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!
Springsteen & El Stingo:
I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities and a thousand unremembered moments produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people.
There was no particular day on which I said, Henceforth I will devote myself to the liberation of my people; instead, I simply found myself doing so, and could not do otherwise.
~Nelson Mandela~
photo: frandor55
News
Eurozone Agrees To Lend Spain 100 Billion Euros
After a 2 1/2-hour conference call of the 17 finance ministers, which several sources described as heated, the Eurogroup and Madrid said the amount of the bailout would be sufficiently large to banish any doubts.
"The loan amount must cover estimated capital requirements with an additional safety margin, estimated as summing up to 100 billion euros in total," a Eurogroup statement said.
Spanish Bank Rescue: Treatment To Make Patient Worse?
And there are reasons to wonder whether the Spanish bank rescue will accomplish its aim of bringing Spanish bond yields back to a more sustainable level. The first question is whether it is big enough.
Even though the Spanish government is confident that €100 billion gives it an ample buffer, Spain’s unemployment level only recently gapped up to 25%. Without a fix for the underlying economy, it’s not hard for the powers that be to underestimate the stresses Spanish banks will face as the impact of job losses work their way through the economy.
CIA Gets Nod To Step Up Drone Attacks In Pakistan
Now, said a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity in discussing sensitive issues, the administration's attitude is, "What do we have to lose?"
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta made clear the deteriorating relations with Islamabad on Thursday, saying the United States is "reaching the limits of our patience" because Pakistan has not cracked down on local insurgents who carry out deadly attacks on U.S. troops and others in neighboring Afghanistan.
Drones To See Action In Syria?
As the US and its allies ponder what to do about Syria, one suggestion advanced by the protagonists of armed intervention is to use unmanned drones to attack Syrian government targets. The proposal is a measure of the extraordinary success of the White House, CIA and Defense Department in selling the drone as a wonder weapon despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Syrian Forces Bombard Rebels In Latakia
Syrian forces have unleashed a new round of heavy shelling and sent reinforcements to a mountainous area near the coastal city of Latakia, where hundreds of rebels have set up base and which has been the scene of fierce fighting in recent days, activists say.
Is The Press Too Soft On The President?
This raises a few questions. Is it the job of the press to avoid making the President’s “job tougher”? If anything, the opposite seems true. The President has enormous power, and putting him on a glide path in terms of using it—especially when it comes to matters like, say, indefinite detention or drawing up a list of people to kill because he thinks they’re dangerous—does not seem wise. Those things shouldn’t be too easy.
Obama To NN12: Change Is Hard
"Change is also doubling down on clean energy and enacting historic fuel efficiency standards, changing our entire trajectory after decades of inaction," Obama continues.
"Change is the fact that for the first time in history you don't have to hide who you love to serve the country," he adds, referencing the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
Investigation Of WhiteHouse Leaks A Sham?
As Karl Rove made very clear during the previous administration, United States Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president. It is impossible for them to conduct an investigation that might involve direct White House subordinates or even the President himself. This is a sham investigation from the outset........
Women Attacked In Cairo For Protesting Sexism
A rally in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday turned violent when a group of men attacked women who had gathered to protest their continued mistreatment in Egypt. The smaller gathering of about fifty women and additional male allies took place amid a larger march against former dictator Hosni Mubarak's prime minister Ahmed Shafiq, a candidate in next week's presidential election run-off.
Bill McKibben: Time For Increase In Citizen Actions
“We’re not radicals or militants. We’re actually quite conservative. We want the planet to stay the way it is, or go back to the way it was when we were born. The radicals work at the oil companies.”
Bill ended by reminding the audience that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently issued a statement saying that there was no cause for alarm about climate change, because human beings will be able to adapt our behavior and physiology as the planet warms.
“What are they imagining?” Bill asked indignantly. “Are we going to start growing gills?
The Hypocrisy Of "Clean Coal"
The premise behind “clean coal” is presumably that coal is inherently dirty, but that if you do enough to deal with all that filth, you can make it clean. Many would argue that coal can never be clean. But, watching the polluter posse’s votes in congress and listening to their rhetoric on the campaign trail, you’d think that coal isn’t even dirty.
Ever Wondered About The Practices Of Salmon Farms?
BROUGHTON ARCHIPELAGO, B.C. — She's perched in her boat near a fish farm, talking about diseases, the kind that might escape and kill wild salmon. Then she spies a worker peeling toward her in a boat.
Alexandra Morton, bane of North America's salmon farms, runs a hand over tired eyes and awaits a confrontation.
Wildfires Burning In Colorado & New Mexico
Firefighters in Colorado and New Mexico are battling wind-fueled wildfires that are moving fast through parched forests, forcing scores of evacuations and destroying or damaging numerous structures.
A blaze in northern Colorado was first reported Saturday morning and had grown to about 8,000 acres by mid-evening, while a fire in southern New Mexico was small for a few days until it began growing Friday, reaching about 10,000 acres.
Mt. Everest Now A "Hobby Mountain" For The Elites
"We need to debunk the myth of Everest." Despite a long-held wish to ascend it once more without oxygen, he would not climb Everest again. "It's spoiled for me now," he said. "And it's too dangerous. There are simply too many people on there who should not be there".
Microbes Capable Of Surviving On Mars Found
The researchers are also working with astrobiologists to try and model past conditions on Mars.
“With their rocky terrain, thin atmosphere, and high radiation, the Atacama volcanoes are some of the most similar places on Earth to the Red Planet.”
“If we know, on Earth, what the outer limits for life were, and they know what the paleoclimates on Mars were like, we may have a better idea of what could have lived there,” he said.
Blog Posts of Interest
Help Asher Get To Skool on Daily Kos --by rserven
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