Welcome! "The Evening Blues - Weekend Edition" is a casual community diary (published Saturday & Sunday, 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 doesn't feature an individual artist, instead feast your ears upon the heavenly sounds of Bluegrass Women. With a special request by NCTim for some Alison Krauss. Enjoy!
Rebecca Frazier - When We Fall
The white people, who are trying to make us over into their image, they want us to be what they call "assimilated," bringing the Indians into the mainstream and destroying our own way of life and our own cultural patterns. They believe we should be contented like those whose concept of happiness is materialistic and greedy, which is very different from our way.
We want freedom from the white man rather than to be intergrated. We don't want any part of the establishment, we want to be free to raise our children in our religion, in our ways, to be able to hunt and fish and live in peace. We don't want power, we don't want to be congressmen, or bankers....we want to be ourselves. We want to have our heritage, because we are the owners of this land and because we belong here.
The white man says, there is freedom and justice for all. We have had "freedom and justice," and that is why we have been almost exterminated. We shall not forget this.
From the 1927 Grand Council of American Indians
News and Opinion
Bernie Sanders – No Fast Track for the TPP
Submitted by: NCTim
Bernie Sanders is taking a stand against Fast Track authority that the republicans and Vichy Dems want to give to President Obama so he can stuff a fascist set of “trade” agreements down the throats of the American people. The fight is on. No to Fast Track. No to the TTIP and No to the TPP (and CISA while we are on the subject of “no”)
Though he has other issues I’m not so enamored with, Bernie is a real populist. Compared to Hillary’s top campaign contributors, his are mainly unions and civic organizations where her’s are big banks, hedge funds and billionaires. But don’t worry, the billionaires still back Hillary even after her phony populist rhetoric. They even said so recently.
Thousands in Germany protest against Europe-U.S. trade deal
(Reuters) - Thousands of people marched in Berlin, Munich and other German cities on Saturday in protest against a planned free trade deal between Europe and the United States that they fear will erode food, labor and environmental standards.
Opposition to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is particularly high in Germany, in part due to rising anti-American sentiment linked to revelations of U.S. spying and fears of digital domination by firms like Google.
A recent YouGov poll showed that 43 percent of Germans believe TTIP would be bad for the country, compared to 26 percent who see it as positive.
The level of resistance has taken Chancellor Angela Merkel's government and German industry by surprise, and they are now scrambling to reverse the tide and save a deal which proponents say could add $100 billion in annual economic output on both sides of the Atlantic.
Rep. Alan Grayson: ‘88 seconds to Debate the TPP’?
Submitted by: NCTim
Fast Track Bill Would Legitimize White House Secrecy and Clear the Way for Anti-User Trade Deals
Following months of protest, Congress has finally put forth bicameral Fast Track legislation today to rush trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) through Congress. Sens. Orrin Hatch and Ron Wyden, and Rep. Paul Ryan, respectively, introduced the bill titled the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015. With Fast Track, lawmakers will be shirking their constitutional authority over trade policy, letting the White House and the U.S. Trade Representative pass Internet rules in back room meetings with corporate industry groups. If this passes, lawmakers would only have a small window of time to conduct hearings over trade provisions and give a yea-or-nay vote on ratification of the agreement without any ability to amend it before they bind the United States to its terms.
The Fast Track bill contains some minor procedural improvements from the version of the bill introduced last year. However, these fixes will do little to nothing to address the threats of restrictive digital regulations on users rights in the TPP or TTIP. The biggest of these changes is language that would create a new position of Chief Transparency Officer that would supposedly have the authority to “consult with Congress on transparency policy, coordinate transparency in trade negotiations, engage and assist the public, and advise the United States Trade Representative on transparency policy.”
However, given the strict rules of confidentiality of existing, almost completed trade deals and those outlined in the Fast Track bill itself, we have no reason to believe that this officer would have much power to do anything meaningful to improve trade transparency, such as releasing the text of the agreement to the public prior to the completion of negotiations. As it stands, the text only has to be released to the public 60 days before it is signed, at which time the text is already locked down from any further amendments.
As Corporate Forces Push Fast Track Bill, Progressives Draw Battle Lines
Fast Track is 'a one way ticket' in the wrong direction, say opponents
Submitted by: NCTim
Warning that passing Fast Track legislation would amount to rubber-stamping corporate trade pacts like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, progressives are vowing to hold members of Congress accountable for their votes on the compromise bill announced Thursday—and reminding them of how dangerous such trade policies are for the public, workers, and the planet.
"[T]he big deal is that Fast Track sets the stage for new flawed trade deals including the TPP and a deal with the European Union (known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP)," wrote Patrick Woodall, research director and senior policy advocate for Food & Water Watch, in an op-ed published Friday at Common Dreams. "These two mega-trade deals would impose the global trade rules benefiting transnational companies on the majority of the global economy."
Woodall predicted: "Now that the [Fast Track] bill has been introduced expect a fever-pitched campaign by the free-trade lobby to move the bill along."
But despite aggressive campaigning from corporate interests and President Barack Obama's administration, Fast Track approval in the U.S. House and Senate is anything but a done deal.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is great for elites. Is it good for anyone else?
Submitted by: NCTim
In 2011, Australia enacted a tough new anti-smoking law that requires cigarette companies to distribute their wares in plain green packages. Anti-smoking activists see Australia's law as a model for the world. They hope that replacing logos with graphic health warnings will make them less appealing to consumers, especially minors.
