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
“You've got to learn to live with what you can't rise above”
-- Bruce Springsteen
News
Economy continued strong jobs growth in February
WASHINGTON — The government reported Friday a second straight month of strong employment growth in February, with new jobs spread broadly across many sectors, which underscores that the nation's economic recovery is gathering steam and raises hopes for stronger hiring in coming months.
The private sector actually added 233,000 jobs in February, the Labor Department said, but the net gain was dragged down by the loss of 6,000 more government jobs. Government shed an average of 22,000 jobs per month in 2011, so that negative trend is weakening.
Losing an hour, gaining daylight
WASHINGTON - As if you weren't already sleep deprived, you'll get an hour less shuteye Saturday night no matter what time you turn out the lights.
At 2 a.m. local time Sunday, daylight saving time, that harbinger of spring, arrives with the promise of longer, light-filled days well into the evening.
Turn that clock ahead , remember, spring forward , before heading to bed Saturday night to avoid the panic of rising later than you think.
Commentary: Public dole helps more than just the poor
The ongoing debate about public assistance has been lopped sided for far too long. Many of the people who complain about welfare recipients receiving a couple hundred dollars a month, in addition to food stamps, are also reliant upon the government. It’s just that they either don’t notice or ignore that inconvenient fact.
A recently-released study out of Cornell University showed that 44 percent of Social Security recipients, 43 percent of those receiving unemployment benefits, and 40 percent of those on Medicare claim to have not used a government program.
'Occupy' as a business model: The emerging open-source civilisation
The Occupy Wall Street movement is a model for a new economic paradigm, in which value is first created by communities.
Chiang Mai, Thailand - Last week I discussed the value crisis of contemporary capitalism: the broken feedback loop between the productive publics who create exponentially increasing use value, and those who capture this value through social media - but do not return these income streams to the value "produsers".
In other words, the current so-called "knowledge economy" is a sham and a pipe dream - because abundant goods do not fare well in a market economy. For the sake of the world's workers, who live in an increasingly precariousness situation, is there a way out of this conundrum? Can we restore the broken feedback loop?
Strangely enough, the answer may be found in the recent political movement that is Occupy, because along with "peer producing their political commons", they also exemplified new business and value practices. These practices were, in fact, remarkably similar to the institutional ecology that is already practiced in producing free software and open hardware communities. This is not a coincidence.
America's Occupy Wall Street turns online for basics
Japanese forced to rebuild on unsafe ground
Efforts to relocate tsunami-devastated coastal communities to higher ground run into bureaucratic obstacles.
[ ... ]
Some of that money is to be used to relocate devastated coastal communities to safer, higher ground, but as yet there are still no concrete plans to do this.
Death toll climbs after Israeli raids on Gaza
At least 15 Palestinians have been killed and a dozen others wounded, including children, in a series of Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources have said.
[ ... ]
An airstrike late on Friday struck down three Palestinians after an Apache helicopter fired rockets that hit a house and a car, medics told Al Jazeera.
An earlier strike targeted the leader of Popular Resistance Committees, Zuhair Al-Qaissi, and his military escort Mahmoud Al-Hannani, a Palestinian prisoner released from Israeli jails five years ago.
Assad tells Annan 'terrorists' block solution
Former UN chief visits Syria as attacks continue, while Russia and Arab nations agree in Cairo on need to halt violence.
President Bashar al-Assad has told Kofi Annan, the UN and Arab League envoy, that no political solution is possible in Syria while "terrorist" groups are destabilising the country.
"Syria is ready to make a success of any honest effort to find a solution for the events it is witnessing," state news agency SANA quoted Assad as telling his guest in Damascus on Saturday.
"No political dialogue or political activity can succeed while there are armed terrorist groups operating and spreading chaos and instability," the Syrian leader said after about two hours of talks with the former UN secretary-general.
There was no immediate comment from Annan after the meeting, aimed at halting bloodshed that has cost thousands of lives since a popular uprising erupted a year ago.
Gotta be kidding me.
MF Global Holdings Executives to Get Bonuses If Court Approves
The MF Global Holdings Ltd. (MFGLQ) executives who oversaw the company before it failed last year should get bonuses this year if a bankruptcy court approves, said Frank Piantidosi, an adviser working with the trustee, Louis Freeh. A senator objected to Freeh in a letter.
The compensation packages are still being prepared, and would apply to Chief Operating Officer Bradley Abelow, General Counsel Laurie Ferber and Chief Financial Officer Henri J. Steenkamp, Piantidosi of Freeh Group International Solutions LLC said in an e-mail.
China Has Biggest Trade Shortfall Since 1989 on Europe Turmoil
China had its largest trade deficit since at least 1989 last month as Europe’s sovereign-debt turmoil damped exports and imports rebounded after a weeklong holiday.
The shortfall was $31.5 billion, the customs bureau said yesterday. Imports rose 39.6 percent from a year earlier, after a 15.3 percent slump in January, while exports increased 18.4 percent, the bureau said. Data in the first two months are distorted by the timing of the Lunar New Year holiday, which fell in January this year and February in 2011.