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 blues singer and harmonica player Sammy Myers. Enjoy!
Sammy Myers (with Elmore James) - Angel Child
"Cruelty disfigures our national character. It is incompatible with our constitutional order, with our laws, and with our most prized values ...there is no more fundamental right than to be safe from cruel and inhumane treatment. Where cruelty exists, law does not."
-- Alberto Mora
News and Opinion
Omar Khadr, Child Prisoner Who Claimed Torture at Gitmo, Freed on Bail in Canada During U.S. Appeal
Omar Khadr, Once Guantanamo’s Youngest Prisoner, Finally Out of Jail
Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen who was once the youngest inmate held at Guantanamo Bay, was today let out on bail from a Canadian prison — walking free for the first time since he was captured by US forces when he was 15 years old. A judge today ruled that Khadr should be released from a maximum-security prison in Edmonton, Alberta, while he appeals his conviction for throwing a grenade that killed an American soldier during a raid near Ayub Khel, Afghanistan in 2002.
Khadr, who spent nearly 10 years at Guantanamo, will live with his lawyer Dennis Edney and his wife. “I look forward to Omar Khadr letting the Canadian public see who he is,” Edney said outside the courtroom after the judge’s decision was rendered. ...
Born in Canada in 1986, Khadr spent his childhood in the suburbs of Toronto before being taken by his now-deceased father, Al Qaeda financier Ahmed Khadr, to Afghanistan in the late-90’s. Brought into the orbit of militant groups at a young age, Khadr’s life would take a further turn for the worse following the 9/11 attacks and subsequent U.S. invasion of the country.
In later years, videos would surface of Khadr as a young boy being taught by militants how to construct rudimentary landmines with which to target U.S. troops. In July 2002, a house he was residing in would be the target of a U.S. military raid that killed several militants and grievously wounded Khadr, who suffered several gunshot and shrapnel wounds throughout his body before being captured. Sgt. Christopher Speer, a U.S. army medic, would die in that raid, hit by a grenade dubiously alleged to have been thrown by Khadr as he lay wounded.
Following this incident, Khadr was transferred first to the American prison at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan and then to the prison at Guantanamo Bay. In both places, he is alleged to have suffered torture by prison guards and interrogators, including beatings, denial of medical care for wounds, sleep deprivation and various other forms of humiliation and physical mistreatment.
His chief interrogator at Bagram, Joshua Claus, would later be charged in connection with the deaths of several Afghan civilians who were tortured and killed at the camp.
Omar Khadr: after Guantánamo, 'freedom is way better than I thought'
The most surprising thing about life in the modern world, observed the youngest person ever held at Guantánamo Bay hours after he walked free on bail, is that “freedom is way better than I thought.” ...
Speaking with a light Canadian accent and a smile on a chilly Alberta evening in the manicured cul de sac where he will spend his bail time, living with his attorney Dennis Edney, Khadr thanked the Canadian public, despite years of demonization as a dangerous terrorist. ...
Khadr had his own message for the Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper: “I’m gonna have to disappoint him. I’m better than the person he thinks I am.”
Khadr did not address his treatment at Guantánamo where he contends he was placed in stress positions, deprived of sleep for extensive periods and used as a “human mop” after he was confined for so long that he urinated on himself.
Despite Talk of ‘Humanitarian Pause,’ Saudis Vow to Keep Attacking Yemen
Just hours after the Saudi Foreign Ministry announced a speculative notion for a five day “humanitarian pause” in Yemen, Saudi military spokesmen insisted that the attacks would continue and escalate irrespective of any decision to allow humanitarian aid into the country. ...
The Saudi “pause” never seemed liable to happen anyhow, as the foreign ministry conditioned it on the Houthis “disarming,” and the military has since made it clear they’re not going to pause anything at any rate.
The empty offer seems to have been done entirely for the sake of Secretary of State John Kerry, who wants to show that there is some seriousness being given to the massive civilian death toll of the Saudi war, which the US is loudly backing, and to calm Russian-led calls for an outright ceasefire to end the killing.
