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 soul singer Arthur Conley. Enjoy!
Arthur Conley - Sweet Soul Music
“Choose well. Your choice is brief, and yet endless.”
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
News and Opinion
Top U.S. General in Afghanistan Provides ‘Options’ for Slowing Troop Withdrawal
The four-star general in charge of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan told senators today that he has given the Pentagon different options for slowing the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
There are now roughly 13,000 international troops in Afghanistan, 9,800 of them Americans, Campbell said. President Obama’s current plan would have reduced that to 5,500 soldiers, mostly centered in Kabul, by the end of this year. Army Gen. Cambell said that the Afghan government under its new president, Ashraf Ghani, did not want the U.S. to pull back so quickly.
Senators were concerned by the example of Iraq’s descent into war with the Islamic State, repeatedly asking Campbell if an American withdrawal from Afghanistan would lead to a similar situation.
Campbell insisted that Afghanistan would not disintegrate once Americans left, citing Afghan national pride and his belief that “the Afghan security forces are not going to let Afghanistan go in the way of Iraq.” The U.S. has spent $65 billion to date training Afghanistan’s security forces, but attrition remains a problem, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan.
While combat operations in Afghanistan formally ended in December, the administration is continuing airstrikes and special operations there, as well as training and assistance to Afghan forces. Tens of thousands of U.S. military contractors also remain in the country.
U.S. Is Escalating a Secretive War in Afghanistan
As an October chill fell on the mountain passes that separate the militant havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a small team of Afghan intelligence commandos and American Special Operations forces descended on a village where they believed a leader of Al Qaeda was hiding.
That night the Afghans and Americans got their man, Abu Bara al-Kuwaiti. They also came away with what officials from both countries say was an even bigger prize: a laptop computer and files detailing Qaeda operations on both sides of the border.
American military officials said the intelligence seized in the raid was possibly as significant as the information found in the computer and documents of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, after members of the Navy SEALs killed him in 2011.
In the months since, the trove of intelligence has helped fuel a significant increase in night raids by American Special Operations forces and Afghan intelligence commandos, Afghan and American officials said.
The spike in raids is at odds with policy declarations in Washington, where the Obama administration has deemed the American role in the war essentially over. But the increase reflects the reality in Afghanistan, where fierce fighting in the past year killed record numbers of Afghan soldiers, police officers and civilians.
American and Afghan officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing operations that are largely classified, said that American forces were playing direct combat roles in many of the raids and were not simply going along as advisers.
Obama’s War Authorization Request Runs Into a Brick Wall
Unveiling a draft authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) against ISIS on Wednesday, President Obama blundered pretty dramatically, turning what many expected would be an easy approval intoa huge obstacle.
During his speech on the matter, President Obama claimed the AUMF was severely limited, and almost immediately lost the support of the hawkish leadership in Congress, particularly in the Senate, which want a hugely more bellicose war [resolution].
The bigger problem is that Obama was lying in the speech, and the White House press secretary tried to get the hawks back on board by admitting as much, saying the AUMF was deliberately vaguely worded to allow the president to unilaterally escalate as much as he wants. ...
While some hawks might get back on board with the AUMF knowing the bill allows limitless escalation, many are likely to continue to object to it, wanting officials to be more overt about their hostile intentions for the region.
New Islamic State Publication Touts Progress in Clash of Civilizations
In a new issue of its magazine Dabiq, the Islamic State boasts of the progress it’s made in polarizing the world into two sharply opposing camps—supporters on one side, and on the other, the West and all those Muslims who do not accept its newly declared “Caliphate.”
“As the world progresses towards al-Malhamah al-Kubr (the “Great Battle”), the option to stand on the sidelines as a mere observer is being lost,” declares the cover story, titled “From Hypocrisy to Apostasy: The Extinction of the Grayzone.” The magazine also lauds “the withering of the grayzone,” and grimly warns Muslims in the West that they will soon be forced to make “one of two choices.”
The new issue includes an article purportedly written by British hostage John Cantlie, a defense of recent Islamic State killings carried out against those accused of “sexual deviance,” and a piece about two Japanese hostages executed last month. It also features graphic images of a decapitated head, and the badly burned body of Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh, who was captured and killed by the group’s members.
