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 welcome links to your writings here on dkos or elsewhere, posts of pictures, music, news, 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.
|
Good Morning!
March, 2012 by joanneleon
A free America... means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call democracy is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it.
~ Frank Lloyd Wright
Florence + the Machine - Shake It Out
|
Drop in
any time
day or night
to say hello.
|
News
The 50 Coolest Summer Jams of All Time
These are the songs that rocked their radio sumer, or just evoke the hazy thrill of beaches, sweaty house parties, roller-disco bar mitzvahs, dazed guitar-freak blowouts, backstreet boomboxes, that gin-and-juice barbecue that went horribly wrong when everyone got naked to "Hot in Herre." [ ... ]
Au contraire, Nils!
Nils Lofgren: 'I Don't Know If Americans Can Handle a Three-and-a-Half Hour Show"
E Street Band guitarist also says he's adamantly opposed to doing shows without Steve Van Zandt
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/...
The day before Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney had the plug pulled on them at London's Hyde Park, E Street Band guitarist Nils Lofgren called into Rolling Stone to give an update on the tour. "[Bruce] isn't constrained by curfew fines or set times and lengths," Lofgren said. "He takes the energy of the crowd and makes a unique and special show that will never happen again." It's definitely unlikely the plug will ever get pulled during a historic Springsteen and McCartney Beatles jam again.
Lofren also spoke about the nearly four-hour long shows in Europe, why he thinks America won't get shows that long, dealing with setlist changes on the fly and why he can't imagine doing shows without fellow guitarist Steve Van Zandt. Lofgren also likes to give very long, thoughtful answers to questions. In fact, he spoke uninterrupted for 10 minutes and 14 seconds after my first question.
The Only Terrifying Math That Gets Any Attention Is Defense Spending
In that silence, McKibben is a mirror image of the same fault in Obama’s own strategy and discussions more generally about threats to this country, even fairly realistic ones.
Sure, all the details McKibben cites about evident and likely effects of climate change imply this is a security issue: 356 homes gone in Colorado Springs, spiking food prices, even entire countries disappearing.
But until we start using the language of national security, we won’t properly demonstrate the treachery of those who refuse to deal with this. It is politically toxic not to treat terrorism (a far tinier threat to our country) as a war, but no one pays a political price for ignoring the much graver threat climate change poses to our country and way of life. And yet refusing to do things to protect against climate change are similar to Bush telling a CIA briefer, “you’ve covered your ass,” while ignoring the hair-on-fire warnings about an imminent al Qaeda attack.
Hurricane experts await emergence of El Nino
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — El Nino can make the difference between a nasty hurricane season and an easier one. But timing is everything.
Although it's looking more likely that El Nino will emerge this year, scientists still are unsure if it will develop in time to temper the meanest stretch of hurricane season, August through October.
[ ... ]
El Nino, created by an abnormal warming of the Eastern Pacific Ocean, generates strong wind shear that tears apart storms before they get started.
[ ... ]
How will scientists know if El Nino arrives? In simple terms, the temperature of the Eastern Pacific must warm to 75 degrees, and currently it's 74.5 degrees. It could take a body of water as huge as the Pacific a long time to warm that half a degree, Halpert said.
Experts: Ruling could hurt Bradley Manning’s defense in WikiLeaks case
WASHINGTON — Legal experts say WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning’s lawyers might have lost a key element of their defense because of a military judge’s ruling this week that would prevent them from using evidence to contend that there was little “actual harm” from the enormous leak of secret government documents.
[ ... ]
“Two years after the alleged leaks, the conclusion is still merely that the information ‘could’ cause damage – not that it ‘did’ cause damage,” the defense wrote in a filing to the court, calling the speculation of possible damage without proof “far-fetched and fanciful.” Defense attorneys said they’d been given an opportunity to review some of the damage assessments.
On Thursday, however, a military judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, ruled in favor of the government’s argument, saying that evidence of harm caused after the leaks were released isn’t relevant to determining Manning’s guilt or innocence and that it might confuse jurors by shifting the trial’s focus, according to the Associated Press.
Wolf to Leave UBS to Form New Firm
Robert Wolf, who is the UBS chairman for the Americas, is leaving at the end of the month to set up his own advisory shop. He will retain close ties to UBS, which will be the first client of his firm.