Naturally, tobacco companies hated the law. And they found a surprising way to fight back: they persuaded governments in Ukraine and Honduras to file complaints with the World Trade Organization, alleging that the new regulations violated global trade rules.
The case is ongoing, and we don't know how the WTO will rule. But this dispute comes up over and over again in debates about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive new trade deal that is expected to be completed in the next few months. The Obama administration says the deal will expand global trade and bolster America's leadership in Asia. But critics say the treaty will lead to a lot more disputes like the one in Australia, where powerful interest groups try to use trade rules to overrule democratically elected governments.
The TPP covers a bewildering range of topics. In addition to conventional trade issues like tariff rates, it includes language on labor rights, environmental laws, copyright and patent protections, e-commerce, state-owned enterprises, corruption, and government procurement.
The New York Times “basically rewrites whatever the Kiev authorities say”: Stephen F. Cohen on the U.S./Russia/Ukraine history the media won’t tell you
There's an alternative story of Russian relations we're not hearing. Historian Stephen Cohen tells it here
Submitted by: Don midwest
It is one thing to comment in a column as the Ukrainian crisis grinds on and Washington—senselessly, with no idea of what will come next—destroys relations with Moscow. It is quite another, as a long exchange with Stephen F. Cohen makes clear, to watch as an honorable career’s worth of scholarly truths are set aside in favor of unlawful subterfuge, a war fever not much short of Hearst’s and what Cohen ranks among the most extravagant expansion of a sphere of influence—NATO’s—in history.
Cohen is a distinguished Russianist by any measure. While professing at Princeton and New York University, he has written of the revolutionary years (“Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution,” 1973), the Soviet era (“Rethinking the Soviet Experience,” 1985) and, contentiously but movingly and always with a steady eye, the post-Soviet decades (“Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia, 2000; “Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives,” 2009). “The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag After Stalin” (2010) is a singularly humane work, using scholarly method to relate the stories of the former prisoners who walk as ghosts in post-Soviet Russia. “I never actually lost the uneasy feeling of having left work unfinished and obligations unfulfilled,” Cohen explains in the opening chapter, “even though fewer and fewer of the victims I knew were still alive.”
If I had to describe the force and value of Cohen’s work in a single sentence, it would be this: It is a relentless insistence that we must bring history to bear upon what we see. One would think this an admirable project, but it has landed Cohen in the mother of all intellectual disputes since the U.S.-supported coup in Kiev last year. To say he is now “blackballed” or “blacklisted”—terms Cohen does not like—is too much. Let us leave it that a place may await him among America’s many prophets without honor among their own.
It is hardly surprising that the Ministry of Forgetting, otherwise known as the State Department, would eschew Cohen’s perspective on Ukraine and the relationship with Russia: He brings far too much by way of causality and responsibility to the case. But when scholarly colleagues attack him as “Putin’s apologist” one grows queasy at the prospect of a return to the McCarthyist period. By now, obedient ideologues in the academy have turned debate into freak show.
US troops arrive in Ukraine for training exercises
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
MOSCOW (AP) — About 300 US Army paratroopers on Friday arrived in Ukraine for training exercises with national guard units, a move criticized by Moscow and eastern Ukraine's Russia-backed separatist rebels.
The troops, from the Italy-based 173rd Airborne Brigade, are to spend several weeks training a total of about 900 Ukrainian national guardsmen.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich denounced the guardsmen as "ultranationalists ... who stained themselves with the blood of women, children and the elderly during their punitive operations."
Although Interior Minister Arsen Avakov had said the guardsman units could include the Azov Battalion, a far-right formation notorious for using an insignia used by many military units in Nazi Germany, U.S. Embassy spokesman James Hallock said Azov fighters would not be among those trained.
Iraqi soldiers enter refinery amid Islamic State attacks
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraqi soldiers surrounded and entered the country's biggest oil refinery Saturday, which has been besieged for days by Islamic State militants, a senior official said.
The refinery at Beiji, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Baghdad, has been held by the Iraqi military for months despite the militants' onslaught. Holding it remains crucial for the country, as it accounts for a little more than a quarter of the country's entire refining capacity.
Abdel-Wahab al-Saadi, the top military commander in Iraq's Salahuddin province, said ground forces entered the refinery Saturday, days after a number of Islamic State militants carried out a large-scale attack and briefly took over a small part of the sprawling complex.
"It is another victory achieved by Iraqi security forces that are growing confident in the war against the terrorists," al-Saadi told The Associated Press.
Fallout from Libya dominates talks between Obama and Italian leader
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
WASHINGTON — President Obama pledged Friday to work more intensely with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on threats coming from instability in Libya that have led to an influx of immigrants across the Mediterranean.
Obama and Renzi told journalists after an Oval Office meeting that they discussed economic and security concerns, including Ukraine and Islamic State militants. Obama said they also spent a significant amount of time discussing their shared concern over Libya.
“Given Italy’s leadership role across the Mediterranean, the prime minister and I agreed to work together even more intensively to encourage cooperation on threats coming from Libya, including the growing ISIL presence there, as well as additional coordination with other partners in how we can stabilize what has become a very deadly and difficult situation,” Obama said, using an acronym for Islamic State militants.
Italy is struggling to cope with an influx of immigrants who are risking their lives to flee instability in Libya and other parts of North Africa and the Middle East by crossing the sea.