Such shocking and provocative attacks are a means of “dragging the masses into the battle,” the Islamic State explains in Dabiq, through actions meant to “inflame opposition” and “make the people enter into the battle … such that each individual will go to the side which he supports.”
University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole has noted this divide-and-conquer strategy draws less from traditional Islamic theology than from the practice of 20th-century European radicals who sought to “sharpen the contradictions” between various groups as a means of violently reshaping society.
"We’re All One": UNC Shooting Victim Yusor Abu-Salha’s StoryCorps Interview Months Before Death
Thousands attend funeral for Muslim students shot in Chapel Hill
On a soccer field lent for the occasion by North Carolina State University, thousands gathered for the funeral of three Muslim students killed in a brutal attack on Tuesday.
Deah Barakat, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha and her younger sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha were killed in the couple’s apartment in Chapel Hill in what family members have called an “execution-style” hate-crime. Barakat, 23, and Yusor, 21, were newlyweds. Razan was 19 years old.
That the three were beloved by the community is clear. At least 3,000 people attended a candlelit vigil on Wednesday night, while officials confirmed that 5,500 people were at the funeral Thursday afternoon. ...
Sameer Abdel-Khalek, a family friend of Barakat, spoke to the Guardian after the bodies had been laid to rest, and said the day had been a whirlwind of emotions, from feeling numb to bursting into tears.
He said that he felt “inspired” by the reaction and solidarity both of the Muslim community, and of the wider community.
“At the end of the day,” he said, “it shows the light that persists even in darkness. You can only gauge the darkness by the light; and this light has overtaken the darkness that has befallen us.”
New UN Security Council Resolution Seeks to Deprive Islamic State of Funding
The United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution on Thursday aimed at choking off funding for the Islamic State terror group by targeting the sale of oil and antiquities from territory it controls in Iraq and Syria and ransom payments for hostages it has taken.
The Islamic State — which is also known as ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh in Arabic — is already listed as an al Qaeda-affiliated group under previous UN sanction measures, though al Qaeda disavowed its ties to the group last year after an internal dispute. The new, Russian-authored resolution clarified bans pertaining to oil sales, funding, and the payment of ransoms to explicitly cite the Islamic State and the al Qaeda faction Jabhat al-Nusra. The resolution also included a binding prohibition on the sale of illicit artifacts from Syria, modeled on an existing ban in Iraq.
"This is a resolution that tries to squeeze, stress, and eliminate the financial support for terrorism, specifically for Daesh and Jabhat al-Nusra and all the people they are dealing with," Iraq's UN Ambassador Mohamed Ali Alhakim told reporters following the vote. ...
Negotiations over the resolution among the Security Council's five permanent members — elected members were only able to suggest small additions — reflected unity in opposition to the Islamic State, which has seized large portions of both Iraq and Syria in the past year. Last week, an American official close to the discussions said that the US team had "worked relatively constructively" with Russian diplomats, with whom they have otherwise sparred repeatedly over the Kremlin's support for Ukrainian separatist rebels and embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Binyamin Netanyahu in climbdown over prize judges
Israel’s prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been forced into an embarrassing climbdown after being ordered by the country’s attorney general to reinstate three judges he had removed from the prestigious Israel prize because of their leftwing political views.
In his capacity as acting education minister, Netanyahu had ordered that two judges on the literature prize and one on the film prize be removed, later claiming on his Facebook page that the prize panels were being dominated by “extremists” and “anti-Zionists”. Critics denounced his actions as a “purge”.
The fierce controversy, coming a month before 17 March elections when Netanyahu will seek a fourth term as prime minister, has dominated the media in recent days and taken on a political significance that has reached far beyond the prize itself – awarded annually to figures in the arts, sciences and for lifetime achievement.
Instead it has been read by critics as evidence of Netanyahu’s desire to silence any criticism of which he disapproves.
Netanyahu’s climbdown came after Israel’s attorney general Yehuda Weinstein wrote to Netanyahu’s office on Thursday night to demand he “reverse course” on his decision to exclude the judges, one of whom had signed a petition a decade ago supported academics and students who chose not to serve as soldiers in the occupied Palestinian territories.
In reply the prime minister’s office said it “respects the Attorney General’s directive to desist from dealing with the appointment of Israel prize judges, due to the upcoming elections”.
Netanyahu warned, however, that should he be re-elected in the elections he will seek to rewrite the rules for how judges for the prize will be selected.