A 28-year veteran of Wall Street, Mr. Wolf has enjoyed his status as a prominent defender of the Obama administration and a top-ranking fund-raiser. He has garnered more than $500,000 to re-elect the president this year, and regularly plays golf and vacations with Mr. Obama on Martha’s Vineyard.
From an Unlikely Source, a Serious Challenge to Wall Street
Something very interesting is happening.
There’s been so much corruption on Wall Street in recent years, and the federal government has appeared to be so deeply complicit in many of the problems, that many people have experienced something very like despair over the question of what to do about it all.
But there’s something brewing that looks like it might be a blueprint to effectively take on the financial services industry: a plan to allow local governments to take on the problem of neighborhoods blighted by toxic home loans and foreclosures through the use of eminent domain. I can't speak for how well the program will work, but it's certaily been effective in scaring the hell out of Wall Street.
Under the proposal, towns would essentially be seizing and condemning the man-made mess resulting from the housing bubble. Cooked up by a small group of businessmen and ex-venture capitalists, the audacious idea falls under the category of "That’s so crazy, it just might work!" One of the plan’s originators described it to me as a "four-bank pool shot."
[ ... ]
Cities and towns won’t need to ask for an act of a bank-subsidized congress to do this, and they won’t need a federal judge to sign off on any settlement. They can just do it. In the Death Star of America’s financial oligarchy, the ability of local governments to use eminent domain to seize toxic debt might be the one structural flaw big enough for the rebel alliance to exploit.
White House Has Concerns With Eminent Domain Proposal
The bid by the private company Mortgage Resolution Partners to team with municipalities and use eminent domain laws to purchase underwater mortgages and then refinance them at a discount to the borrower has generated lots of attention at the wonk level. Now the White House has weighed in, and expressed skepticism [ ... ]
Securitization, Take II: Investment Firms Seek to Securitize Rental Payments
Though this proposal to use eminent domain to buy up underwater homes and refinance them has been getting a lot of publicity in intellectual circles, the unorthodox fix for the housing market is already happening. That would be the REO-to-rental revolution, where investment firms buy up foreclosed properties in mass quantities after repossession, and flip them into the rental market. Entire firms are being built with this business model. We know that over 40% of the city of Oakland’s foreclosed homes have been purchased by investors. This isn’t prospective, it’s already happening.
Setting aside for a moment the potential problems of creating a large swath of hedge fund slumlords, as well as the possibility of razing entire neighborhoods with new development, the theory for the investors is that they can generate a steady stream of rental payments that will eventually dwarf the fire-sale price they paid for the foreclosed property. But there are all kinds of pitfalls to that model, like extended vacancies or troublesome tenants who refuse to pay. I hadn’t figured out how the investors planned to work around that model, until I saw this story in the Wall Street Journal. And then the light bulb went on.
Four years after mortgage-linked deals played a starring role in the worst financial crisis in decades, banks and real-estate investors are at work on a new type of security tied to the housing market.
This time, financial firms are seeking to engineer deals backed by the rental payments of residents living in previously foreclosed homes. [ ... ]
[ ... ]
I think the key will be if the rating agencies once again abandon their responsibility as neutral arbiters and rate these securities highly. There’s very little data to go on about lengths of vacancies and timely rental payments. And the fact that the same trustees and structured finance experts who created, packaged and sold mortgage-backed securities during the housing bubble are the ones pitching this should act as a big, flashing NO sign. Sadly, I’m not sure it will.
Domestic programs gird for sequester
For all the hysteria in Washington over sequestration, you’d be forgiven for believing it only affects defense.
The well-financed, sophisticated lobbying arm of the military industry has mobilized to warn against the looming budget ax. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has become the loudest and most effective opponent of the cuts. And congressional Republicans fiercely protective of the Pentagon have aggressively drawn attention to the need to stave off the more than $500 billion in cuts that begin next year.
But nobody seems to be talking about the other $500 billion in reductions — to Head Start, child care and AIDS programs, as well as many other domestic programs that face across-the-board cuts. The limited lobbying and political attention on the domestic end of the sequester reveals the brutal reality of how Washington works when it comes to budgets: Industries with the biggest companies and the most powerful lobbyists still drive the conversation.
