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!
Topsail Sound. (Photo by joanneleon. November, 2011)
“In Washington, the fossil fuel industry has bought one party and scared the other so we’re going to have to build a movement to challenge them some”
-- Bill McKibben
CSNY - Wooden Ships
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News and Opinion
Ah, the establishment strikes back. Hit piece on Occupy Sandy and in favor of the Red Cross. My guess is that Red Cross is getting worried about a challenge to their nearly guaranteed stream of funding any time there is a disaster. Note the author's evidence against Occupy Sandy -- flimsy. Go go go Status Quo! They probably don't mind losing the small donor money but when the money from corporations and trade organizations, etc. came under threat, a hit piece in Forbes was necessary.
The American Red Cross, Occupy Sandy and Americans Helping Each Other
An interesting thing happened when the Consumer Electronics Association announced that we would be contributing to the American Red Cross to help those affected by Hurricane Sandy. We got pushback from reporters and colleagues who did not think a contribution to the Red Cross was a good idea. Some said we should be giving to the Occupy movement’s spinoff, Occupy Sandy.
Ulrich slams Red Cross slow Sandy response
The American Red Cross has come under fire by frustrated storm victims and elected officials in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, with many charging the organization’s relief effort in southern Queens started far too late and has not been nearly strong enough.
“I’ve seen just a lethargic, slow response from the Red Cross,” City Councilman Eric Ulrich (R-Ozone Park) said. “Embarrassingly minimal.”
Ulrich said he has been on the ground in some of the harder hit regions of Queens daily since the day before the storm and that the organization was nowhere to be found in the first few days after the hurricane. He also said his experience trying to work with the Red Cross to bring a mobile Tide Laundromat truck to Queens has been frustrating, with Tide and Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office saying the relief organization should ask Tide to respond, but the Red Cross telling Ulrich that was not the case. Ulrich said he is still waiting for an answer from the Red Cross.
RPT-INSIGHT-Red Cross response to Sandy fails to meet expectations
Nov 14 (Reuters) - Noreen Ellis begged the American Red Cross for help a few days after Superstorm Sandy slammed into the U.S. East Coast.
A 90-year-old bedbound woman living on Ellis's block needed to be moved from the Rockaways, an eight-mile long, narrow spit of land in New York City, to a shelter with heat and electricity.
"I said, 'This woman needs to be transported. Can you help?' And the Red Cross said, 'We don't do that,'" Ellis said.
She shot back: "What does the Red Cross do?"
Ellis's frustration, echoed by many residents in the places worst hit by Sandy across the New York region, exposed a gulf between what many people expected the charity to do in times of crisis and what it actually delivers.
With the Rolling Jubilee, Debt Activists Strike a Nerve
Long before the curtain goes up on the Rolling Jubilee's kick-off telethon tonight, it was clear that the event's organizers have struck a nerve.
The Rolling Jubilee, a project of the debt-activist group Strike Debt, an outgrowth of Occupy Wall Street and the people behind the Debt Resistors Operation Manual, is based on a diagnosis that Americans are struggling under an ever more complex and stifling architecture of student debt, medical debt, credit card debt, and mortgages.
The solution proposed by Strike Debt is based on the biblical institution of a the jubilee, a year in which debts were wiped clean and indentured servants released from their bondage. The Rolling Jubilee will buy debt on the debt market, where it can be had for pennies and the dollar, and then, rather than hounding the debtors for repayment, it will simply forgive the debt.
'Occupy Sandy' Movement Focuses on Offering Help to Storm Victims in New Yor
Watch 'Occupy Sandy' Focuses on Offering Help to Storm Victims on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.
Behind Occupy's Rolling Jubilee Debt Campaign, Personal Finance Book For Debtors And Defaulters
Occupy Wall Street alumni have hatched a new plan: Raise money and then bail people out of debt. The campaign, called Rolling Jubilee, kicks off Thursday night with a live-streaming telethon broadcast on the Jubilee's web site.
While Occupy's latest initiative may or may not succeed, Strike Debt, the group behind the Jubilee campaign, hopes to aid struggling debtors in another way: They have written a personal finance book. Unlike other educational money books, it's not for people who have money, but for people who don't.
The book, which is free of course, is called the Debt Resistors' Operations Manual. In very simple terms the book outlines strategies for haggling with creditors, the consequences to defaulting on loans and background on how financial institutions operate.
Article from the
Washington Post. Who knew?
How does a ‘Jubilee’ roll? Jesus explains.