The Terror Strategist: Secret Files Reveal the Structure of Islamic State
Submitted by: mimi
An Iraqi officer planned Islamic State's takeover in Syria and SPIEGEL has been given exclusive access to his papers. They portray an organization that, while seemingly driven by religious fanaticism, is actually coldly calculating.
Aloof. Polite. Cajoling. Extremely attentive. Restrained. Dishonest. Inscrutable. Malicious. The rebels from northern Syria, remembering encounters with him months later, recall completely different facets of the man. But they agree on one thing: "We never knew exactly who we were sitting across from."
In fact, not even those who shot and killed him after a brief firefight in the town of Tal Rifaat on a January morning in 2014 knew the true identity of the tall man in his late fifties. They were unaware that they had killed the strategic head of the group calling itself "Islamic State" (IS). The fact that this could have happened at all was the result of a rare but fatal miscalculation by the brilliant planner. The local rebels placed the body into a refrigerator, in which they intended to bury him. Only later, when they realized how important the man was, did they lift his body out again
Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi was the real name of the Iraqi, whose bony features were softened by a white beard. But no one knew him by that name. Even his best-known pseudonym, Haji Bakr, wasn't widely known. But that was precisely part of the plan. The former colonel in the intelligence service of Saddam Hussein's air defense force had been secretly pulling the strings at IS for years. Former members of the group had repeatedly mentioned him as one of its leading figures. Still, it was never clear what exactly his role was.
33 killed, 100 injured in Afghanistan blasts, ISIS claims responsibility
At least 33 people have been killed and more than 100 injured in a series of explosions in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, according to police and local media. ISIS has claimed responsibility.
A blast took place outside a local bank, police chief Fazel Ahmad Sherzad told Reuters.
The attacker was riding a motorbike and detonated his explosives while military personnel and civilians were waiting to receive their salaries from the bank, Sherzad said.
Brutal images of the injured and the dead at the scene have been circulating online
China sentences journalist to 7 years for leaking state secrets
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
BEIJING — A Beijing court sentenced a veteran Chinese journalist to seven years in prison Friday on charges of leaking a document detailing the Communist Party leadership’s resolve to aggressively target civil society and press freedom as a threat to its monopoly on power.
The sentence against Gao Yu, 71, comes amid a widening clampdown on free speech that highlights the gap between China’s vision of rule of law and Western notions of civil liberties and judicial fairness. The verdict appears to confirm the authenticity of the leaked document, deemed a state secret, which had been reported since June 2013, but never was discussed openly by the leadership.
It verifies widely held assumptions about Communist Party leader Xi Jinping’s distrust of any social organization outside party control, as recently manifested in the more-than monthlong detentions of five women’s rights activists who planned to start a public awareness campaign about sexual harassment.
Gao had denied the charges, which could have carried a life sentence.
Russia's Missile Wall in Iran
April 19, 2015 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - The popular narrative surrounding the conflict between the West and Iran has always been one of a dangerous rogue state bent on obtaining nuclear weapons before triggering a nuclear-fueled Armageddon aimed at Israel. Underneath this elementary propaganda, lies a more complex truth underpinning a proxy conflict between East and West.
Just as had been the case during World War I and II, the strategic position, resources, and population of Iran constitute a necessary prerequisite to first overcome before containing and eventually overrunning the political order in Moscow. This time around, in addition to Moscow, the Western axis also seeks to eventually encircle and overrun Beijing as well.
Unlike during the World Wars, vast wars of attrition and mechanized invasions are not a possibility today. Instead, a concerted campaign of proxy wars, covert political subversion, sanctions, and other non-military instruments of power are being employed in what is for all intents and purposes a global conflict.
Increasingly defining the fronts of this conflict, in addition to political and economic alliances, is the presence of "missile walls," or national missile defense programs being erected by both East and West.
Making Unnecessary Enemies in Yemen
The Saudi-Israeli tandem is trying to pull the U.S. and other militaries into the Yemeni civil war by arguing that the Houthi rebels are Iranian proxies. But the reality is much more nuanced and the American interest may go in a different direction, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
A strong Manichean streak runs through American perceptions of the outside world. That streak involves a habit of seeing all conflict and instability in binomial terms, a presumption that one of the perceived two sides is good and the other bad, and an urge to weigh in on the presumptively good side.
The influence that these tendencies have had on U.S. policy has varied over time. The influence was readily apparent, for example, during the George W. Bush administration’s days of “you’re either with us or with the terrorists.” The Obama administration has tried to move in a less Manichean and more realist direction, especially in conducting diplomacy with Iran and in so doing opening a door to a more fruitful all-azimuths diplomacy in the Middle East generally.
But the current administration still operates in a political environment in which the old perceptual habits set limits on what the administration can do, or perhaps push it into doing things it might not otherwise have done.
In Israel’s army, more officers are now religious. What that means.
The percentage of officer cadets who are religious has grown 10-fold since the early 1990s. Among secular Israelis, that’s being met with a mix of respect, and concern.
Submitted by: NCTim
Eli, West Bank — A cease-fire had just gone into effect on Aug. 1 when Palestinian militants ambushed an Israeli reconnaissance team in southern Gaza.
Someone shouted, “Goldin’s gone!”
Lt. Hadar Goldin had been kidnapped – dragged into a nearby Hamas tunnel – and his commander killed. Lt. Eitan Fund, the deputy commander, quickly resolved to pursue the captors. Ditching all his gear save a pistol and a flashlight, the lanky 23-year-old ran hundreds of meters into the darkness, hurtling past weapons, explosives, and other tunnels. He and his small team found the missing officer’s equipment, but not Lieutenant Goldin.
