show us that the woman is always the support of the thoughtful man and and doer, but nothing more than that."
-- Pope Francis (2007)
News and Opinion
Pakistan Tells UN Rapporteur: There Is Not Consent For Obama's Drone Strikes
UN says US drones violate Pakistan's sovereignty
ISLAMABAD (AP) — The head of a U.N. team investigating casualties from U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan declared after a secret research trip to the country that the attacks violate Pakistan's sovereignty.
Ben Emmerson, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, said the Pakistani government made clear to him that it does not consent to the strikes — a position that has been disputed by U.S. officials.
President Barack Obama has stepped up covert CIA drone strikes targeting al-Qaida and Taliban militants in Pakistan's tribal region along the Afghan border since he took office in 2009.
The strikes have caused growing controversy because of the secrecy surrounding them and claims that they have caused significant civilian casualties — allegations denied by the United States.
According to a U.N. statement that Emmerson emailed to The Associated Press on Friday, the Pakistani government told him it has confirmed at least 400 civilian deaths by U.S. drones on its territory. The statement was initially released on Thursday, following the investigator's three-day visit to Pakistan, which ended Wednesday.
Strike Two! It's a bad day for the Obama administration. This time a federal appeals court says that the administration can't keep up its ludicrous position that they can't confirm or deny the CIA drone program that the administration
brags about to the press:
Appeals court rejects CIA’s argument over acknowledging drone operations
A federal appeals court on Friday rejected the CIA’s claim that it could neither confirm nor deny whether it has an “intelligence interest” in the use of drones, a ruling that could force the agency to disclose limited details about the use of the technology in counterterrorism operations.
The court ruled that a blanket denial is neither “logical nor plausible” after administration officials from the president on down discussed targeted killing operations.
The decision followed a lower court ruling that the agency did not have to acknowledge drone operations, never mind produce any documents about them, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the American Civil Liberties Union.
“This is an important victory. It requires the government to retire the absurd claim that the CIA’s interest in the targeted killing program is a secret, and it will make it more difficult for the government to deflect questions about the program’s scope and legal basis,” said Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU’s deputy legal director, who argued the case before a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Appeals Court. “It also means that the CIA will have to explain what records it is withholding, and on what grounds it is withholding them.”
Dear President Obama, when you are reduced to defending yourself by attempting to create a favorable comparison with Dick Cheney, you've hit bottom. Seriously, find yourself a 12-step program or something.
President Obama: I'm no Dick Cheney on drones
President Barack Obama’s defense to Democratic senators complaining about how little his administration has told Congress about the legal justifications for his drone policy: Dick Cheney was worse.
That’s part of what two senators in the room recounted of Obama’s response when, near the outset of his closed-door session with the Senate Democratic conference on Tuesday, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) confronted the president over the administration’s refusal for two years to show congressional intelligence committees Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel memos justifying the use of lethal force against American terror suspects abroad. ...
While Obama defended his handling of the issue, he told his former Senate colleagues he understood their concerns about being left out of the loop on such sensitive decisions, senators said. The president noted that he would have “probably objected” over the White House’s handling of this issue if he were still a senator, they said. But, according to the sources, he noted his viewpoint changed now that he occupies the Oval Office — not a room in a Senate office building. ...
Rockefeller also charged that after Brennan was confirmed, the administration clammed up again and “went directly back to the way they were from 2001-2 to 2007.”
Obama on drones: I’m not Dick Cheney
President Obama, in defense of his targeted killing program, reportedly said, “This is not Dick Cheney we’re talking about here.”
It’s the sort of defense Dick Cheney would probably use, were he not already Dick Cheney.
Aside from the fact that the Obama administration’s shadow drone wars are comparable to Bush-era programs of rendition and wiretapping in terms of secrecy and extrajudicial executive action, the president’s reference to the former V.P. is in itself troubling. It invokes the same race-to-the-bottom, “at least the other guy is worse” logic that saw many dejected liberals trudge reluctantly to the voting booths for Obama last November. What a sad political epoque — when not being literally the worst, not being Dick Cheney — is a defense.
Costs of War: 225,000 Lives and up to US$4 Trillion
As the ten year anniversary of the US invasion approaches, updated research shows that both the human and financial costs of the preemptive and prolonged military adventure in Iraq are higher than the most Americans even now realize and astronomically higher than its proponents assured the public as they made their case for war a decade ago.
