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 Chicago bluesman Earl Hooker. Enjoy!
Earl Hooker - Earl's Boogie
“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.”
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
News and Opinion
Petraeus Plea Deal Reveals Two-Tier Justice System for Leaks
David Petraeus, the former Army general and CIA director, admitted today that he gave highly-classified journals to his onetime lover and that he lied to the FBI about it. But he only has to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor that will not involve a jail sentence thanks to a deal with federal prosecutors. The deal is yet another example of a senior official treated leniently for the sorts of violations that lower-level officials are punished severely for.
According to the plea deal, Petraeus, while leading American forces in Afghanistan, maintained eight notebooks that he filled with highly-sensitive information about the identities of covert officers, military strategy, intelligence capabilities and his discussions with senior government officials, including President Obama. Rather than handing over these “Black Books,” as the plea agreement calls them, to the Department of Defense when he retired from the military in 2011 to head the CIA, Petraeus retained them at his home and lent them, for several days, to Paula Broadwell, his authorized biographer and girlfriend. ...
Under his deal with prosecutors, Petraeus pleaded guiltyto just one count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified information, a misdemeanor that can be punishable by a year in jail, though the deal calls only for probation and a $40,000 fine. As The New York Times noted today, the deal “allows Mr. Petraeus to focus on his lucrative post-government career as a partner in a private equity firm and a worldwide speaker on national security issues.”
The deal has another effect: it all but confirms a two-tier justice system in which senior officials are slapped on the wrist for serious violations while lesser officials are harshly prosecuted for relatively minor infractions.
David Petraeus Gets Hand-Slap for Leaking, Two Point Enhancement for Obstruction of Justice
Former CIA Director David Petraeus will not be asked to plead guilty at all for lying to FBI investigators. In an interview on October 26, 2012, he told the FBI,
(a) he had never provided any classified information to his biographer, and (b) he had never facilitated the provision of classified information to his biographer.
For lying to the FBI — a crime that others go to prison for for months and years — Petraeus will just get a two point enhancement on his sentencing guidelines. The Department of Justice basically completely wiped away the crime of covering up his crime of leaking some of the country’s most sensitive secrets to his mistress.
When John Kiriakou pled guilty on October 23, 2012 to crimes having to do with sharing a single covert officer’s identity just days before Petraeus would lie to the FBI about sharing, among other things, numerous covert officers’ identities with his mistress, Petraeus sent out a memo to the CIA stating,
Oaths do matter, and there are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws that protect our fellow officers and enable American intelligence agencies to operate with the requisite degree of secrecy.
David Petraeus is now proof of what a lie that statement was.
Edward Snowden ready to return to U.S., lawyer says
“Snowden is ready to return to the States, but on the condition that he is given a guarantee of a legal and impartial trial,” his Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, said at a news conference Tuesday, as quoted by Russian state media outlet TASS. ...
Despite a 2013 letter from Attorney General Eric Holder that promised Snowden would not face the death penalty upon his return, Kucherena said he wants assurances of a fair trial as well.
“That is, they guarantee that Snowden will not be executed, not that he will receive a fair trial. And it is guaranteed by attorney [general] who cannot even influence court decisions according to law,” Kucherena was quoted as saying.
Jesselyn Radack, one of Snowden’s American legal advisers, says Kucherena’s statement echoes what they’ve been saying all along. Were Snowden to return, he would face charges under the World War I-era Espionage Act.
“Snowden would be amenable to coming back to the United States for the kind of plea bargain that Gen. [David] Petraeus received,” Radack said, reacting to news that the former general admittedto providing classified information to his mistress while he led the Central Intelligence Agency.
Snowden will return to US if fair trial guaranteed – NSA whistleblower’s lawyer
Senior Official Confirms Obama's AUMF Intentionally Ambiguous to Allow Broad War Powers
Another high-ranking Obama administration official confirmed on Tuesday that the White House's proposed Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) in the war on ISIS was left intentionally vague to allow for expansive—and potentially limitless—presidential war-making powers.
Since the AUMF was submitted to Congress last month, it has been the topic of debate within and beyond Washington, DC. Many have raised concerns about its broad terms, which impose no geographic limitations, broadly define the "enemy," allow for deployment of ground combat forces, and leave the controversial 2001 AUMF intact.