Thus began a massive effort led by Givati Brigade commander Col. Ofer Winter to stop Goldin’s captors. Local sources, who dubbed it Black Friday, said at least 130 Palestinians were killed in the aerial and ground assault (Givati put the death toll at 41). By nighttime, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had determined that Goldin was dead, based on evidence found in the tunnel.
Israel: submarines armed with nuclear weapons?
The fact that Israel has nuclear weapons became public quite recently, although Tel Aviv has been concealing this fact carefully for several decades with the support of the United States and several Western European countries. Some Western experts estimate that the Jewish state may dispose of over 400 nuclear warheads which were created in the underground bunkers of a nuclear centre in Dimona (in the desert of Negev) and other secret laboratories. Obviously such a nuclear arsenal is unjustifiably big for a country declaring a commitment to its defensive policy instead of offensive one. According to some experts, these nuclear weapons were adopted by the Israeli army, including in the submarines carrying out continuous watch in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.
Although almost everything regarding Israel’s submarine fleet has been kept in secret in this country, it has nevertheless been reported, in the recent edition of the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, that the Federal Safety Council approved the delivery of the fifth submarine of Dolphin Project, made in the shipyards of Thyssen Krupp, to Israel.
The delivery of Dolphin-class submarines to Israel (4 were already delivered and the country is preparing for the reception of the fifth and sixth in the near future) has always been a contentious issue for German politicians. And not only because of the high-cost of the projects. They are the single most expensive combat systems in the armed forces of Israel and are estimated be worth more than $700 million each. As in the case of previous delivery of German submarines, it is expected that Germany will finance approximately one third of the total cost of the submarine, though it should be mentioned that the first two submarines were given to Israel by Germany free of charge as a “reimbursement of historical debt for the Holocaust.”
However, the concern over the delivery of these submarines to Israel is largely caused by the fact that these ships are equipped with air independent power units with hydrogen fuel cells, have considerable autonomy of underwater placement and become almost invulnerable. And in the case of equipping them with nuclear weapons, they take on significant meaning for the use in military operations. The speculation that through the adoption of the Dolphins, Israel has managed to equip the Naval Forces with nuclear warheads including ICB cruise missiles comes from the Los Angeles Times article of 12/10/2003 that cited two anonymous sources in the US administration (who for obvious reasons left no comment) as well as other publications about Israeli-made cruise missile testing with a range of 950 miles off the coast of Sri Lanka.
Mental Health Experts Warn of 'Emotional Toxicity' of Neoliberalism
Letter released Friday denounces profound damage caused by austerity
Submitted by: NCTim
Four hundred mental health experts signed an open letter released by The Guardian on Friday warning that Britain's austerity cuts, and neoliberalism more broadly, are profoundly damaging to quality of life and psychological well-being.
"The past five years have seen a radical shift in the kinds of issues generating distress in our clients: increasing inequality and outright poverty, families forced to move against their wishes, and, perhaps most important, benefits claimants (including disabled and ill people) and those seeking work being subjected to a quite new, intimidatory kind of disciplinary regime," warned the letter, whose signatories included Susie Orbach—a well-known psychotherapist and social critic.
The Alliance for Counseling and Psychotherapy played a lead role in organizing the statement, which was signed by counselors, psychotherapists, and other providers associated with a broad array of groups, including Psychotherapists and Counselors for Social Responsibility and Disabled People Against Cuts.
The letter specifically took aim at a series of austerity reforms included in the chancellor's latest budget, including the controversial "linkage of social security benefits to the receipt of 'state therapy.'"
Congress is Attempting to Reauthorize Key Patriot Act Provisions by Sneaking it Into “USA Freedom Act”
Yet with Section 215’s lifespan now stretching to a matter of weeks, supporters of broad surveillance powers have yet to put forth a bill for their preservation – evidence, opponents believe, that the votes for reauthorization do not exist, particularly not in the House of Representatives.
More likely, according to a multiple Hill sources, is a different option under consideration: making the major NSA reform bill of the last Congress the point of departure for reauthorizing 215 in the current one.
The bill would not abridge NSA collection of Americans’ international communications, nor prevent the NSA or the FBI from warrantlessly searching through its troves of them for Americans’ identifying information. Nor would it restrict a constellation of surveillance efforts authorized by a Reagan-era executive order. Even a recently disclosed bulk domestic phone records collection dragnet by the Drug Enforcement Agency would be untouched.
“We should be demanding more reforms than the intelligence agencies are gladly willing to offer us,” said David Segal of the activist group Demand Progress.
‘Any reader of Orwell would be perfectly familiar’ with US maneuvers – Chomsky
Major American media organizations diligently parrot what US officials want the public to know about global affairs, historian Noam Chomsky told RT. To US leaders, any news outlet that “does not repeat the US propaganda system is intolerable,” he said.
The culpability of the West – namely the United States – for world affairs, such as the Ukrainian conflict or tensions with Iran, is another idea that is not permissible in leading American media, Chomsky said, adding that world opinion does not matter when that opinion counters US strategy.
“The West means the United States and everyone else that goes along,” he said. “What’s called the international community in the United States is the United States and anyone who happens to be going along with it. Take, say, for example, the question of Iran’s right to carry out its current nuclear policies, whatever they are. The standard line is that the international community objects to this. Who is the international community? What the United States determines it to be.”
