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 you can hang out, talk about what is going on with you, listen to music, talk about the news and the goings on here and everywhere.
Maybe you have seen some news stories that you think are not receiving enough attention and you'd like to post links to them. Maybe you'd like to just chat among friends about your life, your health, your family or social circle, your pets, etc. You can also post links to your own writings here on dkos or elsewhere. Perhaps you want to share some pictures or music or links to other things. This is your kind of place to talk about what's happening.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. If that is what you want, find another place to do it. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact. This diary series is produced by the TeamDFH group but anyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is welcome.
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Good Morning!
Longwood Gardens. August, 2011 © joanneleon
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me--and I welcome their hatred.
I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.
-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/...
News
Blackbeard’s Queen Anne’s Revenge Wreckage Confirmed off North Carolina
A shipwreck discovered in 1996 by a private contractor working for the state of North Carolina has been confirmed to be the Queen Anne's Revenge, the flagship of the notorious 18th-century English pirate Blackbeard, state officials said.
In 1718, Blackbeard ran aground in Queen Anne's Revenge on a sandbar at Beaufort Inlet, Carteret County, N.C. He and his crew abandoned the ship to survive.
[ ... ]
According to National Geographic, major artifacts recovered from the excavation of the wreckage site include apothecary weights stamped with tiny fleurs-de-lis, royal symbols of 18th-century France, as the Queen Anne's Revenge was a former French ship, Le Concorde, captured by Blackbeard in 1717. A small amount of gold and a bell engraved with the date 1705 were also found.
Scientists: Alloy will Revolutionize Energy by Generating Hydrogen on the Cheap
Research funded by the U.S. Department of Energy has demonstrated how to "tweak" an inexpensive semiconductor material to generate hydrogen from water by using sunlight, a finding that could revolutionize the energy sector.
Remember your Hicks :)
Who You Gonna Bet On, Yet Again (Somewhat Wonkish)
Today’s FT has a piece on famous financial managers having a bad year; among them are John Paulson and Bill Gross. Regular readers may recall that back in 2010 Business Week ran an article contrasting my views with Paulson’s, with the tone of the article clearly conveying the message that we should trust the billionaire, not the silly academic. You might also recall that I was highly critical of Pimco’s assertions that the end of quantitative easing would lead to a spike in interest rates.
Now, the point of this post isn’t to gloat — OK, it’s not mainly to gloat. Instead, what I want to point out is that there has been a simple principle to getting things mostly right in the Lesser Depression — namely, remember your Hicks.
The basic IS-LM model, with its possibility of a liquidity trap, has been a very good guide in these troubled times. And there’s a reason for that: as I wrote long ago, in a piece from the 1990s, IS-LM is basic economics applied to a world in which in addition to production of goods there is both money and a bond market. Aside from the assumption of sticky prices — which is overwhelmingly obvious and supported by strong evidence — it’s your basic, minimal, compelling model. It should come as no surprise that it gets at a lot of what’s going on.
Irene wasn't overhyped for rural areas on East Coast
WASHINGTON _ While many in major East Coast cities wondered whether officials over-prepared the public for Hurricane Irene, the answer from the mostly rural areas hardest hit by the storm was unequivocally no.
Although New York and other major cities were spared the worst of the storm, it slammed rural areas that will need federal help to rebuild. But the Federal Emergency Management Agency has little money left after a series of disasters this year, and Congress will have to address the agency's multiplying needs when it returns next week.
After tearing through eastern North Carolina late last week, Hurricane Irene dumped as much as a foot of rain on parts of the Northeast, including upstate New York and Vermont.
Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/...
True “Resilience” Would Help Prevent the Next 3,420 Climate-Related Deaths, Too
This article –showing how many stupid projects have been funded in the name of homeland security in the last decade–has been making the rounds. Everyone has been pointing to its details on how few people have died in terrorist attacks.
“The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It’s basically the same number of people who die drowning in the bathtub each year,” said John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures in fighting terrorism.
“So if your chance of being killed by a terrorist in the United States is 1 in 3.5 million, the question is, how much do you want to spend to get that down to 1 in 4.5 million?” he said.
[snip]
Only 14 Americans have died in about three dozen instances of Islamic extremist terrorist plots targeted at the U.S. outside war zones since 2001 — most of them involving one or two home-grown plotters.
How Are Americans Feeling about Their Own Circumstances Now, David Plouffe?
Two months ago, David Plouffe dismissed the possibility that the unemployment rate would have any effect on Obama’s reelection chances. He (correctly) noted that people judged the President’s performance on the economy by their assessment of how the economy is doing for them.
Problem is, he claimed that people’s perception of how they were doing was improving.
[ ... ]
Only, people’s impression of the economy isn’t improving over time. In fact, they’re pretty pessimistic about the economy.
Panel: Widespread waste and fraud in war spending
WASHINGTON (AP) — As much as $60 billion in U.S. tax dollars has been lost to waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade due to lax oversight of contractors, poor planning and corruption, according to an independent panel.
In its final report to Congress, to be publicly released Wednesday, the Commission on Wartime Contracting said the waste could grow as U.S. support for reconstruction projects and programs wanes, leaving Iraq and Afghanistan to bear the long-term costs of sustaining the schools, medical clinics, barracks, roads and power plants already built with American money.
Jacksonville National Guard leave for Iraq after Texas training
Two Florida National Guard aviation units have departed Jacksonville for about a month of training in Texas before a one-year deployment to Iraq.
A guard spokesman said the 1204th and 111th aviation regiments' absence will leave the state without most of its heavy-lift military helicopters, which are vital during disaster relief missions. However, Ron Tittle added that National Guard aircraft from other states would be available to replace the six CH-47 Chinooks that departed on Tuesday.