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 chat about our lives, our health, our families, our social circles, our pets, etc. We welcome links to your writings here on dkos or elsewhere, posts of pictures, music, 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.
This diary series is produced by the TeamDFH group but anyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome.
|
Good Morning!
Longwood Gardens, February, 2012, Photo credit: joanneleon
A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.
-- James Madison
News
Well, I thought this was the case after Bush in 2008, but the Democrats helped the Republicans revive themselves with failure to treat an economic emergency like the emergency it is, with their move to the right, with their fealty to the 1%, their obsession with campaign money, and with their fetish for bipartisanship.
Arizona Debate: Conservative Chickens Come Home to Roost
by Matt Taibbi
Throughout this entire process, the spectacle of these clowns thrashing each other and continually seizing and then fumbling frontrunner status has left me with an oddly reassuring feeling, one that I haven't quite been able to put my finger on. In my younger days I would have just assumed it was regular old Schadenfreude at the sight of people like Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich suffering, but this isn’t like that – it's something different than the pleasure of watching A-Rod strike out in the playoffs.
No, it was while watching the debates last night that it finally hit me: This is justice. What we have here are chickens coming home to roost. It's as if all of the American public's bad habits and perverse obsessions are all coming back to haunt Republican voters in this race: The lack of attention span, the constant demand for instant gratification, the abject hunger for negativity, the utter lack of backbone or constancy (we change our loyalties at the drop of a hat, all it takes is a clever TV ad): these things are all major factors in the spiraling Republican disaster.
Afghanistan Violence: U.S. Colonel, Major Killed At Interior Ministry, Officials Say
KABUL, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Two Americans who were shot dead on Saturday inside the Interior Ministry in Afghanistan's capital Kabul are believed to be a colonel and a major in the U.S. military, Afghan security sources told Reuters.
Gunman kills 2 Americans inside Afghan ministry
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – A NATO spokesman has denied claims that the gunman who killed two Americans inside the Interior Ministry in Kabul was another Westerner.
[ ... ]
Two Afghan officials said the ministry shooting did not involve any Afghans.
Jake Tapper Flummoxes Jay Carney On White House Press Policy Hypocrisy
At today’s White House press briefing, Jake Tapper of ABC News bored straight into WH Press Secretary Jay Carney, and it was a thing of beauty. The briefing opened with Carney evincing praise for the two journalists who died last night covering the Syrian popular uprising and resultant government crackdown and oppression, Marie Colvin and Rémi Ochlik as well as the New York Times’ recently deceased, Anthony Shadid. There is little doubt but that Carney, and the White House, have genuine sadness over the deaths. But Carney, on behalf of the White House, was taking it further and using them as shaded vehicle for political posturing and Tapper flat out called him on it.
Europe’s Plan to Colonize Greece
This is a colonization document. The Eurozone will take over almost every aspect of Greek society. And this will be a blueprint for any other poor Eurozone member that gets itself in trouble.
Wadah Khanfar: Iran Strike Would Be A 'Disaster' For Fragile Arab Spring
A strike on Iran would be a "disaster" for the Middle East's burgeoning democracies, said Wadah Khanfar, the former director general of Al Jazeera, in an interview with The Huffington Post this week.
"What will happen is a disaster," Khanfar said. "An attack against Iran at this moment in time is first of all going to create new priorities, new alliances, new fears in the region and new complexities. No one can expect what the result will be."
Khanfar, who traveled to Washington, D.C., to discuss the ongoing transformations in the Arab world and his new project, the Sharq Forum, said he worried the fragile Arab Spring could become an unintended casualty of a war because the new, unstable political alignments could find themselves drifting back to old patterns should foreign intervention came into play, especially if Israel became involved.
Police Spying Leaves New York Muslim Students 'Violated'
A series of Associated Press articles has rocked the city's Muslim population by revealing that police planted informants in mosques, Muslim neighborhoods and Islamic university clubs in New York and its suburbs. Police spied on prayer times, sermon topics, food sold at restaurants and discussions on politics and world events. One report showed that an undercover officer went on a Islamic university group's whitewater rafting trip, while another compiled weekly reports of Muslim student club websites.
'Friends of Syria' group finds opposition from all sides to its work
TUNIS, Tunisia — The first meeting of the so-called "Friends of Syria" group concluded Friday, leaving neither Syrian opponents of President Bashar Assad nor his supporters satisfied.
[ ... ]
"The final statement doesn't call for any concrete action to stop the massacres in Syria," said Ashraf al Moqdad, a Syrian dissident who attended the Tunis gathering. "They are still talking about a political solution at a stage when everything has failed."
[ ... ]
"We must have military intervention. It's the only way to truly get rid of this regime, and quickly," said Jaloul Karim, a Switzerland-based opposition activist who flew to Tunis for the conference. "A political solution will just take too much time. How many more people have to be massacred, how many villages lost?"
After the lackluster response from the West, Karim added, he was now looking to "our brothers in the Gulf" to bail out the ragtag rebels. Qatar, the rising regional powerhouse, has suggested sending weapons to the Free Syrian Army, as it did in the Libyan revolt against Moammar Gadhafi.
'Friends of Syria' call for end to violence
Representatives of more than 70 nations in Tunisia for the "Friends of Syria" meeting have called for an immediate end to violence in the country and for new sanctions on the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
In a final declaration on Friday, the group also called to allow for humanitarian aid to be brought in.
It vowed to "press the Syrian regime to stop all acts of violence" by enforcing current sanctions and introducing new ones, including with travel bans, asset freezes, ceasing oil purchases, reducing diplomatic ties and preventing the shipment of arms.
[ ... ]
The declaration did not fully endorse some Arab calls for peacekeepers to be deployed to Syria, with the declaration saying only that it "noted the Arab League's request to the United Nations Security Council to issue a resolution to form a joint Arab-UN peacekeeping force".
Prior to the declaration, Saudi Arabia and Qatar pushed for a more forceful intervention in Syria, with Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, saying he supported the arming of opposition fighters.
Red Cross evacuates wounded from Homs
Syrian Red Cross workers have moved 27 people from a neighbourhood in the besieged city of Homs and are in negotiations with the government to reach all casualties, a spokesman for the group has said.
[ ... ]
The news came as a major conference was held in Tunisia pushing for aid access.
[ ... ]
Two injured foreign journalists and the bodies of two others who died in a shelling attack on a media centre were not among those taken out of Bab Amr, according to Hassan.
Syria's foreign ministry accused "armed groups" of refusing to hand them over, but an opposition activist in the area said the journalists had refused to leave, the Associated Press reported.
Cuban dissidents tell US visitors that human rights must be respected
Critics of the Cuban government told a U.S. congressional delegation in Havana on Friday that the island’s main problem is its own government, and that respect for human rights must be the first item on the table for any Cuba-U.S. negotiations.
[ ... ]
“We brought them up to date on the real situation in Cuba, and I said that they must be careful, because if 40 years ago (Cuban authorities) were not interested in commercial relations with the United States, today they are,” Moya said.
“This is a government that uses the resources of the people to strengthen and equip its repressive forces,” he added. “So it is very important for us that respect for human rights would be the first framework for any negotiations.”
New protests over U.S. burning of Qurans leave nine dead
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghans took to the streets for a fourth day Friday to protest American mistreatment of the Quran in demonstrations that left at least nine people dead and thousands more expressing frustration that after 10 years of war, U.S. troops still don't understand how to handle a Muslim holy book.