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 is provided by guest deejay, Keith930 and features folk-blues-rockabilly musician Doc Watson. Thanks to Keith for sitting in. Enjoy!
Doc Watson - Deep River Blues
"Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger."
-- Abbie Hoffman
News and Opinion
[Editor's note: Hey everybody. Hope your evening is going well. Joe's on vacation so we're bringing the What's Happenin' news section into Evening Blues this week, with perhaps a few changes/additions. -- joanneleon]
Lawmakers say obstacles limited oversight of NSA’s telephone surveillance program
The administration argued Friday that lawmakers were fully informed of the surveillance program and voted to keep it in place as recently as 2011. Officials say they have taken unusual steps to make information available to Congress, and committee leaders say they have carefully examined the National Security Agency’s data collection.
[...]
Yet some other members of the intelligence and judiciary committees paint a different picture.
They describe regular classified briefings in which intelligence officials would not volunteer details if questions were not asked with absolute precision.
[...]
Similar concerns have come from some Republicans, including Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, a key author of the law authorizing the bulk data surveillance who has in recent weeks become a critic. He said classified briefings for lawmakers were a “rope-a-dope operation” designed to silence “those who are on the trail of something that isn’t right” because rules restrict their ability to speak with other members and the public.
[...
Agency officials, meantime, aggressively court the committee, giving lawmakers a sense of being insiders in a clandestine world and at times treating them to a real-life version of the Spy Museum, former members said.
[Emphasis added]
And some of that article is probably based on what Rep. Amash said on Twitter. The reason that I'm calling attention to the story and these statements is that they are coming from Republicans who are calling out leaders in their own party. The Republicans control the House Intelligence Committee. That makes the statements much more surprising and relevant, IMHO.
Along the same lines, I'd like to include this TechDirt article again, by Jennifer Hoelzer, Sen. Wyden's former deputy chief of staff, on the issue of surveillance, because this was a really important piece.
Jennifer Hoelzer's Insider's View Of The Administration's Response To NSA Surveillance Leaks
And, as I explained in an interview with Brian Beutler earlier this summer, that is just a fraction of the ways the Obama Administration and the Intelligence Communities ignored and even thwarted our attempts to consult the public on these surveillance programs before they were reauthorized. In fact, after the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in which Wyden attempted to close the FAA's Section 702 loophole, which another important Techdirt post this week explains, "gives the NSA 'authority' to run searches on Americans without any kind of warrant," I -- as Wyden’s spokesperson -- was specifically barred from explaining the Senator's opposition to the legislation to the reporters. In fact, the exact response I was allowed to give reporters was:
"We've been told by Senator Feinstein's staff that under the SSCI's Committee Rule 9.3, members and staff are prohibited from discussing the markup or describing the contents of the bill until the official committee report is released. The fact that they've already put out a press release does not lift this prohibition."
[...]
I think it's hard for the American people to trust the President when his administration has repeatedly gone out of its way to silence critics and -- again -- treat oversight as a threat on par with al Qaeda. As another great Techdirt post this week -- US Releases Redacted Document Twice... With Different Redactions -- illustrates, many of the Intelligence Community's classification decisions seem to be based more on a desire to avoid criticism than clear national security interests. And as Senator Wyden said back in 2007, when then CIA Director Hayden (yes, the same guy who thinks we're all losers who can't get laid) attempted to undermine oversight over his agency by launching an investigation into the CIA's inspector general, "people who know that they're doing the right thing aren't afraid of oversight."
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In his book, Secrecy: The American Experience, former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan included a quote from a 1960 report issued by the House Committee on Operations which I believe provides a far better response than anything I could write on my own:
Secrecy -- the first refuge of incompetents -- must be at a bare minimum in a democratic society for a fully informed public is the basis of self government. Those elected or appointed to positions of executive authority must recognize that government, in a democracy, cannot be wiser than its people.
Show us the dishes.
THE N.S.A.’S DIRTY DISHES: OBAMA’S PRESS CONFERENCE
And, he added a little later, “probably what’s a fair criticism is my assumption that if we had checks and balances from the courts and Congress, that that traditional system of checks and balances would be enough to give people assurance that these programs were run properly. You know, that assumption I think proved to be undermined by what happened after the leaks.” Did he really assume that: that the public would think that if all three branches of government were on top of it, there could be no worry for civil liberties? Perhaps what Snowden did was to remind Obama that invisible checks and balances are not quite what the Founders had in mind. As it turned out, Obama said, “I think people have questions about this program.” We do. So show us the dishes; we’ll be able to tell if they’re dirty.