US may sell Saudis bombs once only offered to Israel — report
Amid American efforts to allay Sunni Arab concerns over the nuclear deal with Iran, officials are reportedly considering selling Saudi Arabia bunker buster bombs, which are currently only offered to Israel. ...
Talks for the sale are taking place in secret, since according to a 2008 congressional mandate, the US must ensure Israel’s military superiority in the Middle East. But the American administration is also anxious to reassure its Sunni allies in the region that it is not abandoning them.
In addition to the sale of bunker buster bombs to Saudi Arabia, the US is also considering selling F-35 fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates, according to a recent report.
US Seeking Ways to Blame Syria for Suspected Chlorine Attacks
Reports of chlorine attacks are pretty common in Syria, though half of the time it’s unclear if they amounted to anything other than an accidental release related to hitting an industrial building with some old chemical tanks inside.
Lithuanian officials are reporting that as usual, the latest round has the US looking to blame the Assad government, and that they are trying to “create a way to attribute blame” to the Syrian military for the attacks.
Previous UN Security Council resolutions had threatened “action” if chemical attacks were proven to have taken place, but they did not mandate any specific group that gets to decide who is to blame.
Turkey Officials Confirm Pact With Saudi Arabia To Help Al-Qaida Fight Syria's Assad
Casting aside U.S. concerns about aiding extremist groups, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have converged on an aggressive new strategy to bring down Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The two countries — one a democracy, the other a conservative kingdom — have for years been at odds over how to deal with Assad, their common enemy. But mutual frustration with what they consider American indecision has brought the two together in a strategic alliance that is driving recent rebel gains in northern Syria, and has helped strengthen a new coalition of anti-Assad insurgents, Turkish officials say.
That is provoking concern in the United States, which does not want rebel groups, including the al-Qaida linked Nusra Front, uniting to topple Assad. The Obama administration worries that the revived rebel alliance could potentially put a more dangerous radical Islamist regime in Assad's place, just as the U.S. is focused on bringing down the Islamic State group. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issues, said the administration is concerned that the new alliance is helping Nusra gain territory in Syria.
The coordination between Turkey and Saudi Arabia reflects renewed urgency and impatience with the Obama administration's policy in the region. Saudi Arabia previously kept its distance and funding from some anti-Assad Islamist groups at Washington's urging, according to Turkish officials.
They Won't Shut Me Up - John Kiriakou
Pentagon still mishandling military whistleblower cases, report finds
Military personnel who report retaliation for blowing the whistle on wrongdoing confront a dysfunctional bureaucracy and long delays, according to an assessment by Congress’ watchdog agency.
The Government Accountability Office found the problems when it analyzed about 124 military whistleblower reprisal cases overseen by the Pentagon inspector general’s office, U.S. officials familiar with the draft of the report told McClatchy. The final report is due out soon.
“The report raises questions about whether uniformed personnel are getting fair treatment and whether the Department of Defense’s inspector general’s office can be trusted to resolve these cases,” said one of the officials. The official asked not to be named because the report has not been published.
Court Rules NSA Bulk Spying Illegal: New Vindication for Snowden, and Uncertainty for PATRIOT Act
Of Snowden and the NSA, only one has acted unlawfully – and it’s not Snowden
With the NSA’s bulk surveillance ruled illegal, the debate on the Patriot Act should be reinvigorated – with Edward Snowden free to join in
On 6 June 2013, the Guardian published a secret US court order against the phone company Verizon, ordering it on an “ongoing, daily basis” to hand over the call records of its millions of US customers to the NSA – just one of numerous orders enabling the government’s highly secret domestic mass surveillance program. Just days later the world learned the identity of the whistleblower who made the order public: Edward Snowden.
Now, almost two years later, a US court has vindicated Snowden’s decision, ruling that the bulk surveillance program went beyond what the law underpinning it allowed: the US government used section 215 of the Patriot Act to justify the program. A US court of appeals has ruled the law does not allow for a program so broad. In short, one of the NSA’s most famous and controversial surveillance programs has no legal basis.
