Welcome! "The Evening Blues" is a casual community diary (published Monday - Friday, 8:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Hey! Good Evening!
Tonight's music features boogie woogie piano player Albert Ammons. Enjoy!
Albert Ammons + Pete Johnson - Boogie Woogie Dream
“Obama has carried out more than five times as many covert drone strikes as George Bush. So what’s behind the president’s righteous kill spree? Could it be that he’s just gunning for another Nobel Peace Prize?”
-- Stephen Colbert
News and Opinion
Obama victory infuriates Pakistani drone victims
The roars celebrating the re-election of U.S. President Barack Obama on television give Mohammad Rehman Khan a searing headache, as years of grief and anger come rushing back.
The 28-year-old Pakistani accuses the president of robbing him of his father, three brothers and a nephew, all killed in a U.S. drone aircraft attack a month after Obama first took office.
"The same person who attacked my home has gotten re-elected," he told Reuters in the capital, Islamabad, where he fled after the attack on his village in South Waziristan, one of several ethnic Pashtun tribal areas on the Afghan border.
"Since yesterday, the pressure on my brain has increased. I remember all of the pain again."
In his re-election campaign, Obama gave no indication he would halt or alter the drone program, which he embraced in his first term to kill al Qaeda and Taliban militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan without risking American lives.
Pakistan's American-Flag Makers in High Demand after Obama Win - More Obama means more drones and more protests, says Pakistani flag business owner
American flag makers in Pakistan are likely to benefit from US President Barack Obama's reelection this year, as mass protests over Obama's drone policy are likely to increase along with the demand for American flags to burn, Agence-France Presse reported Wednesday.
Nadeem Shah, the owner of a flag business in Rawalpindi, the twin city of the capital Islamabad, told AFP, that he expected more drone strikes and more protests.
"Of course Obama has become stronger now and he will push his policies harder and there will be more drone strikes because he himself is stronger now," says Shah.
"When the drone strikes increase the protests against these strikes will also increase in Pakistan and it can have an impact on the flags and poster business."
Did Obama Bomb Yemen Hours After Winning Reelection?
Antiwar.com:
Not even a full day had passed before newly reelected President Obama ordered another drone strike in Yemen:
A U.S. drone strike targeted a group of al-Qaida militants on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sanaa on Wednesday night, killing at least three terrorists, government officials said.
Huffpo
"All signs (after dark, suspicions of locals, target) point to Sanhan strike being a US drone," Yemen-based freelance journalist Adam Baron wrote on Twitter.
Several other analysts concurred.
A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. If it were a American strike, of course, it would have to have been authorized by Obama.
4 More Drones! Robot Attacks Are on Deck for Obama’s Next Term
When Barack Obama took office, drone strikes were a once-in-a-while thing, with an attack every week or two. Now, they’re the centerpiece of a global U.S. counterterrorism campaign. Obama institutionalized the strikes to the point where he could hand off to the next president an efficient bureaucratic process for delivering death-by-robot practically on autopilot. Only now he’s the next president. Welcome to Obama’s second-term agenda for dealing with the world. As the Ramones sang: second verse, same as the first. ...
The strikes have spread from Pakistan to Yemen to Somalia. And now that Obama’s been reelected, expect them to spread to Mali, another country most Americans neither know nor understand. The northern part of the North African country has fallen into militant hands. U.S.-aligned forces are currently plotting to take it back. The coming arrival of Army Gen. David Rodriguez, the former day-to-day commander of the Afghanistan war, as leader of U.S. forces in Africa is a signal that Obama wants someone experienced at managing protracted wars on a continent where large troop footprints aren’t available. Instead, Rodriguez will have to track, check and erode the spread of al-Qaida in northern and eastern Africa using drones and commando forces, available from his expanding bases in places like Djibouti. If all of this seems routine, that’s the point.
The Obama administration is doing something similar with cyber weaponry. It’s trying to make them a normal part of everyday conflict. ... All this might seem aggressive for a president who liked to say on the campaign trail that “the tide of war is receding.” But the tide of war never actually goes out. And the wicked-hard problems facing Obama’s national security team may only be getting under way.
Bradley Manning Offers to Plead Guilty to WikiLeaks Charges if Gov’t Drops Espionage, Enemy Case
Despite Massive Opposition, Greece Passes New Austerity Measures
Years and months of anti-austerity protests in Greece that culminated in a two-day national strike that saw over a hundred thousand people in the streets of Athens on Wednesday was not enough to prevent the ruling coalition government—late in the night—of passing the most recent, and critics say most severe, package of austerity measures for the economically shattered nation.