At minimum, according to the Costs of War project at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, 134,000 innocent Iraqis lost their lives as a direct result of the US-led war that began in March of 2003. For numerous reasons, the groups says, this number could well "double" before a complete count is reached.
"The figures for the number of Iraqi civilians killed have been clouded somewhat by arguments about methods for counting the dead and by politics inside Iraq and in the US," the authors of the report note. "Yet to focus on the arguments about how to record the dead and wounded obscures the human toll of the war. What can be said, after reviewing the evidence, is that the conservative 123,000 estimate for civilians killed by direct war-related violence is low, perhaps very low. On the higher end, a 2006 study published by The Lancet estimated 654,965 excess deaths related to the war." ...
Like the human costs, the economic costs of the war are also dynamic, but the project estimates that ultimately the war could cost the US has much $6 trillion when all liabilities are tabulated, including interest payments. As the report specifically notes, the Iraq War—as with the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan—was largely funded by borrowing, not with increased tax revenue or the issuing of war bonds.
James Steele: America's mystery man in Iraq
The Wall Street Follies
First up, the big action of the day, Senator Levin goes whaling. Unfortunately the great harpoon of the Senate failed to find President Obama's favorite banker, Jamie Dimon. As one newspaper put it, there was, "No drama at JPMorgan hearing -- just an executive throwing her staff under the bus. Hopefully there will be just enough drama for the lamestream media to put the story in front of the public's eyeballs, despite the fact that Senator Levin is perhaps not the most electrifying performer in Washington. The facts that have emerged in Levin's committee report and at the hearing should provide greater impetus for passing the Volcker Rule and perhaps putting some teeth into the lame Dodd-Frank regulations that are still under bipartisan, Wall Street-cash-induced attack.
J.P. Morgan Chase Will Be Torn a New One
Why should we care if a private bank, or more to the point a private banker like Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, loses a few billion here and there? What business is it of ours? And why did we have to have congressional hearings about it last year? The whole thing certainly seemed a big mystery to Dimon himself, who dragged himself to Washington and spent the entire time rolling his eyes and snorting at Senators' questions, clearly put out that he even had to be there.
This new report by the Permanent Subcommittee answers the question of why the public needed to be involved in that episode. What the report describes is an epic breakdown in the supervision of so-called "Too Big to Fail" banks. The report confirms everyone's worst fears about what goes on behind closed doors at such companies, in the various financial sausage-factories that comprise their profit-making operations.
If the information in the report is correct, Chase followed the behavioral model of every corrupt/failing hedge fund this side of Bernie Madoff and Sam Israel, only it did it on a much more enormous scale and did it with federally-insured deposits. The fund used (in part) federally-insured money to create, in essence, a kind of super high-risk hedge fund that gambled on credit derivatives, and just like Sam Israel did with his Bayou fund, when it got in trouble, it resorted to fudging its numbers in order to disguise the fact that it was losing money hand over fist.
Chase for years hid the very existence of this operation from banking regulators and lied about the purpose of the fund (saying it was purely a hedging operation when it stopped being a hedge and instead became a wild directional gamble), and it also changed the way it calculated the fund's value once it started to lose hundreds of millions of dollars. Even worse, the bank's own internal auditors signed off on the phoney-baloney accounting of this Synthetic Credit Portfolio (SCP), at one point allowing it to claim $719 million in losses when the real number was closer to $1.2 billion.
Matt Taibbi's liveblog of the Senate hearings on the J.P. Morgan "Whale."
The Guardian's somewhat more detailed liveblog.
Some further background, here.
The congressman from Goldman Sachs, recently appointed National Finance Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, demonstrates just what sort of grovelling and treachery Democrats are willing to perform for Wall Street bankster bucks:
Democrat, Former Goldman Sachs Executive, Introduces Bill To Roll Back Key Element Of Dodd-Frank
Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn), a former Wall Street executive, is joining Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-Ill.) to introduce legislation that would undercut one of the most meaningful elements of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act.
The bill would "allow banks to keep commodity and equity derivatives in federally insured units," Politico reported on Wednesday, meaning that banks would no longer be forced to spin off their trading desks. It would weaken Dodd-Frank's "push out" provision, otherwise known as the Prohibition Against Federal Government Bailouts of Swaps Entities, which bars federal assistance from being provided to any swaps entity.
Derivatives -- which Warren Buffett has referred to as “financial weapons of mass destruction” -- are viewed as a key trigger of the 2008 economic crisis.