Of Snowden and the NSA, only one has so far been found to have acted unlawfully – and it’s not Snowden. That surely must change the nature of the debate on civil liberties being had in America, and it should do so in a number of ways.
The first is the surprisingly thorny question of what to do with Snowden himself. ... Now the courts have ruled that Snowden’s flagship revelation, the very first and foremost of the programs he disclosed, has no legal basis, who now might challenge his status as a whistleblower? ... If the US wants moral authority to talk to other governments about whistleblowers and civil liberty, it needs to be brave: it needs to offer Snowden amnesty.
The court of appeals judges very deliberately chose not to consider the constitutionality of NSA bulk surveillance programs, as such questions are currently before Congress with the ongoing debate on how to reform the Patriot Act. ... For domestic bulk surveillance to continue and be legal, Congress must explicitly vote for it – and then, in time, the judicial branch will consider the constitutional case in earnest.
The president could also use this ruling as an opportunity to consider his stance. The line endlessly aired by the administration and its officials is that all surveillance is legal. That line is no longer valid.
Republicans put plans to reauthorise Patriot Act on hold after court ruling
Senate Republicans have conceded they may have to temporarily suspend plans for a long-term reauthorisation of the Patriot Act after a court ruling against its use by the National Security Agency dramatically turned around the prospects for surveillance reform in Washington.
Three US appeal court judges threw the existing plan – to extend the NSA’s power to collect bulk metadata from American phone records for five years – into chaos on Thursday when they ruled that it was unlawful even under the old legislation.
Now, with the relevant section of the Patriot Act due to expire at the end of the month, Republican leaders in Congress are scrambling to find a shorter-term fix to keep the programme alive as it looks likely that the court ruling will prevent them from securing the necessary votes for a full extension in the remaining six days of this legislative session. ...
Many of those in favour of reform believe their best chance of forcing the Republican leader Mitch McConnell into allowing a vote on the Freedom Act is the prospect of him failing to pass anything and forcing the NSA to totally shutdown the controversial programme first revealed by Edward Snowden.
Such a scenario would be preferable to many privacy campaigners, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which originally lodged Thursday’s court challenge.
The government’s deceptive “transparency” lies: The truth about how it’s keeping its secrets
Roughly 1,786 days ago, the Department of Justice’s Inspector General started an investigation into the FBI’s use of Section 215, the provision the government uses to collect the phone records of most Americans. Sometime last June, perhaps 330 days ago, the Inspector General finished the report. Three days before USA Freedom Act failed a cloture vote in the Senate last November, Inspector General Michael Horowitz revealed where the report, which had been four years in the making, had gone to.
It was stuck in declassification review.
All this delay for a report we know directly addresses issues affected by the USA Freedom Act (USAF). ... The delay is all the more inexcusable given one point of USAF and the assumption the Executive Branch had negotiated it in good faith. Part of USAF mandated new Inspector General reports and additional transparency. The biggest improvement on the status quo in the bill, aside from getting the government out of the business of collecting every Americans’ phone records, was those transparency provisions. And yet the Intelligence Community had succeeded in keeping a long-awaited report on that precise program from most of the Members of Congress by not declassifying it in the 5 months between the time it was completed and the time the Senate voted on it. ...
So here we are, bearing down on a hard deadline in a few weeks to reauthorize Section 215, and the FBI still claims to be conducting a declassification review for a report first initiated 5 years ago and completed 11 months ago. This report would be entering kindergarten if it were human, and yet the FBI wants to keep it in a drawer, away from those who need to read it. ...
It is true that USAF permits providers to give more clarity about how many spying requests the government makes of them. It is true that the bill at least requires FISC declassification (though that might look like that summary of a 7 year old opinion, probably on correlations, the government still relies on).
But it’s time to assess how serious the government is about the transparency provisions it is negotiating. Because the evidence suggests, on that front, they’re negotiating in bad faith.