That’s leaving Democratic lawmakers and their allies nervous that their priorities could get shafted.
“My great fear is that medical research education programs and investments in the future of our country will be sacrificed in order to preserve nuclear weapons programs, amongst other things that are not needed,” Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said in an interview Wednesday.
The Arena: Open Mike - July 21-22, 2012
While it is fashionable for voters to call themselves “independent” - both in how they respond to surveys or in their voter registration - polling data tell us that most people who claim to be independent really are not. A Gallup survey earlier this year noted that 40% of those polled identified as independents, but after “leaners” toward one party or the other were weeded out, the percentage of real independents was only about 10%. That squares with a more recent report from Ipsos’ Clifford Young, who pegged independents as 11% of the likely voters in the upcoming election. Political science research suggests that the real proportion of independents in the November electorate will be even smaller, perhaps 5% to7%.
[ ... Abramowitz’s model projects an achingly close contest.]
[ ... ] That’s not to say that all voters are unmovable. Clearly, some voters switched camps from 2004 to 2008, but the “swingy” part of the electorate is small, only a relative handful of every 100 voters. Most of the change from one quadrennium to another comes from variable turnout in the two partisan camps.
Therefore, the key question this November will be less the destination of the hard-core independents than the relative enthusiasm of Democrats versus Republicans. One side will run up the score in Election Day turnout, and it will probably be just enough to tip our sixth modern White House squeaker.
Glimmers of growth on Florida's Space Coast after shuttle shutdown
But a year after the United States ended NASA's space shuttle program, crippling communities around Cape Canaveral that had grown dependent on government contracts, private spaceflight and other ventures are starting to fill the void.
Titusville, Florida, which bore the brunt of the layoff tsunami following the shuttles' retirement, this month landed Utah-based Rocket Crafters, which plans one day to fly Supersonic passenger space planes around the globe.
"Bit by bit, we're seeing companies that are technical in nature that are taking advantage of the high-tech workforce," said Marcia Gaedcke, president of the Titusville Area Chamber of Commerce.
[ ... ]
NASA's layoffs coincided with the worst housing crisis to hit central Florida since the shutdown of the Apollo U.S. space program 40 years ago.
GPS Hijacking Catches Feds, Drone Makers Off Guard
On June 19, when University of Texas researchers successfully hijacked a drone by “spoofing” it — giving it bad GPS coordinates – they showed the Department of Homeland Security how civilian drones could fall into the wrong hands, exposing a potentially serious security flaw. It was exactly what Todd Humphreys, the lead researcher, anticipated in a TEDx talk in February: “You can scarcely imagine the kind of havoc you could cause if you knew what you were doing with a GPS spoofer.”
On Thursday, a month after the experiment, the investigations panel of the House Homeland Security Committee held a hearing on how civilian drones could affect the security of the American airspace. “These findings are alarming and have revealed a gaping hole in the security of using unmanned aerial systems domestically,” said Rep. Michael McCall, the panel’s chairman. “Now is the time to ensure these vulnerabilities are mitigated to protect our aviation system as the use of unmanned aerial systems continues to grow.”
Problem is, the FAA and the Department of Homeland security have yet to come up with specific requirements or a certified system to protect drones from GPS attacks. And what’s worse, neither of them takes responsibility for it. “The Department of Homeland Security mission is to protect the homeland. Unfortunately, DHS seems either disinterested or unprepared to step up to the plate,” said McCall, noting that representatives from the DHS declined to testify at the hearing. The FAA declined to comment on GPS security after the spoofing test.
U.S. Admits Surveillance Violated Constitution At Least Once
The head of the U.S. government’s vast spying apparatus has conceded that recent surveillance efforts on at least one occasion violated the Constitutional prohibitions on unlawful search and seizure.
The admission comes in a letter from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declassifying statements that a top U.S. Senator wished to make public in order to call attention to the government’s 2008 expansion of its key surveillance law.
“On at least one occasion,” the intelligence shop has approved Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to say, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court found that “minimization procedures” used by the government while it was collecting intelligence were “unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.” Minimization refers to how long the government may retain the surveillance data it collects. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution is supposed to guarantee our rights against unreasonable searches.