As protesters battled against riot police outside, prime minister Antonis Samaras announced that a deal was struck following hours of tense negotiations.
Family Research Council calls for ‘civil disobedience’ to block same sex marriages
The senior vice president of the Family Research Council (FRC) said on Wednesday that the civil disobedience may be necessary to prevent same sex marraiges after voters in several states approved marriage equality.
In an special broadcast titled “Election 2012: Aftermath & Aftershocks,” FRC president Tony Perkins told Senior Vice President Tom McClusky that LGBT marriage rights were still “morally wrong” even though pro marriage eqaulity measures passed in Maine, Maryland and Washington. Voters in Minnesota also defeated a proposed amendment to codify marriage discrimination in the state’s constitution.
“The people can vote on it — it’s the first time we’ve seen that [pass] — courts can rule on it, but I don’t think you can violate natural law and force Americans to recognize it as morally right,” Perkins explained.
“I think the term for a lot of things over the next four years, civil disobedience is going to come into play,” McClusky agreed.
Harry Reid Pledges To Fight 'Storms Overwhelming Our Country'
200,000 More in the Dark as Nor'easter Badgers a Besieged Region
Wednesday's nor'easter brought cold and darkness to the storm battered east, but spared them from any significant destruction.
As the storm blanketed the region with thick, wet snow, over 750,000 households from Connecticut to New Jersey remained without power—200,000 of which were new outages thanks to the freshly downed power lines and snapped trees.
"We lost power last week, just got it back for a day or two, and now we lost it again," John Monticello of Point Pleasant Beach, N.J. told the Associated Press. ... Though utility companies had prepared by adding extra crews ahead of the nor'easter, it was not enough to combat the additional damage.
Humans caused Great Barrier Reef collapse: study
The long-term collapse of the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia can be directly attributed to farming runoffs from European settlements, a study published Tuesday claimed.
The study, published in Tuesday’s edition of The Proceedings of the Royal Society B, is the first to connect soil and sediment filled with toxic chemicals from fertilizers and pesticides prior to the decades of climate-driven decline seen in the Great Barrier Reef, one of the largest living structures on the planet.
The study finds that the effect of this pollution basically stopped an important type of fast-growing coral, called Acropra, from growing in damaged areas, preventing the reef from repairing itself after major disturbances like storms or damage by boats dragging anchors.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
Obama 'surrogate' Orsag "Pimping Social Security cuts again"
Seattle Mayor McGinn takes on Big Coal & Global Warming + Burlington Scoping draws big crowd
Environmentalists' Responses to the Reelection of President Obama
Donations for Occupy Sandy page, donations are now tax deductable
A Little Night Music
Albert Ammons - Boogie Woogie Stomp
Albert Ammons - Swanee River Boogie
Albert Ammons - Chicago In Mind
Sister Rosetta Tharpe & Albert Ammons - That's All
Albert Ammons & His Rhythm Kings - The Breaks
Sister Rosetta Tharpe with Albert Ammons - Rock Me
Albert Ammons & Pete Johnson - Boogie Woogie (Yancey Special)
Lena Horne, Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson
Gene Ammons & Albert Ammons - S.P. Blues
Albert Ammons and His Rhythm Kings - Early Mornin' Blues
Albert Ammons and His Rhythm Kings - Mile-Or-No-Bird Rag
Oscar's Chicago Swingers w/ Sam Theard and Albert - Rubbin' on the Darned Old Thing
Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons - Cuttin' the Boogie/Foot Pedal Boogie
Albert Ammons + Sippie Wallace - Buzz Me
Albert Ammons - Deep in the heart of Texas Boogie
Oscar's Chicago Swingers w/Sam Theard, Albert Ammons - I Wonder Who's Been Boogin' My Woogie Now
Albert Ammons and his Rhythm Kings - Sweet Patooty Boogie
Jools Holland - Albert Ammons' Suitcase
Remember when progressive debate was about our values and not about a "progressive" candidate? Remember when progressive websites championed progressive values and didn't tell progressives to shut up about values so that "progressive" candidates can get elected?
Come to where the debate is not constrained by oaths of fealty to persons or parties.
Come to where the pie is served in a variety of flavors.
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." ~ Noam Chomsky
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