In Wake of Spying Scandal, Germany to Restrict Intelligence-Sharing With US
Germany is scaling back its intelligence-sharing operations with the U.S., shortly after it was revealed that the German government had spied on European allies on behalf of the National Security Agency from 2002 to 2013.
Government officials reportedly met Wednesday night to address the growing pressure to explain Germany's role in the operation.
According to an official who spoke to the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, the restrictions will prohibit the country's intelligence agency, BND, from handing over Internet surveillance data requested by the U.S. from a German eavesdropping facility in Bavaria.
The WSJ continued:
A second German official, however, stressed the decision only affected the BND’s Bavarian outpost, which he described as a small part of the agency’s overall intelligence sharing with the U.S.
... Government officials haven’t commented publicly on the decision to curtail sharing with the U.S. of intelligence from the Bavarian listening post, which was disclosed in a classified briefing to select members of parliament on Wednesday. It wasn’t immediately clear who ordered the move, though the Chancellery officially oversees Germany’s intelligence agencies.
The revelation last month that the country's intelligence agency, BND, had spied on "top officials at the French Foreign Ministry, the Elysee Palace, and European Commission... as well as European defense and aerospace firms" was particularly embarrassing for Chancellor Angela Merkel, who previously slammed the NSA for monitoring her cell phone.
Our Senators are asking Hollywood for better propaganda.
Senators Want to “Blow ISIS Out of the Water” with “Fancy Memes”
Lawmakers despairing over the Islamic State’s success in recruiting would-be terrorists on social media proposed on Thursday that the U.S. government create more viral memes, possibly with Hollywood’s help.
“There’s an obvious piece of legislation that we need to start working on,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., said during a Homeland Security Committee hearing on “Jihad 2.0“.
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., backed his colleague’s appeal. “Look at their fancy memes compared to what we’re not doing,” Booker said, displaying examples of jihadist online postings.
U.S. Government Designated Prominent Al Jazeera Journalist as “Member of Al Qaeda”
The U.S. government labeled a prominent journalist as a member of Al Qaeda and placed him on a watch list of suspected terrorists, according to a top-secret document that details U.S. intelligence efforts to track Al Qaeda couriers by analyzing metadata.
The briefing singles out Ahmad Muaffaq Zaidan, Al Jazeera’s longtime Islamabad bureau chief, as a member of the terrorist group. A Syrian national, Zaidan has focused his reporting throughout his career on the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and has conducted several high-profile interviews with senior Al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden. ...
In a brief phone interview with The Intercept, Zaidan “absolutely” denied that he is a member of Al Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood. In a statement provided through Al Jazeera, Zaidan noted that his career has spanned many years of dangerous work in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and required interviewing key people in the region — a normal part of any journalist’s job.
“For us to be able to inform the world, we have to be able to freely contact relevant figures in the public discourse, speak with people on the ground, and gather critical information. Any hint of government surveillance that hinders this process is a violation of press freedom and harms the public’s right to know,” he wrote. “To assert that myself, or any journalist, has any affiliation with any group on account of their contact book, phone call logs, or sources is an absurd distortion of the truth and a complete violation of the profession of journalism.”
A spokesman for Al Jazeera, a global news service funded by the government of Qatar, cited a long list of instances in which its journalists have been targeted by governments on which it reports, and described the labeling and surveillance of Zaidan as “yet another attempt at using questionable techniques to target our journalists, and in doing so, enforce a gross breach of press freedom.”
The Legacy of I.F. Stone
Delaware police release dashcam video of white officer kicking black suspect
Police in Delaware have released dashcam video showingDover corporal Thomas Webster IV kicking Dickerson, a white police officer kicking a black suspect in the face as he puts his hands on the ground in response to commands . ...
Police say Dickerson was knocked unconscious and suffered a broken jaw. Webster is on unpaid leave after he was indicted for second-degree assault.
A previous grand jury declined to indict Webster.
