Welcome! "What's Happenin'?" is a casual community diary (a daily series, 8:30 AM Eastern on weekdays, 10 AM on weekends and holidays) where we hang out and talk about the goings on here and everywhere.
We welcome links to your writings here on dkos or elsewhere, posts of pictures, music, news, etc.
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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Good Morning!
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Damned Beaver / Jeremy is the War, he is every assertion the fucking War has ever made--that we are meant for work and government, for austerity: and these shall take priority over love, dreams, the spirit, the senses and the other second-class trivia that are found among the idle and mindless hours of the day....Damn them, they are wrong.
They are insane.
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But it is a curve each of them feels, unmistakably. It is the parabola. They must have guessed, once or twice -- guessed and refused to believe -- that everything, always, collectively, had been moving toward that purified shape latent in the sky, that shape of no surprise, no second chance, no return. Yet they do move forever under it, reserved for its own black-and-white bad news certainly as if it were the rainbow, and they its children. . . .
Thomas Pynchon: Gravity's Rainbow
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photo credit: frandor55
News
Spain Forced Closer To Precipice As Divisions Open Among G20 Leaders
Leaders of the world's largest economies, the G20 nations, were drowning not waving at their seaside summit in Los Cabos, Mexico last night, as they struggled to find any kind of coherent consensus on what to do about the eurozone crisis.
Federal Reserve Study On Wealth Leaves Excludes The Richest 400 Families
You might say that the exclusion of 400 people isn’t significant; after all, it’s just 400 people. How big a difference could that really make? Well, it turns out, as of 2011, that the top 400 people in America own more than the entire bottom 60% of Americans. So this is not a trivial exclusion. The Fed claims in the report that it has a method for adjusting for rich people who don’t respond to their survey. Why the Fed has just not included the Forbes 400 is not clear, and I’m curious how they adjust for leaving out Mr. Gates and Mr. Buffett and company.
The Bipartisan Embrace Of Saber Rattling
The reality is that, on the level of Iran policy (as opposed to rhetoric), there is very little disagreement in Washington. Nobody with any establishment platform questions America’s right to attack Iran in the event the U.S. decides that doing so is necessary to stop it from obtaining a nuclear weapon (indeed, almost nobody questions America’s right to attack even if it’s in response to a mere Iranian capability).
Major Design Flaws
Uncovered At California Nuclear Plant
On Sunday, Federal investigators revealed the findings of a months long investigation into a radiation leak discovered at California's San Onofre nuclear power plant in January. Officials maintain that major design flaws in new equipment were the leading cause of the malfunction. Nuclear watchdog groups petitioned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Monday morning to keep the reactors shut down while a comprehensive safety review is conducted.
Why Some Of Our Last Old Growth Forests May Be Privatized For Political Favor
The bill that could go to a vote as early as Tuesday includes one measure that would privatize some of the last remaining old-growth trees inside Alaska's Tongass National Forest, a rugged wilderness often called the "crown jewel of the U.S. public lands system." The legislation would convey tens of thousands of acres of Tongass forestland to Sealaska Corp., a native corporation that helped bankroll Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski's 2010 write-in reelection victory.
The Individual Mandate And The Power Of The Bully Pulpit
Apparently not only has Obama’s position on the mandate shifted radically, but he has managed to shift the bulk of his base’s opinion of the mandate with it. Obama’s shift and the partisan nature of this fight has caused base Democrats to develop a frankly bizarre attachment to the individual mandate.
This is a reminder of the true power of the bully pulpit. A President’s position can’t sway the whole country, but it can have a huge power to sway the President’s base. We saw similar dynamics with support among Obama’s base for the Libya war and same-sex marriage going up significantly after he spoke out in favor of them. A president can easily get his own base to become invested in a particular position, even if just a few years ago the same president’s campaign was spending millions running ads saying it was a bad idea.
American Politics And The End Of The Enlightenment
We are witnessing an epochal shift in our socio-political world. We are de-evolving, hurtling headlong into a past that was defined by serfs and lords; by necromancy and superstition; by policies based on fiat, not facts.
Much of what has made the modern world in general, and the United States in particular, a free and prosperous society comes directly from insights that arose during the Enlightenment.
Too bad we’re chucking it all out and returning to the Dark Ages
Occupy Caravan On The Road To National Gathering
Occupy Caravan is one week young today. The Caravan started in California last Monday with one group leaving from San Francisco and a second from Los Angeles. The two groups have taken different routes as they travel east for the Occupy National Gathering in Philadelphia.
Native American Supreme Court Victory
Native American tribes are celebrating a major victory in their battle for equal treatment after the US supreme court ruled that the government could no longer short-change them over contracts for public services.
Heart Attacks Much More Frequent In HIV Patients
People with H.I.V. have more than four times the risk of sudden heart attack as their uninfected peers, Dr. Hsue and her colleagues reported last month in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
It's Not A Pee-Pee Or A Wee-Wee..It's A Vagina
I gotta say, getting our asses handed to us has inspired progressives to put the party back in political party. And the performance of Vagina Monologues just yards from where State Rep Lisa Brown, 3 days ago, was silenced for saying vagina one day earlier was just such an event.
Blog Posts of Interest
Must Read From Chris Hedges on Daily Kos by Jesselyn Radack
Liberman Feeds Of Leak Hysteria, Calls For de facto Official Secrets Act on Daily Kos by Jesselyn Radack
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