How We Lost Yemen
The United States used the Pakistan playbook on Yemen's terrorists. It didn't work.
All this raises a rather simple question: Why? Why, if the U.S. counterterrorism approach is working in Yemen, as Barack Obama's administration claims, is AQAP still growing? Why, after nearly four years of bombing raids, is the group capable of putting together the type of plot that leads to the United States shuttering embassies and missions from North Africa to the Persian Gulf?
The answer is simple, if rather disheartening: Faulty assumptions and a mistaken focus paired with a resilient, adaptive enemy have created a serious problem for the United States.
[...]
In Afghanistan and Pakistan, al Qaeda was largely a group of Arabs in non-Arab countries. In Yemen, al Qaeda is made up mostly of Yemenis living in Yemen.
[...]
The United States can target and kill someone as a terrorist, only to have Yemenis take up arms to defend him as a tribesman. In time, many of these men are drawn to al Qaeda not out of any shared sense of ideology, but rather out of a desire to get revenge on the country that killed their fellow tribesman.
How to Read Afghanistan
“The Taliban are over there — not far away,” the old man says in Pashto. “I would like to tell [the Americans] a story. In our country, we grow wheat and we have ants. There is no way we can stop the little ants from stealing the wheat. There are so many little ants it is almost impossible to stop them. I’ve told this story to help the Americans understand the situation in Afghanistan.”
The American sergeant, waiting, shifts uneasily. “He’s giving many examples,” the translator finally says. “The main point is that if you want to get the [Taliban] they are behind this road, behind this mountain.”
The video is about the perils of inaccurate translation, and indeed, the translator fails mightily. But it’s worth asking what the sergeant would have made of the story had it reached him. The Afghan is saying something crucial about the inseparability of insurgents from everyone else, and about the dangers of fighting in the weeds, where bullets can strike the wrong targets, like pesticides that kill the very crops they’re designed to protect. The story might not supply coordinates for an insurgent safe house, but it certainly helps an attentive listener understand what the world looks like to a villager in a contested part of the country
GOOD intelligence requires good reading; you can’t have one without the other. Paula Loyd understood this. Years earlier, in her anthropology honors thesis at Wellesley, she described how marginalized people — servants, slaves, women in male-dominated societies — quietly pushed back against the dominant social order. Drawing on the work of the Yale political scientist James C. Scott, she wrote that they tended to be “cautious about expressing their resistance openly when they perceive the power of the dominant group to be very strong.” But “when they are among their own, the peasants carry on an entirely different dialogue.” In such situations, she observed, people talk in “jokes, metaphors, folk tales, and codes,” artfully conveying meaning while preserving maximum deniability.
Prosecutors and F.B.I. Examine JPMorgan Over Losses
The employees — Javier Martin-Artajo, a manager who oversaw the trading strategy, and Julien Grout, a low-level trader in London — could face charges of falsifying bank records. A third trader, Bruno Iksil, is cooperating with the government. Some authorities have discussed having Mr. Iksil agree to a lesser charge, two people briefed on the matter said, though others have suggested that he escape all criminal liability.
Stiglitz.
The Wrong Lesson From Detroit’s Bankruptcy
When I was growing up in Gary, Ind., nearly a quarter of American workers were employed in the manufacturing sector. There were plenty of jobs at the time that paid well enough for a single breadwinner, working one job, to fulfill the American dream for his family of four. He could earn a living on the sweat of his brow, afford to send his children to college and even see them rise to the professional class.
Cities like Detroit and Gary thrived on that industry, not just in terms of the wealth that it produced but also in terms of strong communities, healthy tax bases and good infrastructure. From the stable foundation of Gary’s excellent public schools, influenced by the ideas of the progressive reformer John Dewey, I went on to Amherst College and then to M.I.T. for graduate school.
[...]
At one level, one might shrug: companies die every day; new ones are born. That is part of the dynamics of capitalism. So, too, for cities. Maybe Detroit and cities like it are just in the wrong location for the goods and services that 21st-century America demands.
But such a diagnosis would be wrong, and it’s extremely important to recognize that Detroit’s demise is not simply an inevitable outcome of the market.