The Obama administration has waffled on just how extensive the powers granted in the proposed AUMF are. When he initially submitted the proposal on February 11, Obama claimed it "would not authorize long-term, large-scale ground combat operations like those our Nation conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan." ...
And just a few weeks later, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry clarified the AUMF indeed allows for the deployment of combat forces, without clarifying concrete limitations to boots-on-the-ground.
Netanyahu Warns US Deal with Iran Would Turn Middle East into 'Nuclear Tinderbox'
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's impassioned address on the dangers of a US nuclear deal with Iran may have won him 26 standing ovations in Congress Tuesday, but it also earned him a rebuke from US President Barack Obama who retorted that the Israeli leader had offered no "viable alternative" in his critique.
In the near 40 minute-long speech, Netanyahu invoked the Jewish history of persecution and claimed that Iran's "tentacles of terror" were already clutching Israel and posed a "threat to the entire world." He warned that a US agreement with Iran would turn the Middle East into a "nuclear tinderbox" and said a potential deal wouldn't "block Iran's path to the bomb… It paves Iran's path to the bomb."
There are just two weeks to go until Israelis head to the ballots for the state's upcoming elections, and polls show Netanyahu's Likud party and the Zionist Union, a coalition camp made up of Labor and Livni, are currently neck-to-neck in the election race. With this in mind, many expected the Israeli prime minister to seize the opportunity to play hardball on the Iran deal in such a high-profile forum Tuesday, and he did not disappoint.
"This is his [Netanyahu's] thing," Yossi Mekelberg an Israeli political analyst with Chatham House and Regents University in London told VICE News. "A lot is going against him in Israel; corruption scandals, rising house prices. So, the goal is to tell voters: 'I'm Mr. Security. I'm going to Congress. I'm going to defend you against Iran.'"
Former IAEA Director Says No Basis for Netanyahu Iran Claims
Iran nuclear deal 'will be a farewell to arms control', Netanyahu tells Congress
Binyamin Netanyahu has urged a packed US Congress to resist an emerging deal to contain Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons in a fiery speech that may significantly complicate ongoing international negotiations in Switzerland.
Despite a boycott by up to a quarter of House Democrats and eight senators, the Israeli prime minister received loud applause from both sides of the joint meeting of Congress when he pleaded with them to block any lifting of economic sanctions in return. ...
Netanyahu claimed that terms outlined yesterday by Barack Obama would “inevitably lead to a nuclear armed Iran whose unbridled aggression will inevitably lead to a nuclear war”.
“The foremost sponsor of international terrorism could be weeks away from having enough enriched uranium for an entire arsenal of nuclear weapons – and this with full international legitimacy,” he said.
“That’s why this deal is so bad: it doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb; it paves Iran’s path to the bomb.”
Netanyahu outlined impossible Iran deal, U.S. official says
The White House believes Netanyahu not only failed to present an alternative to the emerging agreement, but also presented unrealistic demands for what he would deem a better agreement.
“In his speech, Netanyahu outlined a nuclear agreement that will never happen,” the senior official said. “We agree with what he said about Iranian involvement in terror and the other negative things Iran does, but the negotiations we’re conducting are meant to prevent them from getting a nuclear bomb, and we need to focus on that.”
Netanyahu’s demand that Iran’s nuclear infrastructure be completely dismantled, the official continued, would be unacceptable not only to Iran, but also to the other countries involved in the talks – Germany, Britain France, Russia and China.
Moreover, he said, Netanyahu’s demand for additional sanctions on Iran could backfire. “If we go with new sanctions, would the world support this? What’s liable to happen is that Iran will abandon the negotiations, begin installing thousands of new centrifuges, activate the reactor in Arak and quickly become a nuclear threshold state. We’re proposing an agreement that will halt Iran’s nuclear program for more than a decade.”
Impotent Western Sanctions Fail To Disrupt Russian Energy Exports
In some ways, the sanctions have had the desired effect. But in others, notably the energy trade, they have failed, and in fact it could be argued they have backfired, by hurting the businesses that do business with Russia. Moreover, the sanctions have further isolated Russia from Europe and drawn it closer to alternative energy partners, namely Turkey and China. ....