Rachel Corrie's family loses wrongful death appeal in Israel's supreme court
Israel’s supreme court has rejected the appeal by the family of Rachel Corrie – the US activist who was crushed to death by a military bulldozer in Gaza 12 years ago – which had sought to hold Israel liable for her death.
The ruling, which followed a high-profile hearing before Israel’s top court last year, appears to bring to an end – in the Israeli courts at least – years of effort by Corrie’s family to hold the country’s military responsible for her death.
Instead, the court upheld the decision of a lower court, which invoked the “combat activities exception” that the Israeli military cannot be held responsible for damages in a war zone.
“Our family is disappointed but not surprised,” the Corrie family said in a statement released on Thursday. “Nevertheless, it is clear that this decision, affirming the August 2012 lower court finding, amounts to judicial sanction of immunity for Israeli military forces when they commit injustices and human rights violations.
“Despite the verdict, our family remains convinced we were correct in bringing this case forward,” the family said. “The day after Rachel was killed, Prime Minister Sharon promised President Bush a thorough, credible and transparent investigation. Clearly, that standard was not met.”
Putin tried to delay Ukraine ceasefire deal, EU summit told
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, sought to delay agreement on a Ukrainian ceasefire at talks in Minsk because he wanted pro-Russia separatists to capture the eastern railway hub of Debaltseve, an EU summit has been told.
Three of the four leaders at the talks in Minsk – the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, France’s president, François Hollande, and Ukraine’s embattled president, Petro Poroshenko – dashed to the Brussels summit directly from Belarus.
Briefing 26 other EU heads of government on the fraught negotiations that resulted in a truce supposed to start on Sunday, the Minsk participants painted a picture that failed to inspire confidence.
Witnesses to the discussion said all the EU leaders were sceptical about the success of the Minsk peace plan, not least because Putin had resisted pressure for a ceasefire. He hoped to delay the truce by 10 days, the summit heard, in order to force the surrender of up to 8,000 Ukrainian troops who are surrounded in Debaltseve by pro-Russia separatists.
Putin was said to have made it clear that Debaltseve had to fall. In public remarks following the deal, Putin also said the separatists had the Ukrainian forces encircled and that “of course, they expect [the Ukrainians] to lay down their arms and cease resistance”.
NYT Whites Out Ukraine’s Brown Shirts
In covering the Ukraine crisis, the New York Times continues its descent into becoming little more than a propaganda organ for the U.S. State Department and the Kiev regime, again refusing to acknowledge the role of neo-Nazi militias in the civil war against ethnic Russians in the east.
On Wednesday, the Times published a long article by Rick Lyman that presented the situation in the port city of Mariupol as if the advance by ethnic Russian rebels amounted to the arrival of barbarians at the gate while the inhabitants were being bravely defended by the forces of civilization. But then the article cites the key role in that defense played by the Azov battalion.
Though the article provides much color and detail – and quotes an Azov leader prominently – it leaves out one salient and well-known fact about the Azov battalion, that it is composed of neo-Nazis who display the Swastika, SS markings and other Nazi symbols.
But this inconvenient truth – that neo-Nazis have been central to Kiev’s “self-defense forces” from last February’s coup to the present – would presumably disrupt the desired propaganda message. So the New York Times just ignores it and refers to Azov as simply a “volunteer unit.”
What’s particularly egregious about this omission is that the connections between the Azov battalion and Nazism have been well-documented for months and even acknowledged by officials of the Kiev regime, who knowingly sent these and other extremists into the battle because they are the fiercest fighters. ...
Despite the newsworthiness of a U.S.-backed government dispatching neo-Nazi storm troopers to attack Ukrainian cities, the major U.S. news outlets have gone to extraordinary lengths to excuse this behavior, with the Washington Post publishing a rationalization that Azov’s use of the Swastika was merely “romantic.”
Hat tip Azazello for this must-read article:
Neoliberalism is our Frankenstein: Greece and Ukraine are the hot spots of a new war for supremacy
Europe’s confrontation with Greece, the West’s with Russia as the Ukraine crisis runs nearly out of control: Why is it more useful by the week to think of these together?
They are both very large, moments of history. There is this. They both reach critical moments this week, as if in concert. The outcomes in each case will be consequential for all of us.