Bringing the Crisis to a Head in Baltimore
It’s been nine months since the Black youth of Ferguson, Missouri, set history in motion with their demand for justice for Michael Brown, yet the “movement” has maintained its momentum while the forces of Tom Foolery and collaboration are on the defensive. In Baltimore, the young Black State’s Attorney gave the people what they had so loudly demanded, but didn’t expect to get: serious charges against the six cops directly involved in Freddie Gray’s death, with one officer facing up to 30 years in prison for 2nd degree “depraved heart” murder – a potential template for future “depraved indifference” charges against killer cops. Thirty-five year-old Marilyn Mosby became an instant icon for millions when she concluded her announcement of the charges with a salute to Black youth: "You’re at the forefront of this cause, and as young people, our time is now." ...
The only thing that can work to fundamentally change the system for Black people – whether in the 21st century or the Sixties – is mass organization for popular empowerment. In a society where police practice systemic violence, the resistance will inevitably include violence, as well. Baltimore saw both ingredients at work, over the past couple of weeks – and it scared the powers-that-be to their bones. Whatever this “movement” will ultimately be called, it announced its active presence in a major American city at the beginning of the hot season. There was clearly more than simple “looting” going on in the pattern of confrontation with police – which means, important things are happening in the street. When high school kids rush out of school to join the battle against the cops, we know that important things are happening in their peer groups. And the summer has not yet begun.
The “peaceful” protesters and the bad “thugs” – who might be the same person at different times of day – created a small taste of the crisis that must come to all of the Baltimores of the United States, if Black people are to control or replace the local police and sever every fatal connection to the Mass Black Incarceration State that has been imposed over the past 45 years. It is only at the point of crisis that those in power will even consider bowing to Black demands for transformational change. In the process of consciously bringing about this crisis, we will be compelled to deal with those Blacks that collaborate with corporate and white power, and to create an environment that is, shall we say, not conducive to their presence in the community.
As Obama Admin Seeks More Funding for Charter Schools, Questions Raised over Billions Already Spent
With Banks 'Still Too Big to Fail,' Another Financial Meltdown Looms
Seven years after the financial crisis began, many of the conditions that helped cause the near collapse of the U.S. banking system—and that were used to justify the multi-trillion-dollar U.S. government bailout of mammoth financial institutions—endure, warns a new report from the Corporate Reform Coalition (CRC).
Titled Still Too Big to Fail (pdf), Thursday's report charges that since the meltdown began in 2008, regulators have failed to make sufficient progress on key components of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, or to boost transparency in political spending.
"The top six bank holding companies are considerably larger than before, and are still permitted to borrow excessively relative to the assets they hold," the report states. "They are dangerously interconnected and remain vulnerable to sudden runs, because they borrow billions of dollars from wholesale lenders who can often demand their cash back each and every day."
It goes on: "Banks can still use taxpayer-backed insured deposits to engage in high-risk derivative transactions here and overseas. Compensation incentives fail to discourage mismanagement and illegality, given that when legal fees, settlements, and fines mount, it is usually the shareholders, not the corporate executives who pay."
And, the report warns, "[s]hould one of these giant banking firms fail again, it appears that the damage will not be contained."
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature from the Appeal to Reason: H. G. Creel concludes his series on the investigation made by the Commission on Industrial Relations into the conditions of tenant farmers in Texas and Oklahoma.
Tune in at 2pm!
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Obama to promote TPP at Nike - a corp that offshores jobs and pays slave wages overseas
Today, President Obama is visiting Nike’s headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon to garner support for the trade deal, which would be signed by the US and 11 Pacific Rim countries. That’s an apt place for Obama to beat the free-trade drum – Nike, like the TPP, is associated with offshoring American jobs, widening the income inequality gap, and increasing the number of people making slave wages overseas. Since the passage of NAFTA in 1993, we’ve seen the loss of nearly five million US manufacturing jobs, the closure of more than 57,000 factories, and stagnant wages. This deal won’t be any different.