The first example is coal. Despite sanctions, Russian coal is moving at higher volumes to the European countries most dependent on the cheap fossil fuel for home heating. German coal imports are the highest since 2006, as importers take advantage of a lower ruble and lower oil prices. According to the news site RT, Germany imported over 12 million tonnes of coal from Russia in 2014, despite the country’s reputation as a leader in renewable energy, symbolized through “energiewende”, the much-lauded plan to switch Germany from nuclear power and fossil fuels to renewables. The dirty truth is that Germany gets about half of its electricity from coal, with the other half coming from natural gas and nuclear. About a third of German coal comes from Russia. In addition, the former World War adversaries also trade a lot of natural gas; 25 billion cubic meters per year imported by Germany, to be exact. ...
Then there’s the United States. As President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry last year lambasted Russia for supporting pro-separatist rebels in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, and accused the Kremlin of involvement in the shooting down of a Malaysian airliner, a huge coal carrier was crossing the ocean to deliver 40,000 tons of thermal coal to the Schiller Station coal-fired power plant in New Hampshire. Forbes broke down the reasons for the apparent contradiction nicely, stating that for the East Coast, Russian coal is “easy to get and cheaper to ship.” An added advantage: coal from Russia emits less sulfur than US coal, making it easier to comply with environmental regulations.
Many US citizens would also be horrified to learn that a considerable amount of nuclear power produced in the United States comes from Russian uranium, none of which is yet subject to Western sanctions. According to the US government’s National Nuclear Security Administration, about half of the fuel used in American nuclear reactors comes from dismantled Soviet warheads, purchased under the $12-billion “Megatons to Megawatts” program. While that program expired in 2013, Russia continues to work with the United States in supplying enrichment facilities to enrich uranium for use in nuclear power plants as Russia is the world leader in supplying enriched uranium. In 2012 the two countries reached six-year deals to supply over $1 billion worth of reactor fuel to four American utilities, and to provide enrichment services for the US Enrichment Corporation (USEC) for nine years. According to a report by The Jamestown Foundation, “[if] US sanctions extend to include the Russian nuclear industry, one of the biggest losers could well be the US nuclear industry itself.” ...
Russian aggression in Ukraine certainly put its Western trading partners in a quagmire. While the stick of sanctions, exacerbated by plunging oil prices, has paid off from a Western point of view in terms of halving the value of the ruble, spiking inflation and causing Russia’s first contraction of GDP in five years, they have also had a boomerang effect. Victims of sanctions and countersanctions include American poultry businesses, which export around $300 million a year worth of chicken to Russia; European businesses that export to Russia; and big oil companies like BP and ExxonMobil that have had their exploration activities curtailed.
Building backdoors into encryption isn't only bad for China, Mr President
Want to know why forcing tech companies to build backdoors into encryption is a terrible idea? Look no further than President Obama’s stark criticism of China’s plan to do exactly that on Tuesday. If only he would tell the FBI and NSA the same thing.
In a stunningly short-sighted move, the FBI - and more recently the NSA - have been pushing for a new US law that would force tech companies like Apple and Google to hand over the encryption keys or build backdoors into their products and tools so the government would always have access to our communications. It was only a matter of time before other governments jumped on the bandwagon, and China wasted no time in demanding the same from tech companies a few weeks ago.
As President Obama himself described to Reuters, China has proposed an expansive new “anti-terrorism” bill that “would essentially force all foreign companies, including US companies, to turn over to the Chinese government mechanisms where they can snoop and keep track of all the users of those services.”
Obama continued: “Those kinds of restrictive practices I think would ironically hurt the Chinese economy over the long term because I don’t think there is any US or European firm, any international firm, that could credibly get away with that wholesale turning over of data, personal data, over to a government.”
Bravo! Of course these are the exact arguments for why it would be a disaster for US government to force tech companies to do the same. (Somehow Obama left that part out.)
As Yahoo’s top security executive Alex Stamos told NSA director Mike Rogers in a public confrontation last week, building backdoors into encryption is like “drilling a hole into a windshield.” Even if it’s technically possible to produce the flaw - and we, for some reason, trust the US government never to abuse it - other countries will inevitably demand access for themselves. Companies will no longer be in a position to say no, and even if they did, intelligence services would find the backdoor unilaterally - or just steal the keys outright.
Apple and Google 'FREAK attack' leaves millions of users vulnerable to hackers
Millions of people may have been left vulnerable to hackers while surfing the web on Apple and Google devices, thanks to a newly discovered security flaw known as “FREAK attack.”