As noted with alarm last week, most Americans have by now surrendered to a blitz of propaganda wherein Russia and its leadership are cast as Siberian beasts, accepting as truth tales the National Enquirer would be embarrassed to run. In Europe, Greeks and Spaniards show us up, indeed, as a supine, spiritless people incapable of response or any resistance to the onslaught. There is this, too.
At writing, Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s imaginative new finance minister, has just made his first formal effort to present European counterparts with new ideas to get foreign debts of €240 billion ($271 billion) off the books and the Greek economy back in motion. These ideas can work. Even creditor institutions acknowledge that Greece cannot pay its debts as they are now structured. But at a session in Brussels Wednesday, the European Union’s arms remained folded.
Also at writing, the Poroshenko government in Ukraine appears to have recommitted to a cease-fire signed last September in Minsk and promptly broken. It is not surprising given Kiev’s very evident desperation on all fronts. But neither would it be if Poroshenko once again reneges. There is a sensible solution on the table now, but these are not people who have so far been given to one.
There is something tragically irrational driving both of these crises. The genesis of each, at least nominally, is the question of whether markets serve society or it is the other way around. Economic conflict, then, has been transformed into humanitarian disasters. This is what Greece and Ukraine have most fundamentally in common.
It is in search of a logical explanation of the illogic at work in these two crises that something else, something larger, emerges to bring them into a coherent whole. Washington has so many wars going now, none declared, one can hardly keep the list current. But the most sustained and havoc-wreaking of them is unreported. This is the war for neoliberal supremacy across the planet. Greece and Ukraine are best viewed as two hot fronts in this war, a sort of World War III none of us ever imagined.
No Deal: Eurozone, Greece in deadlock over debt
U.S. Drops to 49th in World Press Freedom Rankings, Worst Since Obama Became President
Each year, Reporters Without Borders issues a worldwide ranking of nations based on the extent to which they protect or abridge press freedom. The group’s 2015 ranking was released this morning, and the United States is ranked 49th.
That is the lowest ranking ever during the Obama presidency, and the second-lowest ranking for the U.S. since the rankings began in 2002 (in 2006, under Bush, the U.S. was ranked 53rd). The countries immediately ahead of the U.S. are Malta, Niger, Burkino Faso, El Salvador, Tonga, Chile and Botswana. ...
To explain the latest drop for the U.S., the press group cited the U.S. government’s persecution of New York Times reporter Jim Risen, as well as the fact that the U.S. “continues its war on information in others, such as WikiLeaks.” Also cited were the numerous arrests of journalists covering the police protests in Ferguson, Missouri (which included The Intercept‘s Ryan Devereaux, who was tear-gassed and shot with a rubber bullet prior to his arrest).
'Privacy Critical to Human Freedom': Snowden, Poitras, and Greenwald Talk NSA
Filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald sat with the New York Times media columnist David Carr on stage while the whistleblower himself, Edward Snowden, appeared via videolink from Russia where he remains under asylum protection.
Poitras described how once you recognize how "pernicious and ominous" the world created by the NSA has become, "it does give you that sense of not being able to sleep" because you come to understand "how deep these powers go."
Greenwald, who along with his colleagues at the Guardian, won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Snowden documents, said during the talk, "The realm of privacy is critical to human freedom, to political activism and is something that we've always sought out."
Rejecting the idea that "only people who have something to hide" should be worried about government surveillance, Greenwald continued by arguing that what those people are saying "is that 'I've agreed to turn myself into such a submissive, pliant, uninteresting person that I actually don't think the government is interested in me.' That in itself is an extraordinary damage—that you accept that bargain or that that bargain even exists. But I think for all of us, just the knowledge that we might be watched at any given moment is very psychologically damaging," for individual people and for society as a whole.
On why the revelations have touched such a nerve around the world and why he tends to sleep well at night despite the situation he now finds himself in, Snowden said, "The reality is that people care about our ability to communicate and associate without being monitored and judged based on private activities. And as long as we have that, we will win regardless of the efforts against us."
Obama responds to hacks and Silicon Valley with 'emerging cyber threat' plan
President Barack Obama will set out new cybersecurity rules at a Silicon Valley summit on Friday as the White House reacts to the Sony hacking scandal and attempts to mend increasingly ruptured relations with the technology industry.
The White House announced an executive order to encourage information-sharing between the private sector and the government ahead of Obama’s cybersecurity summit at Stanford University.