He added that, “any reader of [George] Orwell would be perfectly familiar with this. But it continues virtually without comment.”
Our government is a dysfunctional mess. Here are 4 ways to fix it
D.C. is a disaster, but former journalist and campaign pro Michael Golden tells Salon there's reason for hope
One of the more important realities of American government is so prosaic that its discovery can be something of an anticlimax. Because the truth is that while it’s a serious error to treat the politics of the global hegemon as if it were a game, much of self-government in the United States operates according to a set of clearly defined rules. It can be a chore to learn them — and some are more easily found than others — but, fundamentally, democracy has guidelines from which all else flows.
So why is it that despite the great degree of unhappiness many millions of Americans feel concerning their government, movements devoted to changing those basic rules are so few and far between? To be sure, America does not lack for organizations focused on one, two or even a constellation of issues. But with the exception of the growing movement to change the laws governing campaign finance, little attention is paid to implementing more radical, systemic changes. If baseball can change in response to consistent failure, why not the United States?
As far as former broadcast journalist and campaign manager Michael Golden is concerned, the only acceptable answer to that question is simple: It can, it must and, if its citizens organize and demand changes, it will. Which changes should be made — and why they’re so necessary — is the subject of his new book, “Unlock Congress: Reform the Rules ~ Restore the System,” which was released in hardcover earlier this week. Recently, Salon spoke with Golden over the phone to discuss his ideas for reform and why he believes that, sooner or later, positive changes will come.
Former Dem Senator Chris Dodd Advised Execs to Give to GOP: “Fundraising Does Have An Impact”
Submitted by: NCTim
Chris Dodd’s first career was as the liberal U.S. Senator from Connecticut, a self-professed champion for working families and a Democratic presidential contender in 2008. But hacked emails from Sony offer new insight into how he operates in his second career, as the head of the Motion Picture Association of America, a lobby group for the movie industry.
On January 28, 2014, Dodd emailed executives from major motion picture studios to share two news articles. One revealed that Google had shifted its campaign donation strategy, giving more to Republican lawmakers, and another projected that the GOP would likely perform well in the midterm elections that year.
The articles, Dodd wrote, “underscore the point I’ve been trying to make, which I’m sure you all understand – while loyalty to a person and/or party is admirable, we also need to be smarter about being supportive of those who are and will be in positions to make decisions that affect this industry.”
Dodd listed a number of policy priorities for the industry, from tax credits to intellectual property law, and explained: “We need the capacity to gain and maintain relationships, and with campaigns getting more and more expensive, fundraising does have an impact.”
Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin: Wall Street Owns Hillary Clinton, But She Still Might Lose
On Bloomberg TV, the conservative political historian and journalist Mark Halperin says that Hillary Clinton’s populist and leftist statements don’t worry Wall Street — he even asserts (at 0:27 on the video), that “Wall Street won’t hold her accountable to it,” meaning that they feel confident she doesn’t really believe the populist things she says — but that her veering left to win the nomination is toxic to her final campaign anyway. She’ll still be able to collect hundreds of millions of dollars from Wall Street for her campaign (even as they also fund the Republican Party), but she will be weakened by the primaries — weakened in the general election campaign against the Republican.
Here is why (according to his analysis): the distrust of her among “the left” during the Democratic Party Presidential primaries is driving her to say things that will be thrown back against her by the Republican nominee during the general election, when the Republican nominee will be able to expose her self-contradictions, which she will necessarily have gotten herself into while she was trying to persuade enough Democrats to vote for her during the Democratic primaries.
Halperin says (1:13 on the video) that, “She’s terrified of the left, their demands will never end.” In other words: The only way that Hillary Clinton will be able to convince enough liberals to vote for her to become the Democratic nominee will be for her to say things that will be inconsistent with other things she says, so that, in the following general election campaign (if she gets that far), only Wall Street and a few still-trusting liberals will support her, which will give the Republican nominee a much clearer and bigger field of political appeal. The Republican nominee will be able to maintain a less self-contradictory conservative line, by adhering, presumably, to the Ronald Reagan model — one which holds together both the religious and the aristocratic bases of the conservative movement, to draw far more conservatives to the polls come Election Day, than the by-then-demoralized Democratic Party will be able to motivate to the polls.
Halperin is basically saying that the only way Hillary Clinton will be able to win the Democratic nomination (since Wall Street is in the bag for her, and only the Party’s liberal base can block her from winning the nomination) will be for her to spout a line that is so “everything-for-everybody” as to depress the Democratic Party’s turnout come Election Day.
Whatever happened to the big, bad federal deficit?
Spending is up in Congress and only one likely GOP presidential candidate has mentioned the 'd' word. What happened to the red ink menace?
Submitted by: NCTim
Washington — Whatever happened to the big, bad federal deficit? You know, the red ink menace that was supposed to devour America’s fiscal future?
We ask because the way Congress is acting the deficit must have gone into hiding. Look at how eager lawmakers were to whoop through the “doc fix,” the big bill averting (permanently) planned reductions in Medicare reimbursements for physicians. It passed the Senate today by a 92-to-8 vote, having squeaked through the House last month, 392-to-37.
Yes, the move is popular, obviously. It resolves an issue that’s been a problem for years. Yet the doc fix is expensive, and only about one-third of its cost is offset by budget cuts. It’ll add some $141 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years.
