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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.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Good Morning!
Longwood Gardens, February, 2012, Photo credit: joanneleon
Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose—and you allow him to make war at pleasure.
-- Abraham Lincoln
News
Conflicting accounts.
Sixteen Afghan civilians killed in rogue U.S. attack
There were conflicting reports of how many shooters were involved, with U.S. officials asserting that a lone soldier was responsible, in contrast to witnesses' accounts that several U.S. soldiers were present.
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Neighbors and relatives of the dead said they had seen a group of U.S. soldiers arrive at their village in Kandahar's Panjwayi district at about 2 a.m., enter homes and open fire.
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"They (Americans) poured chemicals over their dead bodies and burned them," Samad told Reuters at the scene.
Neighbors said they had awoken to crackling gunfire from American soldiers, who they described as laughing and drunk.
Taliban vow revenge for Afghans killed by American
Some Afghan officials and local villagers expressed doubt that a single U.S. soldier could have carried out all the killings in houses about a mile (2 kilometers) apart and burned the bodies afterward.
"It is not possible for only one American soldier to come out of his base, kill a number of people far away, burn the bodies, go to another house and kill civilians there, then walk at least 2 kilometers and enter another house, kill civilians and burn them," said Ayubi.
Some villagers also told officials there were multiple soldiers and heard shooting from different directions. But many others said they only saw a single soldier.
US soldier's killing spree puts Afghanistan on a knife-edge
About 1,000 people gathered to protest outside the Zangabad military base, in southern Kandahar province, as the bodies were prepared for burial and news of the killings spread throughout the area, a ribbon of mud adobe compounds interspersed with pomegranate orchards vineyards and fields of opium and marijuana.
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Among the dead was a young girl in a green and red dress who had been shot in the forehead. The bodies of other victims appeared partially burned. A villager claimed they had been wrapped in blankets and set on fire by the killer.
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The US president, Barack Obama, and the British prime minister, David Cameron, are due to discuss UK and American plans for Afghanistan at a meeting in Washington on Tuesday.
US vows to probe Afghanistan shooting rampage
The US president has called his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai, to express his condolences after a US soldier in Afghanistan wandered off base and killed more than a dozen villagers in their homes.
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The US embassy in Kabul has sent out an alert to its citizens in Afghanistan cautioning that as a result of the shooting, "there is a risk of anti-American feelings and protests in coming days".
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Al Jazeera's Bernard Smith, reporting from Herat on Sunday, said the soldier entered three houses near the base and opened fire on civilians.
Whistleblower Lawsuits Against Banks Extinguished in Foreclosure Fraud Settlement
I think my disgust over federal housing policy is just about complete. As you know, we’re still waiting for the actual terms of the foreclosure fraud settlement, more than one month after the announcement. But more information has dribbled out, not much of it to the good. Michael Hiltzik rounded up some of the more troubling issues. He mentions that OCC penalties will get folded into the settlement, basically charging $0 for their violations. The Federal Reserve did the same thing. He mentions the Ted Gayer study showing that only 500,000 borrowers will even be eligible for the principal reduction in the settlement, half of what HUD and other regulators promised. And he adds that the Treasury Department restored all HAMP incentive payments for servicers who failed to meet their obligations under the programs. As Hiltzik writes, “If the banks had shown as much forbearance toward their struggling borrowers as these three agencies have shown toward the banks, the foreclosure settlement wouldn’t have been necessary in the first place.”
But it gets worse. Remember those whistleblower lawsuits announced last week, alleged fraud in how Bank of America abused HAMP? iWatch News expanded on those reports, showing the different strategies BofA used to delay and deny loan modification claims for eligible borrowers:
Money markets, largely unchanged since 2008 crisis, remain big risk
WASHINGTON — Plain-vanilla money market funds, part of the skeletal structure of American finance, may be a $2.7 trillion disaster hiding in plain site.
When Congress in 2010 passed the most sweeping revamp of financial regulation since the Great Depression, it tried to address most of the problems that led to or were exposed by the near-collapse of the financial system. Money market funds slipped through the cracks.
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In 2008, after the giant Wall Street bank Lehman Brothers failed, money markets fell into panic. The oldest money market fund, Reserve Primary Fund, had to write off its investment in commercial paper issued by Lehman and could not guarantee its investors 100 cents on the dollar. It was a phenomenon called breaking the buck, and had happened only twice before as isolated events.
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The SEC under Schapiro wants to make them less vulnerable to runs. Within the next two months, SEC staffers will recommend two alternatives for the full commission to consider. One involves moving to a variable "net asset value," which essentially would float the value of the assets and thus change the entire way money market funds have operated.
Banks are still not lending. They are making their profits on the free money from the Fed.
Banks Buy Treasuries at Seven Times Pace in 2011
U.S. banks bought more government and related debt in the first two months of 2012 than they did in all of last year, an endorsement of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s assessment of the economy that’s boosting demand for bonds even with yields near the lowest on record.
While the economy has expanded for eight straight quarters, unemployment at 8.3 percent, the scheduled end of the Bush-era tax cuts, a mandatory $1 trillion in federal budget cuts over 10 years and the presidential election campaign have made banks hesitant to accelerate lending. Instead of providing credit, they are exploiting the gap between the Fed’s target interest rate for overnight loans and Treasury yields to make profits.
(Emphasis added).
Latest Stress Tests Are Expected to Show Progress at Most Banks
How healthy is a bank if it is not lending and is simply sucking money from the Fed and the Treasury? What is the purpose of banks again?