About 1,000 people are expected to attend the meeting, including Apple’s chief executive officer Tim Cook and top cybersecurity officials from Google, Facebook and Yahoo who have been pushing back on terrorism cooperation, as well as executives from credit card companies and utility companies that have been busy expressing frustration over consumer protection. ...
Other than Cook, however, there will be a notable shortage of major US tech company leaders at the summit, being held at the alma mater of many of Silicon Valley’s top innovators. Facebook chairman and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt and Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer declined invitations to attend, according to the companies.
Tech firms are still smarting from the revelations of National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden and have clashed with Obama over their ability to publicly report on government surveillance requests.
Google boss warns of 'forgotten century' with email and photos at risk
Piles of digitised material – from blogs, tweets, pictures and videos, to official documents such as court rulings and emails – may be lost forever because the programs needed to view them will become defunct, Google’s vice-president has warned.
Humanity’s first steps into the digital world could be lost to future historians, Vint Cerf told the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in San Jose, California, warning that we faced a “forgotten generation, or even a forgotten century” through what he called “bit rot”, where old computer files become useless junk.
Cerf called for the development of “digital vellum” to preserve old software and hardware so that out-of-date files could be recovered no matter how old they are.
“When you think about the quantity of documentation from our daily lives that is captured in digital form, like our interactions by email, people’s tweets, and all of the world wide web, it’s clear that we stand to lose an awful lot of our history,” he said.
“We don’t want our digital lives to fade away. If we want to preserve them, we need to make sure that the digital objects we create today can still be rendered far into the future,” he added.
Denver Police Killing of LGBT Teen Jessica Hernandez Sparks Outcry as Officers’ Claims Disputed
FBI Director Defends Police, Says Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist
FBI Director James Comey repeatedly defended the police in a speech intended to address race relations after a series of high profile killings by law enforcement officers.
Speaking at Georgetown University this morning, Comey said citizens need to have more empathy for police, that police response time is not influenced by race, and that “law enforcement is not the root cause of problems in our hardest hit neighborhoods.”
Comey also cited and quoted from the song “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist” from the Broadway play Avenue Q, adding that, while everyone has a duty to try and overcome bias, “racial bias isn’t epidemic in those who join law enforcement any more than it is epidemic in academia or the arts.” And yet “after years of police work, officers often can’t help but be influenced by the cynicism they feel” and begin viewing black citizens differently.
The much-anticipated address comes in the wake of a series of killings of black citizens at the hands of local police, including Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; Eric Garner in New York; and Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio. Video of the speech is available here, and the prepared, written version of the remarks here.
Jailed Whistleblower Chelsea Manning Wins Battle to Receive Hormone Therapy
Chelsea Manning, the U.S. Army whistleblower who leaked thousands of internal military and State Department documents to help expose wrongdoing by the U.S. government, will receive the hormone treatment she has been fighting to receive since she was first sent to Ft. Leavenworth prison in 2013.
Manning is serving a 35-year sentence for releasing, among other materials, video footage of U.S. soldiers gunning down civilians from a helicopter in Iraq in 2007. Following her conviction, Manning came out publicly as transgender and soon upon her arrival at Ft. Leavenworth requested that she been given the hormone therapy which the medical community officially agrees is essential to her health and well-being. ...
Chase Strangio, an attorney with the ACLU who has served as counsel in Manning's lawsuit against the Army, welcomed the development but called it only an important first step in providing his client with the treatment to which she is entitled.
"The delay in treatment came with a significant cost to Chelsea and her mental health and we are hopeful that the government continues to meet Chelsea's medical needs as is its obligation under the Constitution so that those harms may be mitigated," Strangio said in the statement.
Amid Lopsided Recovery, Republicans Plan Cuts to Food Stamp Program
House Republicans are reportedly renewing efforts to cut the federal food stamp program, increasing restrictions on benefits and who may qualify for them.
House Agriculture Committee chairman Mike Conaway (R-Texas) will introduce the effort at the committee's February 25 meeting, the first of several hearings scheduled this year to debate the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which administers food stamps. Conaway told the Wall Street Journal on Thursday that implementing changes may take months, but reports suggest that Republicans will aim to slash funding for the program and tighten eligibility requirements.
However, food stamp rules are already being tightened across the country.