Will Judge Go Rogue, Reject DOJ Settlement With "Too Big To Fail Bank," HSBC?
There could be a hitch in the Justice Department's controversial decision not to prosecute Europe's largest bank over allegations it laundered money for Mexican drug gangs, rogue states and terrorist money men.
To the surprise of some experts, a federal judge has so far refused to sign off on an agreement reached three months ago between federal prosecutors and the Britain-based bank HSBC. Despite what prosecutors said was a mountain of evidence of illicit money transfers, the deal enabled HSBC to avoid a potentially crippling criminal prosecution. Instead HSBC agreed to pay an unprecedented $1.92 billion in fines.
While the Justice Department brokered the deal, it can't go through without the approval of U.S. District Court Judge John Gleeson.
"It does not seem likely that the judge would have taken this much time if he was not at least thinking hard about whether to accept the agreement," said Duke University Law Prof. Sam Buell, a former federal prosecutor.
Petition Here
The Best Way Yet to Proclaim Love for a Tax Cheat
Ernst & Young LLP received the usual kid-glove treatment given to too-big-to-fail enterprises when it reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department over illegal tax shelters it sold more than a decade ago. The government chose not to prosecute the Big Four accounting firm, and Ernst is getting off by writing a relatively small check. ...
Yet there was one area where Ernst made out beyond all reason: A veritable love letter at the bottom of the statement of facts that Ernst and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York agreed to as part of their accord. It said: “The wrongdoing in this case by a small group of professionals at E&Y represented a deviation from the more than 100-year history of ethical and professional conduct by E&Y and its partners.”
To which one can only respond: What? ...
Rather than cover 100 years, I decided to go as far back as the merger between Arthur Young & Co. and Ernst & Whinney that created Ernst & Young in 1989. The firm has been in trouble over ethical violations and professional misconduct on a regular basis ever since. ...
It would be nice to believe the prosecutors were on the public’s side here. Unfortunately it seems they were more concerned about protecting Ernst than they were anyone else.
Treasury chief Jacob Lew not worried about financial bubble
US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Thursday that he was not worried about a potential financial bubble forming as Wall Street stocks racked up record highs.
“The analysis that I’ve seen doesn’t give me reason to be worried right now,” Lew said in an interview on US business news channel CNBC.
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Meet the Private Prison Lobby
As the immigration reform debate heats up, an important argument has been surprisingly missing. By granting legal status to immigrants and ordering future flows, the government could save billions of dollars. A shift to focus border security on real crime, both local and cross-border, would increase public safety and render a huge dividend to cash-strapped public coffers.
This kind of common-sense immigration reform has the multibillion-dollar private prison industry shaking in its boots. Its lobbyists are actively targeting members of congressional budget and appropriations committees to not only maintain, but increase incarceration of migrants — with or without comprehensive immigration reform.
While a broad public consensus has formed around the need to legally integrate migrants into the communities where they live and work, private prison companies Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and The GEO Group, thrive off laws that criminalize migrants, including mandatory detention and the definition of immigration violations as felonies.
CCA and GEO also know that in the current immigration debate they cannot come straight out and say ‘immigrants should be defined as criminals because it makes us rich’—even though it does. CCA comes pretty close to saying this in its 2010 Annual Report, when it warns that “any changes [in the laws] with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.”
For more on the issue, here's yesterday's Majority FM podcast, "Christopher Petrella: Inside The Private Prison Industry With Matt & Michael" (hat tip to oaktown girl)
Will a Grand Bargain or Betrayal be Obama's Legacy
"So from the beginning, President Obama did not use FDR as his model, Franklin Delano Roosevelt as his model of what a successful president would be. He used Clinton and he used President Reagan, and both of them--I mean, obviously Reagan didn't practice austerity, but he talked austerity, and Clinton practiced austerity and, you know, helped lead to the recession early in the decade through that austerity.
So this is still Bob Rubin and that entire Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party that has led the nation to disaster. Rubin was a complete disaster at Citicorp, of course, after he left the Clinton administration. And as we are speaking, the news has broken that employment in Europe has reached an all-time low, precisely because of austerity. So, yes, this is horrific in terms of austerity.
And it is also horrific--not only is he not making his place in history through what FDR did, of designing great programs that made the economy work better and made America vastly more humane; Obama perversely sees his chance of fame is ruining FDR's legacy and beginning to unravel all of those programs."
