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.
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Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Good Morning!
Zuccotti Park, September 17, 2012 (Photo by joanneleon)
"When you're using the language of success to describe abject failure, you have no credibility in the eyes of those on the ground who know the truth."
- Lieutenant colonel Daniel Davis, August 2012
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Fortunate Son
(Warning: Video contains war images)
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News
Afghanistan war forgotten in American presidential race
Washington, Saturday. America's "forgotten war" in Afghanistan, is missing in action again, squeezed out of the campaign narrative as President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney duel for the White House.
Americans still die in Afghanistan, 70,000 US troops still serve, civilians are cut down in the crossfire and top US brass says war strategy is under threat from rising insider attacks on Nato troops by Afghans.
But in a race consumed by economics, character attacks and over-hyped gaffes, Arlington National Cemetery's fresh rows of headstones are an afterthought.
Former Afghan soldier: "When I was in the army, I was always thinking, how can I get a gun and face the infidel invaders and kill them." ... "When I shot the Americans, they were looking down at a map." ... "I want to kill them because they invaded our country."
Turncoat officer reveals Taliban link
A few hours after this video was filmed by Al Jazeera, an ISAF airstrike hit the same location, killing more than 10 Taliban fighters.
Quick chart demonstration of the increase in insider attacks over the past few years.
More US personnel killed in Afghanistan
Appeals court skeptical of Obama secrecy around drone killings
A U.S. appeals court responded skeptically on Thursday to Obama administration assertions the government can withhold documents about a program that uses aerial drones for targeted killings overseas.
A suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union is part of a broad legal strategy, also playing out in federal court in New York, to learn more about the drone program that the government says targets al Qaeda militants.
The program is shrouded in secrecy, even as officials up to President Barack Obama acknowledge it exists.
What remains in dispute is whether the government has confirmed the involvement of the CIA in the program, and if so, whether the CIA must turn over documents to the ACLU.
Drone secrecy put to test in court
Robert Fisk: Al-Qa'ida cashes in as the scorpion gets in among the good guys
The US media has already invented a new story in which America supported the Arab Spring saved the city of Benghazi when its people were about to be destroyed by Gaddafi's monstrous thugs – and has now been stabbed in the back by those treacherous Arabs in the very city rescued by the US.
The real narrative, however, is different. Washington propped up and armed Arab dictatorships for decades, Saddam being one of our favourites. We loved Mubarak of Egypt, we adored Ben Ali of Tunisia, we are still passionately in love with the autocratic Gulf states, the gas stations now bankrolling the revolutions we choose to support – and we did, for at least two decades, smile upon Hafez al-Assad; even, briefly, his son Bashar.
WTF?
Defense hawk wants out of Afghanistan: 'We're killing kids who don't need to die'
Rep. C.W. Bill Young, R-Fla., said in an interview this week that "we're killing kids who don't need to die."
[ ... ]
The top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, raised the prospect of an early withdrawal of U.S. forces, who are scheduled to be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
"I think all options (should) be considered, including whether we have to just withdraw early rather than have a continued bloodletting that won't succeed," McCain said Wednesday. "The whole program has to be re-evaluated because the process they said would lead to that withdrawal has been an abject and total failure."
The next day, McCain issued a statement clarifying his comments. He suggested halting the drawdown of U.S. forces to reassess the strategy, including Obama's plan.
He added that no option should be taken off the table, even the possibility of a more rapid withdrawal of American troops. However, McCain insisted that "would be the worst possible course of action.
Top Chinese official visits Afghanistan in a rare visit
Zhou's visit considered significant as China, a close ally of Pakistan look to make strong investments in the Afghanistan to build its strategic interests there.
Globalization, the tech revolution and the middle class
The second big strand of the Internet revolution that Milner homed in on is “free.” Here, again, Milner argues that something unprecedented is going on: Thanks to the revolutionary impact of “free,” massive global brands can be created almost overnight.
Milner’s final major trend is less abstract: e-commerce. Again, this is hardly a novel phenomenon. But what Milner thinks is new is the impact of e-commerce as it moves from being the sideshow to becoming the main event.
Today, Milner estimates that 6 percent of retail sales is done online. He believes that number will be 20 percent within a decade, and he thinks it will be 50 percent within two decades. That shift, Milner argues, will have a profound and positive impact on the world economy: an 8 percent increase in efficiency. Another predicted consequence is less benign: “a pretty significant job loss in the retail sector to the tune of 40 million jobs in the next 20 years.”
Rural Minorities Ponder The American Dream From The Bottom Rung Of The Economic Ladder
About 22 miles northeast of Laredo, Texas, in an otherwise desolate and unincorporated stretch of Webb County, a roughed-out grid of unnamed dirt roads cuts through a maze of half-built cinderblock homes and dilapidated trailers.
[ ... ]
Like most of the homes in this ostensibly planned subdivision, the De La Os' trailer, with its exposed beams and jerry-rigged wiring, is a work in progress. The family is blessed with electricity -- still a luxury for some impoverished communities along the Texas-Mexico border -- but they lack running water. For this residents queue up, sometimes for hours, at a county-run spigot a couple miles away, where they fill huge plastic drums of varying shapes and vintage with foul-smelling water that officials describe as potable. Elia and Rogelio, like most residents, won't drink it, preferring to visit a private, for-profit water vendor in Laredo, or nearby Rio Bravo, for jugs to slake their thirst.
[ ... ]
From the borderlands of Texas and the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta to the reservations of the Great Plains, there are many places like this, and they have remained as such, generation after generation -- all of them easy to find. While much has improved since this sort of grinding poverty was first identified as a national disgrace more than 40 years ago, advocates for the rural poor say the pace of change has been glacial. They also say that persistent, multigenerational poverty continues to plague millions of people living in rural areas, particularly blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans who languish in small towns and isolated outposts where dollars are scarce, development is difficult and discrimination is historically rampant.