Last February, Obama signed an $8.7 billion food stamp cut into law as part of an omnibus bill that included billions of dollars in agriculture subsidies and insurance. At the time, the president said the bill would expand opportunities for unemployed and low-income workers; however, numerous 2015 reports have shown that a majority of American families continue to face financial instabilities, and more children relied on food assistance in 2014 than before the recession.
As Public Pensions Shift to Risky Wall Street, Local Politicians Rake in Political Cash
GOP Assault on Social Security Could be 'Death Sentence' for Nation's Disabled
Republican opposition to a plan that would shore up a critical government safety-net program amounts to a new front in the GOP's class war and could equal a "death sentence" for many poor recipients, defenders of Social Security said this week.
The White House has proposed shifting money between two Social Security accounts in order to avert deep cuts in disability payments—specifically, reallocating a small portion of the Social Security payroll tax from its old-age account to disability for five years—as has been done numerous times in the past.
The AARP and other elder advocacy groups support the strategy, which would extend by 17 years the life of the disability reserve, currently projected to be exhausted by the end of 2016, according to acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration Carolyn Colvin. ...
Republicans oppose the practice of shifting funds. On the first day of the new GOP-controlled Congress, the U.S. House passed a measure making it more difficult to move funds between separate accounts maintained by the Social Security Administration.
But failure to allow the reshuffling would "lay the groundwork for a 19 percent cut in disability benefits," according to a report (pdf) issued Tuesday by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). "That’s a horribly devastating cut for individuals—most of whom are in their 50's and in poor health—to absorb beginning next year. In fact, since most disability recipients receive barely $1,200 a month, a cut of nearly 20 percent could mean the difference between affording food, medicine, clothing or paying bills.
This is a really excellent piece, worth reading in full:
GOP shows it doesn't understand Social Security disability--and doesn't care
The killing floor was the hearing room of the Senate Budget Committee. There, Chairman Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) not only displayed a shocking level of ignorance of Social Security and the disability program, but offered no solutions whatsoever to the looming crisis--which he repeatedly mischaracterized. ...
The raw truth is this: The reserve, or trust fund, from which the disability program receives about 20% of its funding is expected to run dry in 2016. If nothing is done, disability payments, which currently average about $1,068 a month to 11 million disabled persons and their family members, will have to be cut by that same percentage. Colvin called that "a death sentence" for those beneficiaries.
Social Security Commissioner Carolyn Colvin spoke up for the most reasonable fix: reallocate a small portion of the Social Security payroll tax from its old-age account to disability for five years. That would extend the life of the disability reserve to 2033; the exhaustion date of the old-age reserve would move from 2034 (according to the system trustees' latest reckoning) to 2033. As Colvin stated, this staves off any near-term benefit cuts, brings the financing of both programs into line, as it should be, and leaves nearly two decades for Congress and the White House to work out a longer-term strategy.
How little does Enzi understand about Social Security? He kept repeating that disability is going "broke." It's not "going broke"; it will continue to have enough money coming in year after year to fund 80% of currently scheduled benefits. That's not "broke" by any definition of the word.
Aswe've written before, this assertion is nothing but an attempt to cheat working Americans of the benefits they've paid for. The trust funds hold trillions of dollars of U.S. Treasury bonds bought and paid for by payroll taxes collected from American workers since 1983; these transfers have been certified, in writing, every year by U.S. treasury secretaries and other cabinet members, Republican and Democrat, and accepted by Congress. If the money's gone, they should all go to jail--but you won't hear that said by Enzi or his cronies.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature a opinion on the Roosevelt Massacre and the use of private armies.
Tune in at 2pm!
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Don McLean sells American Pie manuscript, saying all will be revealed
Don McLean is to auction the original manuscript of American Pie, his elegiac, enigmatic ballad that became a signature song of its era.
The 16 pages of handwritten and typed drafts include notes and deletions for the recording that became a hit after it was released in 1971. It was named a Song of the Century by the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Auctioneers Christies predicted the papers could fetch around $1.5m (£1m).
McLean, 69, is among the most renowned singer-songwriters of his generation. He said he decided to sell the manuscript on a whim. McLean has admitted the beginning of the more than eight-minute song is about the death of singer Buddy Holly, who died in a plane crash with Ritchie Valens and JP Richardson in 1959.
But he has been elusive about the meaning of most of the lyrics, which has heightened interest and led to countless interpretations.