And that’s not the only up-spending in the works. Add in likely increases in military and domestic spending, and the deficit could go up $100 billion in the next year alone, calculates longtime federal budget expert Stan Collender.
Intersex surgeries spark move away from drastic treatment
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
CHICAGO (AP) — She was born to a young Chicago couple, named Jennifer, and grew into a beautiful long-lashed child with wavy dark hair, big brown eyes and a yearning, youthful desire to be just like all the other girls.
Only she wasn't. Doctors first noticed her slightly enlarged genitals, and then discovered she had testes inside her abdomen and male chromosomes. And so began a series of surgeries to make things "right."
Jennifer Pagonis was born intersex, an umbrella term for several conditions in which an infant's reproductive anatomy doesn't conform to standard definitions of male or female. The physical effects can be subtle, or very obvious.
A century ago, intersex adults were top draws at circus sideshows. Then, as surgical techniques for ambiguous genitals evolved, doctors began performing surgeries on affected infants and encouraged parents to raise children as the sex they visibly resembled. Many families kept the conditions hidden, fearing stigma and shame.
As states warm to online voting, experts warn of trouble ahead
WASHINGTON — A Pentagon official sat before a committee of the Washington State Legislature in January and declared that the U.S. military supported a bill that would allow voters in the state to cast election ballots via email or fax without having to certify their identities.
Military liaison Mark San Souci’s brief testimony was stunning because it directly contradicted the Pentagon’s previously stated position on online voting:
It’s against it.
Along with Congress, the Defense Department has heeded warnings over the past decade from cybersecurity experts that no Internet voting system can effectively block hackers from tampering with election results.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal, which will feature from the United Mine Workers Journal: IN MEMORIAM. (By Mother Jones.) "To you, fair babes of Ludlow, who gave up your lives on the altar of industrial freedom..." And from the Italian section of the magazine: a tribute to the Costa family.
Tune in at 2pm!
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Stephen King On GOP Presidential Field: ‘Hey, I Thought I Was Supposed To Write The Horror Stories’
Submitted by: NCTim
Writer Stephen King has long been a liberal and a Democrat and he’s rarely kept his opinions to himself. Friday was no exception when he hilariously tweeted about the Republican presidential field:
Cruz, Paul and Rubio, all running for President. Hey, I thought I was supposed to write the horror stories.
Cruz, Paul and Rubio, all running for President. Hey, I thought I was supposed to write the horror stories.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) April 16, 2015
Well, it would be hilarious if it weren’t so damned true. Between the three of them, there isn’t an ounce of compassion or empathy. The top .001 percent will benefit while everyone who’s not a bigoted white man will become second class citizens.
Today wasn’t the first time King commented on politics.
Louisiana five years after BP oil spill: 'It's not going back to normal no time soon'
The oil giant says the environmental disaster caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blast is nearly over. That’s not how it feels to Gulf coast residents
To hear BP tell it, the environmental disaster that struck the Gulf of Mexico five years ago is nearly over – the beaches have been cleared of oil, and the water in the Gulf is as clear as it ever was. But how do you spot a continued disaster if its main indicator is the absence of something?
On this strip of land in south-eastern Louisiana, the restaurants are still empty, FOR SALE signs are increasing in store windows, people are still moving away, and this marina on Pointe a la Hache – once packed most afternoons with oystermen bringing in their catch on their small boats, high school kids earning a few bucks unloading the sacks, and 18-wheelers backed up by the dozen to carry them away – is completely devoid of life, save one man, 69-year-old Clarence Duplessis, who cleans his boat to pass the time.
“At this time of day, at this marina, it used to be packed,” Duplessis said. “And now there’s nothing.”
It’s been nearly five years since BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded off the coast of Louisiana, killing 11 workers and spilling nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and residents, fisherman, activists and scientists say the cleanup and restoration is far from over. While some phenomena in the Gulf – people getting sick, fishing nets coming back empty – are hard to definitively pin on BP – experts say the signs of ecological and economic loss that followed the spill are deeply concerning for the future of the Gulf. Meanwhile, BP has pushed back hard on the notion that the effects of its disaster are much to worry about, spending millions on PR and commercials to convince Gulf residents everything will be OK.
Judge gives her reasons for deciding that pot is still dangerous
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
The federal judge who allowed Northern California pot growers to challenge the government’s ban on marijuana says she decided to uphold the law in the end because, although nearly half the states allow for medical marijuana, there are “disagreements among well-informed experts” about whether the plant has any medicinal value.
That dispute among experts shows that Congress had an adequate “rational basis” for classifying marijuana among the most dangerous drugs, said U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller of Sacramento in a written ruling Friday, two days after she refused to dismiss pot cultivation charges against a dozen defendants.
Mueller had granted the defendants a hearing in October, to make their case that they were being prosecuted under an unconstitutional law. It was the first time in several decades that a federal judge had allowed defendants in a U.S. criminal case to challenge the constitutionality of the strict national prohibition on marijuana.
Although the defendants have not claimed they were growing marijuana for medical use, they argued that the charges were invalid because they were based on a law that treats pot more harshly than drugs with fewer benefits and more dangers.
'Mystery disease' kills 18 in Nigeria - officials
A "mysterious" disease has killed at least 18 people in the past several days in south-eastern Nigeria, local officials say.
The outbreak started in the Ode-Irele town, Ondo state, and spread rapidly.
The disease - characterised by blurred vision, headache and loss of consciousness - killed the victims within 24 hours of falling ill.
