Welcome! "The Evening Blues" is a casual community diary (published Monday - Friday, 7:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Hey! Good Evening!
Tonight's music starts with Ry Cooder and “No Banker left behind”. We thought it bad enough when this recording came out a few years back. Now we know there are even greater depths to the Banksters calumny. Maybe we’ll soon be hearing the Libor Lament. But, before that, due out on August 21 is Ry’s Election Special that is designed to send a message to the
“'deacons in the High Church of the Next Dollar”.
Photos From Joe on the Road
Here is a note from joe, received yesterday and a lot of gorgeous photos:
hi, i'm in kallispell, montana. just got in from glacier national park. what an awesome place! it is better than my childhood memories of it.
glacier national park is one of the most awesome places in america. there is a road, going to the sun road, that runs through the middle of the park that is pound-for-pound the most beautiful drive in america. you're surrounded by snow (and some glacier) capped peaks as you drive through.
the lake and rivers that run through the park are a beautiful shade of blue-green and there are lots of flowers that i can't identify, which i'll have to look up later.
i saw a number of mountain sheep, big horn sheep, elk, bear, prairie dogs, hawks and lots of smaller birds.
if folks plan to visit the park, though, do it before 2030 because global warming is causing the glaciers to recede and the official estimate is that they will all be gone by 2030. there were hundreds of glaciers back in the 1850's and the park now has 26. i guess that the bright side of it is that the waterfalls down the sides of the mountains are more spectacular for the additional melt every year, but after that glacial water is gone, there will be considerable downstream effects as the area that used to be fed by that glacial melt water gets considerably drier.
macdonald lake, glacier national park (by joe shikspack, 7/9/12)
macdonald lake, glacier national park (by joe shikspack, 7/9/12)
roadside sheep (by joe shikspack, 7/9/12)
mountain goats (by joe shikspack, 7/9/12)
our dinner guest (by joe shikspack, 7/9/12)
our dinner guest (by joe shikspack, 7/9/12)
jackson glacier, glacier national park (by joe shikspack, 7/9/12)
these things are everywhere in glacier (by joe shikspack, 7/9/12)
unidentified really cool flower (by joe shikspack, 7/9/12)
glacier national park (by joe shikspack, 7/9/12)
glacier national park (by joe shikspack, 7/9/12)
[ Editor's Note: joanneleon and KBO will be holding down the Evening Blues fort while joe shikspack is on his roadtrip vacation. When we can, we'll post photos and messages that he sends in and put them in this section of the diary. He'll be checking in regularly when he has connectivity, so feel free to leave him some greetings in the comments. Also, we would love to have your help with ideas for Evening Blues topics while he is gone, so feel free to lend your Blues and Roots music expertise and ideas in the comments! ]
News
Rep. John Lewis, Civil Rights Icon, on the Struggle to Win–and Now Protect–Voting Rights in U.S.
President Obama Will Call for One-Year Extension of Tax Cuts Up to $250,000 David Dayen, FDL
[...] Perhaps the more important story were the remarks from Obama campaign advisor Robert Gibbs yesterday, where he pronounced the President “100% committed” to letting the tax cuts expire above $250,000. Given Republican unwillingness to split the tax cuts, that can only mean one thing – a full expiration of all the tax cuts.[...]
...
Barclays’ first-mover disadvantage Felix Salmon, Reuters
Barclays is to Liebor as Goldman is to structuring dodgy synthetic CDOs: not the worst offender, necessarily, but the first to hit the headlines....
...
Barclays Just the First Shoe to Drop in Libor Scandal David Dayen, FDL
To anyone left that still thinks the banking system is based on sound fundamentals, even to them the scales must fall from their eyes. It’s based on nothing but quicksand and greed.