There’s no evidence so far that any hackers have exploited the weakness, which companies are now moving to repair. Researchers blame the problem on an old government policy, abandoned over a decade ago, which required US software makers to use weaker security in encryption programs sold overseas due to national security concerns.
Many popular websites and some internet browsers continued to accept the weaker software, or can be tricked into using it, according to experts at several research institutions who reported their findings Tuesday.
They said that could make it easier for hackers to break the encryption that’s supposed to prevent digital eavesdropping when a visitor types sensitive information into a website.
About a third of all encrypted websites were vulnerable as of Tuesday, including sites operated by American Express, Groupon, Kohl’s, Marriott and some government agencies, the researchers said.
University of Michigan computer scientist Zakir Durumeric said the vulnerability affects Apple web browsers and the browser built into Google’s Android software, but not Google’s Chrome browser or current browsers from Microsoft or Firefox-maker Mozilla.
Michelle Alexander: Ferguson Shows Why Criminal Justice System of "Racial Control" Should Be Undone
'They looked like Isis': masked raid led to 'kidnapping' at Chicago police site
When the group of armed masked men burst into Eddie’s Sandwiches in Chicago, John Vergara initially thought he had walked into a stickup. Their guns were drawn, and they told everyone at Eddie’s that afternoon to put their hands on the counter.
Vergara, an art teacher who had stopped in for a coffee, remembered: “At first I thought it was a robbery. I didn’t know it was the police until the sergeant walked in.”
The cops had “machine guns – I mean, I’m talking about rifles,” recalled Jose Garcia, then a cook at Eddie’s. “They all had masks, all of them. They looked like Isis – put it that way.”
It was September 29 2011, and it was just the beginning of an ordeal Vergara and Garcia say led to police holding them – along with the sandwich-shop owner and two others – for eight or nine hours, without any public notice of their whereabouts, without a visit from their lawyers, or without even a phone call. ...
Though the masked police demanded confessions, Vergara and Garcia told the Guardian, everything changed that night in 2011 once Vergara dropped the name of a prominent Chicago civil-rights attorney. Only then, they said, did the police let all but one of the Homan five go – on the condition that Vergara promise not to tell the attorney anything about what happened. ...
One week after the Homan Square revelations began, the Chicago police department continues to deny in unspecific statements that there is anything untoward about the facility ... But now the Guardian has interviewed nine people, seven of them Chicagoans, who have told notably consistent stories about police holding them in Homan Square for hours – and, in one case, days – without providing any way to notify their families or their lawyers as to where they are.
Backed by attorneys and local activists, these citizens point to Homan Square as the latest example of Chicago policing tactics run amok – and of American police officers growing over-militarized and threatening to the very communities, particularly black and brown ones, they are supposed to protect.
DOJ Expected to Clear Darren Wilson But Charge Ferguson Police With Racial Bias
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has reportedly concluded two investigations that were launched following the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown at the hands of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson last August.
The DOJ is expected to clear Wilson of any civil rights violations but accuse the Ferguson police of violating the constitutional rights of the city's black residents through racial bias and excessive force, according to federal law enforcement officials who spoke with the New York Times, Washington Post, and Associated Press ahead of the report's expected release Wednesday.
The report will likely confirm what Ferguson's black residents had repeatedly said in the aftermath of Brown's killing: They were routinely harassed and discriminated against by police, and subjected to constant, unjustified traffic stops.
The DOJ is also expected to reveal new details about racist remarks made by Ferguson officials over email. In a November 2008 email, for instance, an unnamed city official reportedly wrote that Obama could not be president for long, asking colleagues, "What black man holds a steady job for four years?"
Ferguson mired in sweeping racial discrimination, federal report finds
Black residents of Ferguson, Missouri, routinely had their constitutional rights violated through unjustified arrests, traffic stops and other actions carried out by a racially biased police department, the US Department of Justice has concluded.
A federal review of Ferguson’s police force found officers disproportionately used excessive force against black people, who were also subject to arrests without probable cause and stops when driving without reasonable suspicion, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the department’s findings. ...
Ferguson’s population is 67% African American, according to the 2010 census. Yet Justice Department investigators found that between 2012 and 2014, 93% of all arrests were of black people and almost nine in 10 uses of force were against African Americans. In all 14 bites by police dogs when racial information of the person bitten was available, that person was African American.