Oh, Brother
Why Egypt's new Islamist president is keeping the Saudis up at night.
As a Sunni Islamist who came to power through democratic elections, Morsy challenges the autocratic system that Saudi Arabia's rulers have been fighting tooth and nail to uphold. Just last year, the Saudis doled out nearly $130 billion in aid packages to their citizens to assuage discontent. But they did not simply rely on cash to save themselves. The kingdom's leaders also preempted planned "day of rage" protests in March 2011 by sending thousands of troops to Shiite-majority provinces, locking down the capital, and unleashing loyal clergy to threaten potential protesters with violence.
Those measures brought some calm to Saudi Arabia, but not for long. Violent protests erupted last week in the Eastern Province -- home to the country's oil and most of its Shiite population -- after security forces shot and arrested prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr for instigating "sedition." With restless Shiite citizens in the region already chafing at the state's discrimination, Saudi authorities poured gasoline on the fire when they fatally shot two men during the demonstrations. More than a week later, crowds are still taking to the streets in protest and showing no signs of letting up.
The Shiite question is just one of several reasons why the Saudis worry about the future of Egypt. Long before Morsy's election, the Saudis were nervous that Shiite Iran would exploit Egypt's transition. Although Egypt and Iran severed diplomatic relations in 1980 because of Egypt's close relationship with Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and its signing of a peace treaty with Israel, the two countries have maintained economic ties. One example is the Misr Iran Development Bank, a joint venture that was founded in 1975 and survived the next 30 years of turmoil in the Egyptian-Iranian relationship. Today, U.S. Treasury officials suspect that Iran may use the bank as a means of skirting international sanctions on its nuclear program.
Senior Iranian official on their state media says:
‘US not in Afghanistan to fight terrorism ’
“The Americans came to the country with the aim of controlling Russia and China, harassing Pakistan, expanding its influence in the Central Asia and exploiting Afghanistan’s rich resources,” Head of the Iranian Foreign Ministry's General Directorate for Afghanistan's Affairs Mohsen Pakaein said on Saturday.
[ ... ]
“The US has not come to Afghanistan to fight terrorism… building highways, runways for airplanes and importing modern electronic equipment as well as building military bases is not the way to fight terrorism in Afghanistan,” Pakaein added.
The Iranian official said the US military presence in Afghanistan is only a pretext to exploit the country’s natural resources.
Counting Afghanistan's Dead
Addressing the war's failings means talking about policy, but before we do that, a reminder of why it matters.
But there is another cost that matters even more: lives. The go-to source for understanding how many have died in Afghanistan is iCasualties.org, where the count on coalition soldiers killed stands at just over 3,000 right now. But iCasualties only counts soldiers -- thousands of others have died in service to the war in Afghanistan.
When we include contractor deaths -- 2,800, according to a July 12 report in Bloomberg Government [ ... ]
Notably, no one compiles a comprehensive dataset of how many Afghan soldiers and policemen have been killed during the last 10 years. Wikipedia comes close, though their counting is only current as of last summer. According to this obsolete number, more than 10,000 Afghan soldiers and policemen have been killed since 2003.
[ ... ]
As for civilians, The Guardian recently estimated just over 8,000 Afghan civilians were killed in combat between 2006 and 2011. [ ... ] There are no overall estimates of civilian wounded.
Blog Posts of Interest
Defunded - a heartbreaking look at the state of oceanic research by Brian Lam on BoingBoing
Weaving Reality VII: Waging Peace by rserven on DailyKos
Freedom Rider: Demonizing the Poor by Margaret Kimberley on BlackAgendaReport
Sunday: Occupy Town Square, Debtors' Speak-Out, Casseroles March & MORE by OccupyWallSt
Has the WikiLeaks Grand Jury Been Sending People to Bradley Manning’s Hearings? by Kevin Gosztola on The Dissenter
Succinct Summation of Week’s Events (7/20/12) by Peter Boockvar on The Big Picture
Failing to Break Up the Big Banks is Destroying America by Washington's Blog
Local TV News–Now With Ice Cream! by Peter Hart on FAIRBlog
Florence and the Machine - Dog Days Are Over