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Scandal of scandals: Barclays corruption probe digs up new dirt Robert Reich
ust when you thought Wall Street couldn’t sink any lower – when its myriad abuses of public trust have already spread a miasma of cynicism over the entire economic system, giving birth to Tea Partiers and Occupiers and all manner of conspiracy theories; when its excesses have already wrought havoc with the lives of millions of Americans, causing taxpayers to shell out billions (of which only a portion has been repaid) even as its top executives are back to making more money than ever; when its vast political power (via campaign contributions) has already eviscerated much of the Dodd-Frank law that was supposed to rein it in, including the so-called “Volker” Rule that was sold as a milder version of the old Glass-Steagall Act that used to separate investment from commercial banking – yes, just when you thought the Street had hit bottom, an even deeper level of public-be-damned greed and corruption is revealed.
Sit down and hold on to your chair....
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Norway government ends oil and gas strike
Production was due to be shut down from Tuesday with companies set to lock out workers in a dispute over pensions.
"I had to make this decision to protect Norway's vital interests," Labour Minister Hanne Bjurstroem told Reuters.
She was speaking after a last-ditch effort was made to end the row between energy companies and trade unions.
The intervention means that the National Wages Board will facilitate "forced abritration" to end the row over retirement rights. It is unclear how long this process will take.
It means there will be no lockout of the 6,500 offshore energy workers and they will carry on working as normal.
"It wasn't an easy choice, but I had to do it," the labour minister said.
...
How To Think Jul 9, 2012 By Chris Hedges
Cultures that endure carve out a protected space for those who question and challenge national myths. Artists, writers, poets, activists, journalists, philosophers, dancers, musicians, actors, directors and renegades must be tolerated if a culture is to be pulled back from disaster. Members of this intellectual and artistic class, who are usually not welcome in the stultifying halls of academia where mediocrity is triumphant, serve as prophets. They are dismissed, or labeled by the power elites as subversive, because they do not embrace collective self-worship. They force us to confront unexamined assumptions, ones that, if not challenged, lead to destruction. They expose the ruling elites as hollow and corrupt. They articulate the senselessness of a system built on the ideology of endless growth, ceaseless exploitation and constant expansion. They warn us about the poison of careerism and the futility of the search for happiness in the accumulation of wealth. They make us face ourselves, from the bitter reality of slavery and Jim Crow to the genocidal slaughter of Native Americans to the repression of working-class movements to the atrocities carried out in imperial wars to the assault on the ecosystem. They make us unsure of our virtue. They challenge the easy clichés we use to describe the nation—the land of the free, the greatest country on earth, the beacon of liberty—to expose our darkness, crimes and ignorance. They offer the possibility of a life of meaning and the capacity for transformation.
{snip}
And here is the dilemma we face as a civilization. We march collectively toward self-annihilation. Corporate capitalism, if left unchecked, will kill us. Yet we refuse, because we cannot think and no longer listen to those who do think, to see what is about to happen to us. We have created entertaining mechanisms to obscure and silence the harsh truths, from climate change to the collapse of globalization to our enslavement to corporate power, that will mean our self-destruction. If we can do nothing else we must, even as individuals, nurture the private dialogue and the solitude that make thought possible. It is better to be an outcast, a stranger in one’s own country, than an outcast from one’s self. It is better to see what is about to befall us and to resist than to retreat into the fantasies embraced by a nation of the blind.
Blog Posts of Interest
What's Happenin'? 07.10.12 on DailyKos by Lady Libertine
"Welcome to the rest of our lives" on DailyKos by A Siegel
Military Wives Turn Their Backs To Victims of Sexual Assault on DailyKos by angelajean
NYPD’s Counterterrorism Strengths: Bigfooting, Entrapping, and Overselling by emptywheel
A Little Night Music
More from Ry featured in the movie Crossroads is the
Feelin Bad Blues
And , from 1992 with John Lee Hooker we have:
Here’s
How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live
followed by
Dark was the Night
and wrapping it up for tonight Ry’s back with John Lee Hooker and
Crawlin’ King Snake
Coming soon... a new cooperative site with content and discussion that focuses on the real issues of the day.
More signal, less noise.
"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."
~ Winston Churchill
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