Local health officials and World Health Organization experts are now in the town to try to identify the disease.
California declares measles outbreak officially over
Submitted by: enhydra lutris
California’s Disneyland measles outbreak — the largest in the state in more than two decades — is officially over, the state Public Health Department said Friday.
The outbreak began in mid-December at the two Disney theme parks in Orange County and ultimately sickened more than 130 people in California, plus dozens in other states and countries.
It also reignited a long-smoldering debate on childhood immunization requirements and triggered proposed new legislation to require that all schoolchildren be vaccinated before starting kindergarten.
In a telephone media briefing Friday, state public health authorities said that while the measles outbreak may be over, the threat of more surges in infectious diseases remains, especially with large pockets of under-vaccinated children and adults throughout California.
Clueless North Carolina Gov. Blasts The Size Of The 50-Mile Offshore Drilling Buffer Zone
Submitted by: NCTim
Congress is holding hearings regarding offshore oil drilling in the Atlantic, off the coasts of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory praised the Obama administration’s attempts to allow drilling off the Atlantic coast, according toThink Progress, but took issue with the 50-mile buffer zone in Obama’s plan. McCrory, who seems unaware of how far—or close—to the Gulf Coast Deepwater Horizon was when it blew, thinks a 30-mile buffer is perfectly fine.
Perhaps for views, 30 miles is fine. It’s really hard to see 30 miles out, and then you’d have to know what you were looking for in order to see the rigs. However, Deepwater Horizon was located 50 miles off the Gulf Coast, and caused $40 billion in economic losses due to the damage to the coast. How is McCrory not worried about this?
Think Progress notes that McCrory believes North Carolina’s fishing industry will be fine, as will its tourism industry, with just 30 miles between its beaches and the drilling sites. However, coastal communities themselves have a different opinion. No fewer than 16 different towns have passed resolutions against offshore exploration and development, along with the Outer Banks Chamber of Commerce. These are the groups that will be most affected by offshore drilling – and any possible disasters.
Despite the fact that the oil companies, and drilling companies, have their “best practices” in place, and we have tightened down regulations on offshore drilling ourselves, neither of these is really able to address human error and poor judgment. Those are what was responsible for both Deepwater Horizon and the Exxon Valdez oil spill up in Prince William Sound, Alaska.
The Evening Greens
The Evening Greens Weekend Editor: enhydra lutris
March was hottest worldwide since 1880
Last month was the hottest March worldwide since record keeping began in 1880, and the first three months of 2015 also set a new heat record, US government scientists said Friday.
"During March, the average temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 1.53 Fahrenheit (0.85 Celsius) above the 20th century average," said the report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"This was the highest for March in the 1880-2015 record, surpassing the previous record of 2010 by 0.09 F (0.05 C)."
Think Different: Apple and conservation
Marking a precedent-setting conservation partnership, Apple and the Conservation Fund will purchase two large areas of working forest, the organizations announced on Thursday. The move is expected to conserve “more than 36,000 acres of working forestland in Maine and North Carolina, ensuring these forests stay forests and any timber on the land is harvested sustainably,” the partners said in a joint announcement.
This initial purchase of U.S. working forestland marks “the beginning of a worldwide effort, one that represents a new approach as it reassesses its impact on the world’s paper supply chain,” Lisa P. Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environmental initiatives, and Larry Selzer, president and CEO of the Conservation Fund, wrote in a Medium op-ed. Prior to joining Apple, Jackson led the U.S. EPA as President Barack Obama’s EPA Administrator from 2009 to 2013.
Apple will provide the financial resources for the partnership, and the Conservation Fund (TCF) will build out the legal and financial mechanism. The effort will conserve working forest land — encompassing an area larger than the city of San Francisco — in Maine’s Mattawamkeag Forest and North Carolina’s Reed Forest. Threatened with destruction, these working forest lands are of practically priceless and irreplaceable ecological and socioeconomic value, the partners said.
With the working forest conservation partnership, “Apple is clearly leading by example – one that we hope others will follow,” Selzer of the Conservation Fund stated in a joint press release. “By all accounts, the loss of America’s working forests is one of our nation’s greatest environmental challenges. The initiative announced today is precedent-setting.”
Lose species, lose stability, grasslands show
Losing plant species is directly linked to long-term declines in the stable productivity of grasslands, a new study has shown.
The study demonstrates for the first time that for every decrease in plant biodiversity there is a proportional decrease in the stable production of plant biomass through time of grassland ecosystems. Over the long-term, factors such as rising levels of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, more frequent grazing, or drought, only affect ecosystem stability in as much as they affect biodiversity.
The findings are likely to be relevant to a variety of ecosystems and suggest that restoring or protecting plant biodiversity should be central to conservation strategies.
The study was led by researchers at Oxford University and the University of Minnesota and involved 12 experiments carried out at the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve in Minnesota over a period of 28 years. In the experiments levels of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water, as well as the frequency of fires and grazing, were artificially manipulated and the impacts on biodiversity and stability assessed. The researchers found that only when these individual drivers reduced grassland diversity did they in turn reduce its stability. In other words, the effect of all of these human-induced changes on ecosystem stability were mediated by their impact on biodiversity.
A report of the research is published in the journal Science.
Important study of how climate affects biodiversity
A key question in the climate debate is how the occurrence and distribution of species is affected by climate change. But without information about natural variation in species abundance it is hard to answer. In a major study, published today in the leading scientific journal Current Biology, researchers can now for the first time give us a detailed picture of natural variation.