In November, Zachary Senn, a college student reporter at the Modesto Bee, spent three weeks in Indonesia living with and interviewing workers who make goods for Nike, Adidas, Puma and Converse. When you hear Obama talking about those “high-quality jobs,” think of RM, a 32-year-old mother who told Senn that she works 55 hours, six days a week and makes just $184 a month after 12 years at the PT Nikomas factory, a Nike subcontractor that employs 25,000 people. That’s 83 cents an hour or $2,208 a year. ...
Wages in Vietnam, a key TPP partner, are even lower than Indonesia. Nike’s largest production center is in Vietnam where 330,000 mostly young women workers with no legal rights earn just 48 to 69 cents an hour, according to the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights (IGLHR).
According to the IGLHR’s A Race to the Bottom report, Nike symbolizes the destructive impacts of trade deals like the TPP. Those $100-$200 Nike shoes you see in stores carry a declared customs value of $5.27 per pair, according to a sampling of ten shipments of Nike shoes from Vietnam destined for the US market.
In 2014, Nike contracted 150 factories in 14 countries to produce more than 365 million pairs of shoes, according to IGLHR and Matt Powell, sports industry analyst at the NPD Group. Vietnamese workers made 43 percent of those shoes; Chinese workers made 28 percent; and Indonesians made 25 percent. Not one pair was made in the United States.
The Student Debt Sentence: The British Election
British PM David Cameron confounds polls to win second term
British prime minister David Cameron has confounded pollsters and pundits by winning a sensational second five-year term in office for his Conservative party.
This time Cameron looks set to be free from the constraints of coalition with the centrist Liberal Democrats. The Lib Dems, Cameron’s partners in office since 2010, were almost wiped out, and their leader, deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, resigned on Friday morning.
Cameron’s victory in Thursday’s general election obliterated opposition leader Ed Miliband’s hopes of eking out a small win for Labour. Miliband also resigned in the wake of the defeat.
But it came at the price for the Tories of stunning success for the separatist Scottish National party (SNP) north of the border.
At the time of writing, with almost all 650 seats declared, the Conservatives had 325, Labour 229, the SNP 56 and the Liberal Democrats eight. In practice 323 Members of Parliament is the number needed to form a majority government. ...
Ukip, the rightwing populist party that favours British withdrawal from the European Union, won 4 million votes but only a single seat, due to the vagaries of Britain’s electoral system, built for two large parties and now creaking under the weight of many smaller ones. Its leader, Nigel Farage, long a member of the European parliament in Strasbourg but desperate to gain a platform at Westminster, failed to win his seat and resigned as party leader.
The Evening Greens
Obama's Proposed Rule Could Give Away Public-Land Coal for Free
The federal plan to fix loopholes that allow coal companies to skimp on royalties might create a sinkhole instead, critics say.
Recently proposed federal rules on mining royalties, intended to close loopholes that subsidize exports of coal mined from public lands, may instead end up giving away the coal to the industry for free, according to an environmentalist think tank.
Cut-rate royalties have persistently shortchanged the public, according to critics, when vast expanses of public land are leased by the government to coal mining companies. But this newly disclosed flaw in the Obama administration’s plan to fix the problem means that its solution might backfire, eliminating royalties completely in some circumstances.
Royalty payments are supposed to be 12.5 percent of gross proceeds from the sale of the coal, minus deductions for some transport and other costs. Because of loopholes, mining companies have been paying less than that for years. Even so, the payments rake in about $1 billion a year.
Public comments filed by Tom Sanzillo of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, an environmental advocacy group, described how the proposal could reduce royalties to zero. As long as coal prices remain so low, the deductions allowed by the proposal would make export sales worthless on paper, and the royalties would vanish like disappearing red ink.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has been without a permanent boss for 214 days
President Barack Obama has blown past the legal deadline to name a permanent boss for the agency that oversees the safety of the nation’s oil trains and fossil-fuel pipelines — while potentially life-or-death regulations continue to sit in limbo.
It’s part of a pattern for the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, where an internal structure that gives deference to industry has helped stymie safety initiatives for years, even as pipeline accidents have caused more than 170 deaths, 670 injuries and $5 billion in property damage during the past decade. Critics say the agency is in dire need of an overhaul — and want Obama to appoint a leader who’s willing to carry one out. ...