The review found 95% of people detained at the city jail for more than two days between April and September 2014 were black. During the same period, black defendants were found to be 68% less likely than others to have their cases dismissed by judges in the city’s controversial municipal court system.
The review also found that 85% of all drivers stopped by police were black, and that African American drivers were twice as likely as white drivers to be searched during these stops but yet more than 25% less likely to be found in possession of illegal substances or goods. Black drivers were sharply more likely than their white counterparts to be cited for driving offences when these were observed by police officers in person rather than detected by radar or similar technology.
Michelle Alexander: Roots of Today’s Mass Incarceration Crisis Date to Slavery, Jim Crow
Warren: Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch Received $6 Trillion Backdoor Bailout from Fed
Yesterday, the Senate Banking Committee held the first of its hearings on widespread demands to reform the Federal Reserve to make it more transparent and accountable.
Senator Elizabeth Warren put her finger on the pulse of the growing public outrage over how the Federal Reserve conducts much of its operations in secret and appears to frequently succumb to the desires of Wall Street to the detriment of the public interest. Warren addressed the secret loans that the Fed made to Wall Street during the financial crisis as follows:
“During the financial crisis, Congress bailed out the big banks with hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money; and that’s a lot of money. But the biggest money for the biggest banks was never voted on by Congress. Instead, between 2007 and 2009, the Fed provided over $13 trillion in emergency lending to just a handful of large financial institutions. That’s nearly 20 times the amount authorized in the TARP bailout.
“Now, let’s be clear, those Fed loans were a bailout too. Nearly all the money went to too-big-to-fail institutions. For example, in one emergency lending program, the Fed put out $9 trillion and over two-thirds of the money went to just three institutions: Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch.
“Those loans were made available at rock bottom interest rates – in many cases under 1 percent. And the loans could be continuously rolled over so they were effectively available for an average of about two years.”
One of the key reasons that the Fed wanted to keep this information buried from the public is that Citigroup was insolvent during the period it was receiving loans from the Fed.
Koch Mandates to Cut Education Spending Spread Like a Cancer
The Koch brothers' philosophy of the consolidation of wealth by the few is spreading like a cancer. Just look at how their hand-picked governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker - who received massive financial backing from the Kochs - is now being touted in the corporate media as a Republican contender for president in 2016.
Walker, who never graduated from college (leaving Marquette University in Milwaukee for mysterious reasons), has mercilessly attacked education in Wisconsin - starting with the teachers unions and recently extending to the University of Wisconsin.
On February 22, Kevin O'Marah wrote in a Forbes op-ed:
Gov. Scott Walker plans to cut $300M from the budget of the University of Wisconsin and, if he has his way, will alter its mission from a “search for truth” to “meeting the state’s workforce needs.” These steps are so fantastically at odds with what the business community, economy and state need from its public university system that no synonym for ‘stupid’ is too strong.
It should be no surprise then that the newly inaugurated governor of Illinois, Bruce Rauner - a darling of the 1% - is metastasizing the Koch brothers' attack on an educated public. As blogger Lawrence Rafferty recently noted in a piece entitled, "Gov. Bruce Rauner Declares War on Higher Education and the Poor in Illinois":
I have to give Governor Bruce Rauner credit for not taking long to show his hand and publicly attack the Higher Education system in Illinois. It has only been a few weeks since he was inaugurated and he recently unveiled his budget. A budget plan that slashes over $200 million just from the University of Illinois alone.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature a report from the Duluth Labor World: "Gompers Asks Help for Brave Strikers." The strike of the Cloth Hat and Cap Makers of New York City continues as they battle the open shop.
Tune in at 2pm!
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Hillary Clinton to Democrats: don't you want to see a female president?
At her first public event since voters learned that she used personal email to handle sensitive government business for four years, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton avoided any suggestion or shadow of the scandal, instead delivering a dress rehearsal campaign speech to an audience of pro-choice advocates.
As for her long-deferred announcement about the 2016 presidential race, Clinton did no more than repeat old quips about the difficult question of whether to run for president, at one point asking: “I suppose it’s fair to say: don’t you someday want to see a woman president?”
Speaking before a gala to celebrate 30 years of work by Emily’s List, an organization that supports Democratic, pro-choice women candidates, Clinton did not broach revelations that she may have broken rules regarding state secrets under the Federal Records Act.