Corporate-Approved State Bills Kick Low-Wage Workers While They’re Down
President Obama called for a modest raise in the federal minimum wage to $9 in his State of the Union Address, and several Democratic legislators have upped his bid with a proposed increase to $10.10.
But an insidious effort to lower the wage floor is already underway much closer to the ground—in the state legislatures where right-wing lobbyists have been greasing the skids for years for an onslaught of anti-worker policies.
An extensive analysis recently published by labor advocacy organization the National Employment Law Project tracks more than 100 bills introduced in 31 states since January 2011 that “aim to repeal or weaken core wage standards at the state or local level." Each bears the fingerprint of notorious super-lobbying organization the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which acts as a forum for “private sector leaders” to advise public officials. Most of the anti-worker bills were proposed by lawmakers directly linked to ALEC and include language that echoes that of "model legislation" developed by ALEC. Among the proposals are measures to undercut minimum wages for teenage workers, restrict overtime pay and repeal or ban local laws to improve working conditions.
ALEC has been called out by activists for pushing legislation that advances a classic right-wing agenda, from school privatization to rolling back healthcare reform. But the “wage suppression” tactics are a particularly callous attempt by ALEC-affiliated legislators to feed corporate profits by starving workers.
Brooklyn Explodes Over Police Violence
16-year-old Kimani Gray was killed by police on Saturday, March 9 in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. Every evening since, crowds of East Flatbush mourners and their supporters have gathered to take a stand against a police force widely seen as a racist paramilitary organization operating in their neighborhood with impunity.
Scores of police squads have descended upon the growing vigils on Church Avenue. Last night, hundreds of protesters faced off with police, contesting efforts to net and mass-arrest them throughout the evening. Council member Charles Barron told Democracy Now: “This is the least that the community could do is to respond and resist.”
Late in the night, police arrested Kimani Gray’s sister and an estimated 46 others—mainly local young people, and some outside supporters—who remain detained at several precincts. Since 1.30am, witnesses on Twitter have reported that the whole of East Flatbush is becoming a so-called Frozen Zone: an unofficial NYPD tactic of totally excluding the media from an area. ...
Of course, everyone in Flatbush will tell you: Many have died. According to the Stolen Lives Project, the NYPD kills around two Black or Brown people a month, often in stop-and-frisks like the one that claimed Kamani.
2 Years After Invasion to Crush Uprising in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia Helps Fuel Conflict in Syria
Boreal Forest Destruction, Tough Winter Forces Owls South
Herbicides for GMOs Driving Monarch Butterfly Populations to 'Ominous' Brink
Scientist: "If we pull the monarchs out of the system, we're really pulling the rug out from under a whole lot of other species"
The migratory population of the monarch butterfly has reached an "ominous" low, researchers in Mexico announced Wednesday.
Scientists are attributing the decline of this essential pollinating population to the ongoing drought and the "explosive" increase in the use of genetically modified crops in the American corn belt. ...
"The American Midwest’s corn belt is a critical feeding ground for monarchs, which once found a ready source of milkweed growing between the rows of millions of acres of soybean and corn," they continue. However, as farmers have planted over 120 million acres of crops resistant to the milkweed-killing herbicide glyphosate, the monarchs' essential food supply is all but destroyed. ...
Like bees, butterflies provide essential pollinating functions for entire ecosystems."The fruits, nuts, seeds and foliage that everything else feeds on," said Taylor. "If we pull the monarchs out of the system, we're really pulling the rug out from under a whole lot of other species."
I can see the advantages, but this just creeps me out:
Test Tube Meat
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
Obama's secrecy fixation causing Sunshine Week implosion
Pope Francis, Argentina’s President Kirchner have a history of contentious battles
The choice for Democrats: Obama or liberalism?
The Democrats Have No Clothes
Sad Tidings
Rebels Still Stand Alone
A Little Night Music
Lightnin'Hopkins - Mr Charlie, your rollin'mill is burnin' down
Lightnin' hopkins - Lonesome Road
Lightnin' hopkins - Shake That Thing
lightnin' hopkins - bring me my shotgun
Lightnin Hopkins & Sonny Terry - Take A Trip With Me
Lightnin' Hopkins - Lightnin's Blues - American Folk - Blues Festival
Lightnin Hopkins - Mojo Hand
Lightnin' Hopkins / Let Me Play With Your Poodle
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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