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.
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Good Morning!
Longwood Gardens, February, 2012, Photo credit: joanneleon
The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.
-- Buddha
News
‘Operation Hilarity’ fizzles
While there was much hype about Democrats voting for Santorum as results began to trickle in early Tuesday night — in large part thanks to some helpful nudging from big-name Democrats in the days leading up to Tuesday’s primary — a closer look at the numbers show it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
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While Democrats voting for Santorum comprised roughly 5 percent of the vote on Tuesday, in the 2000 race, Democrats supporting John McCain made up about 14 percent of voters overall.
Democrats may have netted Santorum about 3 or 4 percent of the vote on Tuesday, but they netted McCain about 12 percent and actually gave him his margin of victory in 2000.
Euro-area banks tapped the European Central Bank for a record amount of three-year cash in an operation that may boost bond and equity markets.
Euro-area banks tapped the European Central Bank for a record amount of three-year cash in an operation that may boost bond and equity markets.
The Frankfurt-based ECB said today it will lend 800 financial institutions 529.5 billion euros ($712.2 billion) for 1,092 days. [ ... ]
The economy of the 17 nations sharing the euro is forecast by the European Commission to contract 0.3 percent this year as the debt crisis prompts governments and consumers to cut spending. The ECB’s loans are intended to relieve liquidity strains and grease the flow of credit to households and businesses, boosting growth.
Arrests target suspected 'Anonymous' hackers
Twenty-five suspected members of the Anonymous hacking movement have been arrested in a sweep across South America and Europe, Interpol says.
The arrests were made in Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain by local police working in collaboration with Interpol's Latin American information technology crime group, a statement released on Tuesday from the international police agency said.
9/11 victims' remains were sent to landfill
The portions of remains that ended up at a landfill came from the 2001 attacks on the Pentagon as well as a hijacked airliner that went down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on 9/11, according to the report by an independent panel.
The report also said that remains of some US troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan had been mishandled at the mortuary.
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Details of how the 9/11 remains were disposed of were buried as background material in the report, which focused on how to fix management problems at the troubled mortuary.
Google to launch controversial privacy rules
Internet firm Google is set to launch its controversial new privacy policy on March 1, allowing the company to regroup data from several of its services that were previously separate.
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On Tuesday, France demanded that the internet giant postpone rolling out the policy due to come into effect on Thursday, as it appeared to break European Union data protection rules.
In January, the European Commission launched a bid to make companies, including internet giants such as Google or Facebook, give people more control over their personal data or face big fines.
[ ... ]
"If you're signed in, we may combine information you've provided from one service with information from other services," Whitten said. "In short, we'll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience."
Profits up, revenue down as banks lumber along
WASHINGTON — U.S. banks ended 2011 on a roll, a government regulator reported Tuesday, with profits up sharply from a year earlier and over the entire year.
That profit, however, came largely from areas having little to do with new lending, and the falling revenues cast a cloud over the sector.
[ ... ]
The number of loans that are behind on payments has fallen steadily over the past two years, the FDIC said, but the "noncurrent" rate remains higher than it was at any point in the 1980s and 1990s. Real-estate loans make up 87 percent of the delinquent loans, an all-time high according to the agency.
Exclusive: Homeland Security Kept Tabs on Occupy Wall Street
The most ominous aspect of the report, however, comes in its final paragraph:
"The growing support for the OWS movement has expanded the protests’ impact and increased the potential for violence. While the peaceful nature of the protests has served so far to mitigate their impact, larger numbers and support from groups such as Anonymous substantially increase the risk for potential incidents and enhance the potential security risk to critical infrastructure (CI). The continued expansion of these protests also places an increasingly heavy burden on law enforcement and movement organizers to control protesters. As the primary target of the demonstrations, financial services stands the sector most impacted by the OWS protests. Due to the location of the protests in major metropolitan areas, heightened and continuous situational awareness for security personnel across all CI sectors is encouraged."
Big Sis Can’t Quit the Drug War
Three years ago, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that the war on drugs “had not worked” — and admitted that the American appetite for narcotics “fuels the drug trade.” But now Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano would like to take that all back. It’s full steam ahead for the drug war.
“‘Is the drug war a failure and are we going to change our strategy?’ I would not agree with the premise that the drug war is a failure,” Napolitano said Monday after a meeting with Alejandro Poire, Mexico’s interior minister and top drug warrior. “I would say however that it is a continuing effort, to keep our peoples from becoming addicted to dangerous drugs,” she added.
If the Drug Czar Does Not Supervise the Money It Doles Out, Who Does?
At the Daily Press Briefing today, Jay Carney was asked whether the White House approves of the NYPD spying on New York and New Jersey’s Muslim communities.
He responded by claiming that the Office of National Drug Control Policy–the Drug Czar!–has no authority over the money.
US Vows No Change of Course in Afghanistan Despite 17% of NATO Deaths in 2012 From Fratricide
Displaying a remarkable inability to process the meaning of ongoing events, both White House spokesman Jay Carney and Pentagon spokesman George Little ventured dangerously close to “Baghdad Bob” territory on Monday, declaring that there is no reason to change the strategy or timetable for withdrawal in Afghanistan despite violence levels that have been on a steady rise since the US diverted its attention from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2003 and a rising toll of NATO forces being killed by Afghan forces.
Afghan forces face threat from within, says official
On Saturday, a U.S. lieutenant colonel and a major were shot at close range while working in an office in the heart of the Interior Ministry, one of the most closely-guarded buildings in Afghanistan.
A stunned NATO quickly withdrew all staff from ministries dotted around the Afghan capital following the attack which came after the burning of Korans in a NATO base triggered deadly riots in parts of the country.
Why We Couldn't Change Afghanistan
Thus, it is possible to discern a picture of an Afghan future and to predict it will fall far short of the high hopes that attended American and Western engagement there following the al-Qaeda attacks in America on September 11, 2001. These were hopes of an Afghanistan ruled effectively by a central government in Kabul aligned with the West and capable of keeping the Taliban at bay. Instead, Western influence will be severely reduced. The central government in Kabul will probably be weak, as it has been for most of Afghanistan's history. The centrifugal effect of Afghanistan's ethnic geography will be exacerbated by intensified involvement, directly and by proxy, of competing external powers. Pakistani, Indian and Iranian influence will increase, as will that of the Afghan Taliban in Pashtun-majority areas and probably within the Kabul political establishment. In the absence of a significant improvement in the relationship between India and Pakistan, their geopolitical competition, played out by proxy, could become the dominant ideological conflict inside Afghanistan. Given the weakness of the Afghan national polity, endemic corruption and economic dependence on international aid, the long-term survival of any successor regime is doubtful, even without the challenge of a Taliban insurgency more coherent than the mujahideen insurgency of the 1990s.
U.N. Tries Humanitarian Angle on Syria, Ground Offensive Underway in Homs
The United Nations is working on a new Security Council resolution designed to win support from China and Russia by focusing on the humanitarian crisis in Syria. Earlier this month, the nations vetoed a resolution condemning President Bashar al-Assad and calling on him to step down. However, American and French diplomats are working on the draft of a new resolution that calls for a cease fire and demands access to the country for aid workers, a proposal that China's foreign minister appeared to be more open to. Ignoring regime change in favor of focusing on the human crisis inside the country will make it much hard for Syria's allies to justify their opposition to interference. There's no word yet on when or if the resoultion will come to a vote before the full Security Council.