Still, while unpleasant surprises are possible, analysts are counting on the Fed to find banks largely healthy. That would stand in marked contrast with the holes, in the tens of billions of dollars, found on balance sheets in the first round of stress tests in 2009.
“Everybody wants to avoid headlines,” said Chris Kotowski, an analyst with Oppenheimer. “People are angry at the banks, and both the banks and the regulators just want to do something to show we’re working our way back towards normalcy. That’s what everyone is craving.”
Obama's tax plan no help to small firms
But Obama's proposal only affects companies known as C corporations, which are structured like General Motors Co., Apple Inc., and other large companies. These companies pay taxes on the money they earn.
Most small companies are sole proprietorships, partnerships, and businesses known as limited liability companies or S corporations. In these companies, earnings from the business are "passed along" to the owners, who report the income on their 1040 tax forms and the owners pay the tax. Just 25 percent of small businesses are set up as C corporations.
In fact, most small businesses have a substantially higher tax rate. Households with incomes above $250,000 a year face a federal tax rate of up to 39.6 percent next year. Many small-business owners are likely to fall into that group - especially if they're in a two-income household, which means the taxes on their businesses in effect would be 39.6 percent, far above the proposed 28 percent tax on corporations.
At Lunch, Bloomberg and Obama Discuss Future
But most intriguingly, they talked about the future. Over a long private lunch at the White House, President Obama posed a question to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg: what are you interested in doing next?
Mr. Obama, facing a bruising re-election fight, is eager to attract the kind of centrist, independent voters drawn to Mr. Bloomberg’s brand of politics.
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Mr. Bloomberg’s precise response is unknown. But their meeting a few weeks ago, confirmed by aides to both leaders and previously undisclosed, was potentially significant for both men, as Mr. Obama seeks support for his presidential campaign and Mr. Bloomberg ponders his post-mayoral career.
Don’t Let Corporations Slash Pension Payments: Roger Lowenstein
There is something about pensions that makes their sponsors just want to say no. For months we have been reading about cities and states failing to pay what is due into employee pension funds. Now corporate America is getting into the act.
Big employers want Congress to give them a break on pension funding. Business lobbies such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers have managed to get a pension sweetener attached to a Senate highway bill that, potentially, would reduce required contributions by billions of dollars.
May Day Mutiny: Radical Transformation Rises
Yesterday I read Tidal 2, the second journal put out by a group calling itself Occupy Theory.
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The General Strike, as undertaken by Gandhi against the British, “has always been special because it is undertaken by those who suffer, not by morally outraged ideologues,” Spivak says. “It is by definition non-violent…though the repressive apparatus of the state has used great violence against the strikers. Although the results are transformative, the demands are usually focused on laws….If one sees the connection between the General Strike and the Law, one realizes that this is not legal reformism, but a will to social justice….Unlike a party, a general strike refuses to cooperate until things change.”
Tidal 2 ends with a bold call for a General Strike on the symbolically important day of May 1, 2012, May Day.
“Mistakes Were Made”: One-Time Object of Derision Now a Core Template of Our Social Behaviors
To use one’s high pubic position to deliberately circulate obfuscating language was, as my aunt saw it, to commit an act of vandalism against the virtual republic of words, and from there, the very real republic of human beings which is absolutely dependent on transparent and rational language for its proper and peaceful functioning.
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The habit of suspending of personal agency, and with it, the search for moral responsibility, is now visible all around us. It is perhaps immediately visible on the level of our financial, military and political elites.
Who caused the financial meltdown? Who has caused the anger which has made this country an object of hatred in the Middle East and elsewhere? Who has destroyed the most basic precepts of humanitarian and constitutional behavior in this country?
Radio 4 pilots US version of News Quiz
BBC Radio 4 is piloting a US version of its topical satirical show The News Quiz, recorded in New York with a panel of American comedians taking aim at the Republican primary elections.
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News Quiz USA will air on Radio 4 on 22 March, fronted by Daily Show contributor Lewis Black. It duplicates the format of the British version, which is chaired by Sandi Toksvig and features regular panellists such as Jeremy Hardy and Andy Hamilton commenting sardonically on the news.
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The most likely US home for The News Quiz would be NPR, a network of nearly 1,000 public service stations that is the nearest radio equivalent to the BBC in America.
Egypt MPs in no-trust motion against govt
Egypt's parliament has voted to begin steps to withdraw confidence from the military-appointed government.
The move on Sunday will pile pressure on the ruling generals to appoint a new cabinet led by the Muslim Brotherhood.
A vote of no-confidence would take Egypt into new political waters and could set the stage for a confrontation if the generals, who assumed power after the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak last year, refuse to yield to the will of a parliament elected in the country's most democratic vote in six decades.
The 0% Doctrine: Obama Breaks New Ground When It Comes to War with Iran
The irony is that the president has propounded a war-making policy of unprecedented extremity at a moment when there is no evidence that the Iranians are pursuing a bomb -- not yet at least. The “supreme leader” of their theocratic state has termed the possession of nuclear weapons “a grave sin” and U.S. national intelligence estimates have repeatedly concluded that the Iranians are not, in fact, moving to build nuclear weapons. If, however -- and it’s a giant if -- Iran actually got the bomb, if a 10th country joined the nuclear club (with others to follow), it would be bad news, and the world would be a worse place for it, but not necessarily that greatly changed.
What could change the world in a radical way, however, is the 0% doctrine -- and the trend more generally to make war the personal prerogative of an American president, while ceding to the U.S. military what was once the province and power of diplomacy.