The agency has been without a permanent boss for 214 days as of Wednesday, four days longer than federal law says an acting chief can serve unless the president has nominated a replacement. Before that, PHMSA spent nearly five years helmed by a former industry lawyer who did little to erase the agency’s reputation for laxness. A growing number of fellow Democrats say Obama just needs to pick somebody — and soon, since the clock is ticking down on his administration’s opportunity to make wholesale changes.
Bow down to your Broccoli - James Inhofe welcomes our new Vegetable Overlords...
As Carbon Pollution Hits Record Level, Senator James Inhofe Says Climate Change Is Greening the Planet
Scientists may have recorded another unsettling milestone in the buildup of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere, but leave it to Oklahoma senator — and snowball aficionado — James Inhofe to find the bright side.
"People don't realize you can't grow things without CO2," Inhofe, the Republican chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said on the chamber's floor Wednesday. "CO2 is a fertilizer. It's something you can't do without. No one ever talks about the benefits that people are inducing from that as a fertilizer." That buildup has led "to a greening of the planet and contributed to increasing agricultural productivity," he said.
David Suzuki: Alberta finally shifted left in these elections. But can it go green?
Albertans have convincingly thrown their support behind provincial NDP leader Rachel Notley for several reasons. One was her desire to change the status quo for the benefit of ordinary people. Another was that she presented a complete economic vision that was worth supporting. While government leaders in the past have insisted the only way for Alberta to remain economically stable is through oil and gas investment, the NDP expressed a more confident belief that Albertans have the ingenuity, skills and workforce to build a more diversified economy that can shield the province from the volatile boom-and-bust cycle of the resource markets. ...
Albertans woke up to the reality they were left with crumbling infrastructure, not enough schools and a healthcare system that was broken. With the lowest corporate tax rates in Canada and little money put aside for prosperity and contingency, Alberta has fallen behind other oil-rich jurisdictions like Norway, which has used its trillion-dollar, resource-generated sovereign wealth fund to remain prosperous in the face of falling oil prices. ... On top of the government’s failure to reinvest revenue into the province, Albertans have faced an increasingly tarnished global reputation as little has been done to protect the environment and promote investor confidence in the notoriously polluting oilsands operations. The unchecked growth of emissions from the oilsands is the single biggest reason why Canada is unlikely to meet its international climate commitments. ...
Rachel Notley and the Alberta NDP have taken the first steps toward change in a province that was thought to be unwaveringly conservative until a month ago. They have shown confidence in the creativity and ingenuity of the province’s people. They have rejected the steamroller approach to resource development in favor of collaboration. Now comes the real test of the province’s new leadership. Will the NDP commit to decisions that will strengthen Alberta’s place in the world’s clean energy economy, clean its air and protect its environment?
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Congressmen Blame Drugs, Gay Marriage, Welfare, and Immigrants for Unrest in Baltimore
Hat tip, Big Al:
Council on Foreign Relations’ Grand Strategy: China Must Be Defeated, The TPP Is Essential to Undermining China
Congressional Research Service on being transgender in the military
A Little Night Music
Sammy Myers - My Love Is Here To Stay
Sammy Myers - Rhythm With Me
Sammy Myers - Sleeping In The Ground/My Love Is Here To Stay
Sammy Myers (with Elmore James) - Little Girl
Sammy Myers - Sad and Lonesome Day
Sam Myers - You Don't Have To Go
Sam Myers - Ninety Nine
Anson Funderburgh & Sam Myers - Changing Neighborhoods
Sam Myers - Gold Tail Bird
Sam Myers - Coming From The Old School
Anson Funderburgh Feat. Sam Myers - Come On
Sam Myers - Let You Slowly Bring Me Down
Anson Funderburgh and Sam Myers - Look On Yonders Wall
Sam Myers - Money is my Downfall
Sam Myers w/Anson Funderburgh - Monkey Around
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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