[ ... ]
Put another way: Of the 46 million U.S. residents who now live below the poverty line, nearly 60 percent are minorities. This is despite the fact that all racial and ethnic minorities combined comprise just 37 percent of the U.S. population.
Universal-EMI Merger Could Yield New Mega-Label To Threaten The Future Of Music
Now, though, digital music services have gone mainstream, promising listeners a world of perfectly legal possibilities and an end to the major labels' vice grip.
If only it were so.
[ ... ]
Artists are also worried about the merger's consequences. "It's all totally stacked against the creator," said Casey Rae-Hunter, who heads the Future of Music Coalition, an organization representing independent and unsigned musicians. "And the Universal-EMI merger gives them even more leverage to do really scary things."
[ ... ]
Meanwhile, digital music companies are struggling to stay afloat. Over the past decade, major labels have used their market power to extract wildly expensive licensing agreements from new digital services -- pricey enough to render almost all of them unprofitable. Pandora lost over $16 million last year, while Spotify lost more than $55 million.
Big labels have bludgeoned less fortunate startups out of existence with lawsuits. If the FTC approves the Universal-EMI merger, Grooveshark could be the next casualty.
Today, the same giant record labels that attempted to outlaw both the portable MP3 player and the CD burner during the 1990s now have a stranglehold on digital innovation, and they remain nearly as hostile to new services as they were to Napster.
Chris Christie, failing up the Republican party from New Jersey
Never mind that the 'Jersey Comeback' has fizzled, Christie counts on bullying bluster to make him GOP darling in 2016
Not too long ago, Chris Christie, the obstreperous governor of New Jersey, liked to tout something he called a "Jersey Comeback". But that phrase somehow didn't make it into his keynote speech at last month's GOP convention. And no wonder: unemployment in the Garden State is at a 35-year high of 9.8% – the fourth-worst in the nation – and unlike in the Rust Belt states or other hard-hit regions, in Jersey unemployment is still climbing. Poverty rates are also at their highest in years, according to new census figures. And this week, all three of the big credit rating agencies lashed the state's economic performance, with S&P cutting its rating to negative and warning that Christie's budget was a thing of make-believe.
[ .. ]
The Christie juggernaut is finally facing a backlash. And so the governor's trademark petty insults are now directed not only at his political opponents, but at anyone who even mentions that things are going south. Both the media and Democrats are "rooting for failure" if they point up that unemployment is up and revenues are down. And when the head of the state's nonpartisan office for budget analysis identified the massive revenue shortfall, Christie responded in typically furious fashion. "Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?" he yowled, before comparing him to Dr Kevorkian.
[ ... ]
So what Christie, and we, are learning is that he doesn't need Romney or anyone else to succeed. He doesn't need to be a successful governor, or even a minimally competent one. Fill the role demanded by central casting – the hard-driving tax-slasher with no time for niceties – and there will be enough insulation, in the party and in the media, to withstand even the most dismal economic performance. He may be a bully rather than a leader, but Christie is savvy enough to know which gets to you to the top.
The Emancipation Proclamation at 150: a miracle in need of an encore
Abraham Lincoln was a revered hero to my family, but Martin Luther King's message is that the fight for justice is never over
Today, we have urgent need of new proclamations from which new miracles might spring. For such a prodigiously endowed nation, the United States has the widest gap between rich and poor, among the most racially segregated educational systems in the developed world, and close to thehighest rate of incarceration on the planet. We know this to be true. And yet, 46% of the American electorate support Mitt Romney for our next president – a man who recently disparaged the other "47%" who intend to support President Obama, as "victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it".
Martin Luther King Jr called the American project an endless moral commitment; that commitment to regeneration seems endangered at the moment. If I had the power of magic words, I would speak into being an Edict of Education, a Provision of Health and Welfare, an Encyclical of Enfranchisement and a Mandate for a Goodly Mixing of our promised Melting Pot.
Really important piece to read, IMHO, very readable and concise, unlike most discussion about quantitative easing.
Why the New Fed Stimulus Won't Jumpstart the Economy - and What Would
The economy could use a good dose of "aggregate demand" - new spending money in the pockets of consumers - but QE3 won’t do it. Neither will it trigger the dreaded hyperinflation. In fact, it won’t do much at all. There are better alternatives.
All this hyperventilating could have been avoided by taking a closer look at how QE works.
The money created by the Fed will go straight into bank reserve accounts, and banks can't lend their reserves. The money just sits there, drawing a bit of interest.
The Fed's plan is to buy mortgage-backed securities (MBS) from the banks, but according to the Washington Post, this is not expected to be of much help to homeowners either.
[ ... ]
As Australian economist Steve Keen explains:
... reserves are there for settlement of accounts between banks, and for the government's interface with the private banking sector, but not for lending from. Banks themselves may ... swap those assets for other forms of assets that are income-yielding, but they are not able to lend from them.
Blog Posts and Tweets of Interest
Panetta Continues to Ignore Reality, Calls Surge a Success by Jim White
Obama Re-Endorses Raising Social Security Payroll Tax Cap by David Dayen
Obama officials' spin on Benghazi attack mirrors Bin Laden raid untruths by Glenn Greenwald
This Vigil Needs Your Support Redux by davidset
The song that started a movement: Playing for change by BOHICA
Jimi Hendrix - All along the watchtower (Vietnam)
(Warning: Video contains war footage)
We are ready for some serious change. We are ready to take up the tools of a free and analytic press to peacefully undermine the stranglehold of the kleptocrats on our battered democracy. We are ready to expose and publicize their greed, lies and illegal machinations and hold their enablers in government and the media to account. Are you in?
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
~ Margaret Mead
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