She instead tested some likely themes for a 2016 presidential campaign, such as middle-class jobs, stagnant wages and labor rights. She also tried to frame herself – to a crowd that included prominent politicians and celebrities being served seared halibut and chocolate soufflé – as a leader who is intimately familiar with the struggles and preoccupations of everyday Americans. The populist rhetoric, proclaimed at an expensive Washington DC hotel and in light of Clinton’s own tangled relationship with Wall Street and political elites, landed somewhat flat with the otherwise receptive, voluble audience.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Infrastructure
The Evening Greens
Bank of England Issues Warning Over Looming 'Carbon Bubble' Threat
The Bank of England, one of the oldest banks in the world, has joined the growing ranks of those warning of the financial risk posed by a "carbon bubble," which will occur if urgently needed climate change regulations render coal, oil, and gas assets worthless.
"One live risk right now is of insurers investing in assets that could be left 'stranded' by policy changes which limit the use of fossil fuels," Bank of England official Paul Fisher told (pdf) the Economist's Insurance Summit 2015 in London on Tuesday. "As the world increasingly limits carbon emissions, and moves to alternative energy sources, investments in fossil fuels and related technologies—a growing financial market in recent decades—may take a huge hit."
Reserves are by definition bodies of oil, gas or coal that can be drilled or mined for financial gain. Currently, regulators allow companies to book them as assets, and on the assumption that they are at zero risk of being stranded—left below ground, "value" unrealized—over the full life of their exploitation.
But several recent analyses have shown that most existing reserves of fossil fuels cannot be burned if global warming is to be limited to 2° Celsius, as the world's nations have pledged. A study in January found that to avert climate disaster, the majority of fossil fuel deposits around the world—including 92 percent of U.S. coal, all Arctic oil and gas, and a majority of Canadian tar sands—must stay in the ground.
Despite such warnings, the Guardian notes, "companies spent $670bn (£436bn) in 2013 alone searching for more fossil fuels, investments that could be worthless if action on global warming slashes allowed emissions."
Energy Superpower Ambitions of US and Canada
New Study Shows California Droughts Driven by Climate Change and Here to Stay
The increasingly frequent and severe droughts that have punished California over the past two decades—including the current record-breaking one—are primarily the result of human-caused climate change and will likely grow even worse, scientists at Stanford University warn.
Published in Monday's issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the new research analyzes historical records, as well as computer simulations of global warming, to investigate the role of changing temperatures during California droughts over the last 120 years.
The researchers concluded that human-driven global warming is exacerbating and increasing the confluent warm and dry conditions that have produced the state's most severe droughts.
"Of course low precipitation is a prerequisite for drought, but less rain and snowfall alone don't ensure a drought will happen," explained Stanford professor and lead author Noah Diffenbaugh. "It really matters if the lack of precipitation happens during a warm or cool year."
"We've seen the effects of record heat on snow and soil moisture this year in California, and we know from this new research that climate change is increasing the probability of those warm and dry conditions occurring together," Diffenbaugh added.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Inside Chicago's legacy of police abuse: violence 'as routine as traffic lights'
Why Did Israel Decide to Support Syrian Rebels?
Then They Came for the N Word
Recommended:
Netanyahu, 'Censored Voices,' and the False Narrative of Self-Defense
A Little Night Music
Earl Hooker - Sweet Home Chicago
Earl Hooker - Blue Guitar
Earl Hooker - Strung Out Woman Blues
Earl Hooker - Hookin
Anna Lee - Earl Hooker
Earl Hooker - The End of the Blues
Earl Hooker - Is You Ever Seen A One Eyed Woman Cry?
Earl Hooker - All Your Love
Earl Hooker - Love Ain't No Plaything
Earl Hooker - Improvisations on Dust My Broom
Earl Hooker - Hot and Heavy
Earl Hooker - Do The Chicken
Earl Hooker - Two Bugs and a Roach
Earl Hooker - Do You Swear To Tell The Truth
John Lee and Earl Hooker - The Hookers (If You Miss 'Im...I Got 'Im)
Earl Hooker & Junior Wells - I Could Cry
Earl Hooker - Move On Down The Line
Earl Hooker - Hooker Cooker
Earl Hooker & Junior Wells - Come On In This House
Earl Hooker - The Hucklebuck
Earl Hooker - I Feel Good
Earl Hooker - Something you ate
Earl Hooker - Walking The Floor Over You, Off The Hook
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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