U.S. Mortgage Group Forced to Correct Initiative Stats
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, in the document sent today, asked members of the administration’s Mortgage Fraud Working Group to correct and update any public materials related to the results released in October of a year-long law enforcement initiative targeting fraud schemes aimed at vulnerable homeowners.
The FBI restated the number of people criminally charged to 107 from 530. Agencies were asked to correct victims’ total losses to $95 million from an estimated $1 billion, and the number of victims found to 17,185 from more than 73,000.
“This targeted approach resulted in the successful filing of many criminal and civil cases around the country, but regrettably, the statistics reported in October included cases that fell outside the specific parameters of the initiative,” the FBI, which co-chairs the mortgage group, said in the memo.
Egypt Tensions Soar as Army Encircles Pro-Morsi Sit-InsEgypt is again on the verge of political violence as military vows to crush encampments and Muslim Brotherhood calls for new marches
The streets of Cairo were again on edge Monday as dawn broke with expectations that encampments held by supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi would face the wrath of the military council and its chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has repeatedly called for the sit-ins to be cleared.
Though clashes were not yet underway and the sit-ins remained peaceful, reports indicate that the military was following through with plans to circle the camps and was setting up check points in an effort to cut of supplies moving into the areas where they are being held.
However, the Associated Press reports the military's plan to fully "disperse" the camps has been postponed following details of the plan being leaked to the press:
The Evening Greens
By JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr., InsideClimate News
Military Report: America Has 'Misguided' Fixation With Domestic Drilling
Despite the steady supplies provided by the current U.S. drilling boom, "the increased domestic production of oil and natural gas is not a panacea for the country's energy security dilemma," they say.
And in blunt language, they criticize American policymakers and legislators for refusing to accept the "robust" scientific evidence that emissions of carbon dioxide are already causing harmful global warming, and for refusing to take actions that, if taken swiftly, could ward off its worst effects.
"Political leaders, including many in the United States, refuse to accept short-term costs to address long-term dangers even though the future costs of responding to disasters after they occur will be far greater," said their report, published this month.
by ERIKA THORKELSON, DeSmog Canada
Rail Company Declares Bankruptcy after Lac-Megantic Derailment">Rail Company Declares Bankruptcy after Lac-Megantic Derailment
The Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway Company filed for credit protection simultaneously in the US and Canada, arguing that the cost of the cleanup has outstripped their ability to pay.
[...]
Credit protection law in both the US and Canada ranks debt as secured and unsecured and disburses funds in that order.
Clement says there is a special provision in US law that could give “elevated priority” to the families of the victims, so that they will get paid just after the secured creditors.
He said that the families may choose to settle out of court rather than waste limited funds on litigation.
by MICHAEL WINES, New York Times
Dolphin Deaths Off East Coast Worry Federal Wildlife Officials
At least 124 of the mammals have washed onto beaches since July, all of them dead or dying, a spokeswoman for the National Marine Fisheries Service said in a conference call with journalists. In July alone, 89 dolphins were beached, seven times the usual number.
At the same time (article dated July 24), this seismic testing will only add to the count of dead and dying dolphins. It will be interesting to follow up on this and see how Secretary Jewell handles it.
by JUSTINE SULLIVAN, Oceana (Protecting the World's Oceans)
Congressman Pallone Challenges Secretary of Interior on Seismic Testing in Committee Hearing
In a House Natural Resources Committee meeting last week, Congressman Frank Pallone of New Jersey expressed his strong opposition to proposed seismic airgun testing along the Atlantic coast, and even delivered a question on seismic testing from Oceana directly to Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell. Pallone, a senior member of the committee, stated that because he is “staunchly opposed to drilling in the Atlantic,” he is against the proposed seismic airgun testing for oil and gas in the region. Seismic airgun testing, which uses dynamite-like blasts of compressed air to search for fossil fuels under the ocean floor, is the first step towards offshore drilling for oil and gas. A proposed plan for seismic airgun testing will span the Atlantic Ocean from Delaware to Florida.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
A Little Night Music
Doc Watson - Black Mountain Rag
Doc Watson - Blues Stay Away From Me
Doc Watson - Make Me a Pallet On Your Floor
Doc Watson - Last Thing On My Mind
Doc Watson - Moody River
Doc Watson - House Of The Rising Sun
Doc Watson - Steel Guitar Rag
The Three Pickers (Earl Scruggs, Ricky Skaggs and Doc Watson)
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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