The Evening Greens
Perhaps they should move it to Boston...
Alaska's Iditarod Sled Dog Race Has Been Re-Routed Because There's Not Enough Snow
Contenders in Alaska's annual Iditarod Sled Dog Race are used to harsh conditions — blizzards that wipe out visibility and temperatures that plunge far below zero — as they make their way along 1,100 miles of trails over eight or nine days of competition.
But, on Tuesday, race organizers announced that the starting point of this year's race will be moved due to a lack of snow, a change that has happened only one other time in the race's 43-year history, in 2003.
"While some snow did fall east of the Alaska Range over the past couple of weeks, other parts of the trail, in very critical areas, did not get much or any of it," Iditarod CEO Stan Hooley said.
The famous sledding competition, which offers the highest cash prize of any race in the sport, is set to begin on the morning of March 7th in Anchorage with a ceremonial 11-mile leg. The actual racing traditionally begins the next day, in Willow, in what's known as the restart.
A helicopter flyover of the route revealed that key parts of the trail lacked snow, so the board unanimously voted to move the restart to Fairbanks, about 300 miles further north. The race will start a day later, on March 9, due the time needed to move the teams and supplies to the right places.
Climate Change Sets Stage for Droughts of 'Unprecedented' Proportions
New research predicts epic, never-before-seen dry spells for U.S. southwest and Great Plains
Within this century, global warming will bring about disruptive, decades-long droughts in the U.S. southwest and Great Plains, exceeding even the driest periods of the last millennium, according to new research released this month.
The study, "Unprecedented 21st-Century Drought Risk in the American Southwest and Central Plains," was published in the inaugural edition of the journal Science Advances, put out by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It supports previous predictions, but suggests that future droughts could be even worse than scientists have said in the past.
In fact, it projects that some time between 2050 and 2100, extended drought conditions across the U.S. will become more severe than the mega-droughts of the 12th and 13th centuries. Such arid conditions would affect millions of people, placing stress on agricultural crops and increasing the likelihood and frequency of water shortages in urban areas.
"The coming drought age—caused by higher temperatures under climate change—will make it nearly impossible to carry on with current life-as-normal conditions across a vast swath of the country," the Guardian warned.
Harvard Students Launch Open-Ended Sit-In Demanding Full Divestment From Fossil Fuels
Dozens of students on Thursday morning launched a sit-in at Harvard University to demand that the institution divest its $36.4 billion endowment—the largest college nest egg in the world—from fossil fuel companies, in step with a global movement to de-fund and de-legitimize the industries driving global warming.
At the time of publication, over 30 students were still occupying Massachusetts Hall, which houses administrative offices, including that of President Drew Faust.
Jasmine Opie, member of Divest Harvard, told Common Dreams over the phone that the direct action is "open-ended" and students are prepared to stay the night. The mood at the protest is "excited and enthusiastic," said Opie, despite the administration's refusal, so far, to engage in meaningful and transparent discussions with demonstrators.
The protest is timed to coincide with Global Divestment Day on Friday and Saturday, which will see more than 400 actions and protests sweep the world, from France to Australia to South Africa. The growing international push to divest has already won significant victories, including the agreement of over a dozen U.S. universities, the World Council of Churches, and the British Medical Association to withdraw their funds from oil, gas, and coal companies.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Human-Driven Extraction Has Doomed Caribou. So Why Are Wolves Paying Deadly Price?
Plan to Release GMO Mosquitoes 'A Science Experiment Run Amok'
Debtors prisons are illegal in America. Missouri locked me up in one anyway
Uncomfortable fact: Hipster racism is often well-intentioned
Sen. Inhofe, conservative publication punked by Ukrainian government propaganda, push faked images purporting to show Russian invasion of Ukraine
Barrett Brown's Prison Time Raises Cybersecurity, Journalism Concerns
An Unsustainable Life
A Little Night Music
Arthur Conley - Funky Street
Arthur Conley - Take Me
Arthur Conley - Burning fire
Arthur Conley - Ha! Ha! Ha!
Arthur Conley - You Don't Have To See Me
Arthur Conley - Bring It On Home To Me
Arthur Conley - Lets Go Steady
Arthur Conley - People Sure Act Funny
Arthur Conley - Rome (Wasn't Built In a Day)
Arthur Conley - Aunt Dora's Love Soul Shack
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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