“Jesus had an economic plan,” as I write in “#OccupytheBible: What Jesus Really Said (and Did) About Money and Power,” my new book on how what Jesus really said about money, and on the power dynamics of what he did about economic issues in his own time.
Jesus’ economic plan is called the “jubilee.” Jesus starts his ministry (Luke 4: 16-19) by standing up in the synagogue in his hometown and reading from one of the key texts of his Hebrew scriptures that announces a jubilee, a time of debt forgiveness.
What Jesus thought needed to be done about debt in the first century is also what needs to happen for indebted Americans in the 21st century, at least that’s the view of some of the folks who brought us Occupy Wall Street.
Grand Bargain = Grand Larceny, Grand Lie
'Grand Bargain' Charade a Scheme to Protect Corporate Welfare
Preserve Benefits: Cut Gouging and Inequities
Congress is still talking about a “Grand Bargain” that “balances” far more spending cuts than tax increases. That is another way of saying that you – the consumer of Medicare and Medicaid services, the recipient of Social Security, and the average taxpayer will take the brunt of the spending cuts, while the wealthy get their income taxes restored, not raised, to their pre-Bush modest levels. Don’t buy it!
More signs of deteriorization of the relations between Israel and Egypt?
Egyptian PM Visits Gaza, Condemns Israeli Assault
As US seeks to influence new government in Egypt, Israel continues to pummel Gaza
In a symbolic show of support for Palestinians under assault by the Israeli military and with hopes of brokering a possible ceasefire, Egypt's prime minister, Hisham Kandil, arrived in Gaza on Friday following nearly a week of escalating violence in the battered enclave.
The possibility of a ground invasion is still very much real.
Overnight and ahead of Kandil's scheduled visit, the Israeli Defense Force bombarded Gaza with reports of over 150 airstrikes which caused massive explosions in the main cities and sent plumes of black smoke into the sky.
Visiting a hospital in Gaza City, Kandil put the focus squarely on Israeli aggression in recent days that has seen nearly two dozen Palestinians killed, including several children.
"This tragedy cannot pass in silence and the world should take responsibility in stopping this aggression," he said.
Hard hitting piece from Greenwald.
Obama's Kill List Policy Compels US Support for Israeli Attacks on Gaza
The US was once part of the international consensus against extra-judicial assassinations. Now it is a leader in that tactic
Meanwhile, most US media outlets are petrified of straying too far from pro-Israel orthodoxies. Time's Middle East correspondent Rania Abouzeid noted this morning on Twitter the typical template: "Just read report in major US paper about Gaza/Israel that put Israeli dead in 1st sentence. Palestinian in 6th paragraph." Or just consider the BBC's headline. Worse, this morning's New York Times editorial self-consciously drapes itself with pro-Israel caveats and completely ignores the extensive civilian deaths in Gaza before identifying this as one of the only flaws it could find with the lethal Israeli assault: "The action also threatens to divert attention from what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly described as Israel's biggest security threat: Iran's nuclear program."
In what I know will be a fruitless attempt to avoid having this discussion subsumed by that tired script: I will recommend several outstanding, truly must-read pieces written by others over the last 24 hours in lieu of my own reciting of the various arguments. Begin with this article by Yousef Munayyer in the Daily Beast setting the crucial context for the rocket attacks from Gaza; then read this Daily Beast news-breaking account from Gershon Baskin, who details how the provocations from the Israelis were geared toward disrupting an imminent peace deal with Hamas ("The assassination of Jaabari was a pre-emptive strike against the possibility of a long term ceasefire"); also vital is this time-line of events leading up to the rocket attacks from Gaza, with ample documentation from Ali Abunimah; and finally, there is this very succinct but poignant summary of what Israel has done over the last three weeks.
Blog Posts and Tweets of Interest
The Evening Blues - 11-15-12 Rolling Jubilee Edition
Warning: Swallowing the President's Bitter Pills May Cause Harsh Austerity
'The Raiders of Your Lost Retirement #6 -- "Bernie Sanders, Progressive Senators Pressure Obama.."
Classified(?) Information Magically Appears at Broadwell's House
Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act Passes: Guess Who's Left Out?
CSNY - Deja Vu
Remember when progressive debate was about our values and not about a "progressive" candidate? Remember when progressive websites championed progressive values and didn't tell progressives to shut up about values so that "progressive" candidates can get elected?
Come to where the debate is not constrained by oaths of fealty to persons or parties.
Come to where the pie is served in a variety of flavors.
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." ~ Noam Chomsky
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