The impact of climate change on species occurrence and distribution is a central issue in the climate debate, since human influence on the climate risks posing threats to biodiversity. But until now methods for investigating how natural climate variation in the past has affected the abundance of species have been lacking.
Now, for the first time, Krystyna Nadachowska-Brzyska and Hans Ellegren of Uppsala University’s Evolutionary Biology Centre in collaboration with researchers at the Beijing Genomics Institute, have managed to clarify the issue in detail by analysing the whole genome of some 40 bird species. By studying the genetic variation of DNA molecules, they have succeeded in estimating how common these species were at various points in time, from several million years ago to historical times.
Ellegren says: ‘The majority of all species exhibit cyclical swings in numbers and these swings often coincide with the periods of ice ages.’
Major advance in artificial photosynthesis poses win/win for the environment
A potentially game-changing breakthrough in artificial photosynthesis has been achieved with the development of a system that can capture carbon dioxide emissions before they are vented into the atmosphere and then, powered by solar energy, convert that carbon dioxide into valuable chemical products, including biodegradable plastics, pharmaceutical drugs and even liquid fuels.
Scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have created a hybrid system of semiconducting nanowires and bacteria that mimics the natural photosynthetic process by which plants use the energy in sunlight to synthesize carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water. However, this new artificial photosynthetic system synthesizes the combination of carbon dioxide and water into acetate, the most common building block today for biosynthesis.
"We believe our system is a revolutionary leap forward in the field of artificial photosynthesis," says Peidong Yang, a chemist with Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division and one of the leaders of this study. "Our system has the potential to fundamentally change the chemical and oil industry in that we can produce chemicals and fuels in a totally renewable way, rather than extracting them from deep below the ground."
Yang, who also holds appointments with UC Berkeley and the Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute (Kavli-ENSI) at Berkeley, is one of three corresponding authors of a paper describing this research in the journal Nano Letters. The paper is titled "Nanowire-bacteria hybrids for unassisted solar carbon dioxide fixation to value-added chemicals." The other corresponding authors and leaders of this research are chemists Christopher Chang and Michelle Chang. Both also hold joint appointments with Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley. In addition, Chris Chang is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator.
Telling the time of day by color
Research by scientists at The University of Manchester has revealed that the colour of light has a major impact on how the brain clock measures time of day and on how the animals' physiology and behavior adjust accordingly. The study, for the first time, provides a neuronal mechanism for how our internal clock can measure changes in light colour that accompany dawn and dusk.
In research publishing on April 17th in the Open Access journal PLOS Biology, the researchers looked at the change in light around dawn and dusk to analyze whether colour could be used to determine time of day. Besides the well-known changes in light intensity that occur as the sun rises and sets, the scientists found that during twilight light is reliably bluer than during the day.
The researchers next recorded electrical activity from the brain clock while mice were shown different visual stimuli. They found that many of the neurons were more sensitive to changes in colour between blue and yellow than to changes in brightness.
The scientists then simulated an artificial sky that recreated the daily changes in colour and brightness, as they were measured at the top of the University's Pariser Building for more than a month. As expected for nocturnal animals, when mice were placed under this artificial sky for several days, the highest body temperatures occurred just after dusk, when the sky turned a darker blue, indicating that their body clock was working optimally. If only the brightness of the sky was changed, with no change in colour, the mice became more active before dusk, demonstrating that their body clock wasn't properly aligned to the day-night cycle.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
National Guard Referred to Ferguson Protesters as 'Enemy Forces', Emails Show
Modern Life Is a Frightening Experiment in How Much Exposure We Can Take from Toxic Chemicals
Noam Chomsky: The U.S. Is Trying to Put an End to Its Extreme Isolation
Can Labor Bring Wall Street Back to Main Street?
praenomen: Part One: Where We Go From Here
praenomen: Part Two: Creating a Hierarchy of Leadership
praenomen: The Fast Track to Oblivion
Judge, jury uphold HERO
The Woodstock Photo
Russian sanctions are not working
Hellraisers Journal: Appeal to Reason on the Losing Fight Against Debt Bondage of Tenant Farmers
A letter to my representatives in Wall Str-- er, DC:
A Little Night Music
Rebecca Frazier - Darken Your Doorway
Rebecca Frazier - Human Highway
Alison Krauss & Union Station - The Lucky One
Alison Krauss - I'll Fly Away
Alison Krauss - Lay My Burden Down
Claire Lynch - If Wishes Were Horses
The Claire Lynch Band - Thibodaux
Claire Lynch - Train Long Gone
Alecia Nugent - Hillbilly Goddess
Alecia Nugent - Breaking New Ground
Alecia Nugent - I Cried All The Way To Kentucky
Amy Gallatin - I Will Always Wait For You
Amy Gallatin - B-flat Polka
Carrie Hassler & Hard Rain - One Way Track To Nowhere
Carrie Hassler & Hard Rain - Going On The Next Train
Dale Ann Bradley - Rusty Old Halo
Dale Ann Bradley - Somewhere South Of Crazy
Rhonda Vincent - Just Someone I Used To Know
Rhonda Vincent & The Rage - Kentucky Borderline
Della Mae - This World Oft Can Be / Big Old Big One
Della Mae - Walk On Boy
Patty Loveless - Pretty Little Miss
Patty Loveless - You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive