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 Team DFH group but anyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome.
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Good Morning!
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Drop in any time of day or night to say hello. |
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A Few Quotes for This Morning
The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken. ~Samuel Johnson
A habit is something you can do without thinking - which is why most of us have so many of them. ~Frank A. Clark
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. ~Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar for 1894
The unfortunate thing about this world is that good habits are so much easier to give up than bad ones. ~Somerset Maugham
Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going. ~Jim Ryun
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News
The cease fire is not going so well...
U.N. Votes to Send Observers to Syria Amid a Shaky Truce
BEIRUT, Lebanon — As low-level violence sputtered in various Syrian cities on Saturday, the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to send an advance team of up to 30 military observers to begin monitoring the tenuous cease-fire.
It was the first time since the Syrian uprising began 13 months ago that the Security Council put its full weight behind a concrete proposal to stop the violence, with Russia and China joining the rest of the 15-member Council to authorize the observer mission.
And the resolution put new pressure on Syria to take its troops off the streets and to open a dialogue with the opposition, both crucial aspects of the six-point plan aimed at ending more than a year of violence that has left at least 9,000 people dead by the United Nations’ count.
At least they're still talking...
Iran, big powers agree - to keep talking
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - After a year of sanctions and saber-rattling over Iran's nuclear program, negotiators from Tehran and six world powers finally resumed talks and found at least enough common ground to agree to meet again next month.
With threats of war hanging over an already unsettled Middle East, U.S. and other Western diplomats welcomed their Iranian counterparts willingness in Istanbul on Saturday to discuss their nuclear activities - something they had refused since early last year.
But though they will meet again, in Baghdad on May 23, they remained poles apart. Iran called for a lifting of sanctions and recognition its uranium enrichment is for purely peaceful ends. The United States demanded urgent action to prove the Islamic Republic is not seeking the potential nuclear arsenal which Washington and ally Israel threaten to eliminate by force.
Tensions in Egypt before the elections...
Authorities Bar 3 Leading Candidates in Egypt Race
CAIRO — The Egyptian election authorities eliminated three of the country’s leading presidential candidates in one broad stroke on Saturday night in an unexpected decision that once again threw into disarray the contest to shape the future of Egypt after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.
The High Election Commission struck down 10 candidates in all, including the three who have generated the most passion in this polarized nation: Khairat el-Shater, the leading strategist of the Muslim Brotherhood; Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, an ultraconservative Islamist; and Omar Suleiman, Mr. Mubarak’s former vice president and intelligence chief.
A little more than a month before the vote begins, the ruling raised new doubts about the credibility of the election, which is supposed to inaugurate a new democracy after decades of authoritarian rule. It capped a year of opaque decisions behind closed doors, shifting ground rules and timetables, conspiracy theories about who holds true power, turbulence in the streets and growing political polarization during the military-led transition after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.
Is it getting too late to stop?
Our apocalyptic odds
Ring a ring o’ roses, A pocketful of posies. A-tishoo! A-tishoo! We all fall down.
For this happy English nursery rhyme, children hold hands to form a circle, and then dance around, singing. Nice for a birthday party. At the end, they all fall down, laughing. However, many people believe this happy, innocent little song easily remembered by young children refers to the dreaded plague that killed hundreds of thousands all over Europe; at times, two-thirds of a community would perish. The “A-tishoo! A-tishoo!” may refer to the sneezing during the pneumonic phase of the disease that can develop after the initial, bubonic phase, known for its feared red spots and boils. The first phase alone led to tens—even hundreds—of thousands suffering an awful death. The frightening, painful deaths of the plague victims in the Middle Ages and in subsequent epidemics (notably the one in London in 1665) soon disappeared from the collective memory.
Well, it doesn't look like you'll be able to purchase a pack of Marlboro Js anytime in the near future...
Obama Says Legalization Is Not the Answer on Drugs
CARTAGENA, Colombia — Leaders at a summit meeting of many of the Western Hemisphere nations on Saturday discussed alternatives to what many consider a failed “war on drugs” that is too reliant on military action and imprisonment. But President Obama said flatly that “legalization is not the answer.”
The issue was placed on the agenda of the Summit of the Americas this weekend by the host, Colombia’s president, Juan Manuel Santos. Even so, Mr. Santos suggested that he had in mind some unspecified middle ground short of fully decriminalizing the drug trade that for years has undermined societies throughout the region, notably in Colombia.
“We have the obligation to see if we’re doing the best that we can do, or are there other alternatives that can be much more efficient?” Mr. Santos said during an informal panel discussion with Mr. Obama and President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil just before the summit meeting began. “One side can be all the consumers go to jail. On the other extreme is legalization. On the middle ground, we may have more practical policies.”
What NOT to do with wild animals...
Unwelcome visitor leaves teeth wounds on Louisiana motel guest
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - A six-foot alligator which showed up at the front door of a Baton Rouge-area motel on Wednesday might have departed without incident had it not been for an overly helpful guest, who later checked out of the motel with puncture wounds.
A housekeeper at the Super 8 Motel just off Interstate 10 in Port Allen, Louisiana, spotted the gator as it crossed the driveway toward the motel at about 3 p.m. She called a maintenance worker, who called the hotel manager to come take a look.
"He came up right by our front door to the lobby," Assistant Manager Tiffany Dunnam said. "He was just hanging out there."
I can think of many other pols I'd like to see chased as well, lol....
Vt. governor chased by 4 bears in backyard
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — A late-night encounter with four bears trying to snack from backyard birdfeeders gave Vermont's governor a lesson in what not to do in bear country.
One of the bears chased Peter Shumlin and nearly caught the governor while he was trying to shoo the animals away, he said Friday.
"I had a close encounter with a bear, four bears to be exact," Shumlin said.