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.
|
Good Morning!
To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of year, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be
~Rachel Carson~
photo: frandor55
News
Syria Clashes Kill At Least 17 In Deraa
At least 17 people have been killed after the Syrian army shelled the southern city of Deraa, according to opposition activists.
The death toll in Deraa, where the uprising against Bashar al-Assad's regime first began in March 2011, was reported by the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Obama Administration Making U.S. Media Its Mouthpiece
The Obama White House's extreme fixation on secrecy is shaped by a bizarre paradox. One the one hand, the current administration has prosecuted double the number of whistleblowers – government employees who leak classified information showing high-level official wrongdoing – than all previous administrations combined.
Obama officials have also, as ACLU lawyers documented this week in the Guardian, resisted with unprecedented vigor any attempts to subject their conduct to judicial review or any form of public disclosure, by insisting to courts that these programs are so secretive that the US government cannot even confirm or deny their existence without damaging US national security..
Drone Strikes To Continue Until Pakistan Shows Proper Respect
KABUL, Afghanistan — Expressing both public and private frustration with Pakistan, the Obama administration has unleashed the CIA to resume an aggressive campaign of drone strikes in Pakistani territory over the last few weeks, approving strikes that might have been vetoed in the past for fear of angering Islamabad.
Bernie Sanders Sees Threatening Aggressiveness Among Ruling Class
There is,” the senator says, “an aggressiveness out there among the ruling class of this country, among the billionaires who are saying: ‘You know what? Ya, we got a whole lot now, but we want even more. And we don’t give a damn about the middle class. We don't care about working families. We want it all. And now we can buy it.’ ”
Referring to Wisconsin as a “testing ground” for the no-limits campaign spending that has been ushered in by the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, Sanders said, “I have a deep concern that what we saw in Wisconsin can happen in any state throughout this country and in the presidential election.”
Voters Reject Public Pensions, & Worker Rights
In 2008, the choice before Bush, and then Obama, was clear. They could hand taxpayer resources to Wall Street and oversee a series of budget crises in states and localities, with the opportunity for later privatization of public assets and the breaking of public sector unions.
Or Bush, and then Obama, could crack down on Wall Street, and make sure that bailout monies went to states and localities, and, with record low interest rates, spur tremendous investment in new energy, infrastructure, and education initiatives. It was a choice. Bush picked Wall Street. Obama also picked Wall Street, with public sector unions supporting Obama like turkeys cheering on Thanksgiving.
Dramatic Decline Of Microscopic Life In BP's Oiled Beaches
The damage may be invisible to the naked eye but researchers report dramatic changes to the community of microbes living in the sands along shorelines oiled by BP's Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.
These communities of the very small—comprised of microscopic worms, fungi, protists, algae, and the larval stages of larger species less than a millimeter in size—underpin vital ecosystem functions in the ocean. They provide food and nutrients for other species, churn the sediments, and contribute to the cycling of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur within marine ecosystems.
Lawsuit Challenges EPA's Failure To Protect Wildlife From Lead Poisoning
Millions of nontarget birds and other wildlife are poisoned each year from scavenging carcasses containing lead-bullet fragments or from ingesting spent lead-shot pellets. Spent ammunition causes lead poisoning in 130 species of birds and animals and frequently kills bald eagles, trumpeter swans and endangered California condors, especially condors in Arizona, where lead is the leading cause of these birds’ deaths.
Nearly 500 scientific papers document the dangers to wildlife from this kind of lead exposure. Lead ammunition also poses health risks for people eating game contaminated with lead bullet fragments.
Recovery? What Recovery?
The jobs figures reflect a big structural problem in the U.S. economy. Real wages have been steadily dropping since the 1970s. We’re creating a permanent class of unemployed and underemployed. And there’s no help on the way from government or private sector, both of which are cutting back and laying off. Even if we got “up” to 125,000 new jobs a month, that would still leave at least 8.1 million people who lost jobs between 2007 and 2010 out of work.
That’s a huge hole. Taking Obama at his Half True word of 15,000 net new jobs a month, it would take 45 years to find gigs for the victims of the 2007-to-2010 subprime mortgage meltdown. Only something big and dramatic, like a new FDR-style Works Progress Administration, could fill it. “Normal” post-recession growth can’t do it. And this recovery—if you can call it that—is anemic at best
.
Only 13.5 % Of Food Workers Earn A Liveable Wage
.......the majority of these workers take home crummy wages and few benefits, according to a new report from the Food Chain Workers Alliance. Perhaps most strikingly, among workers surveyed by the FCWA, only 13.5 percent made a liveable wage (an amount FCWA defines as higher than 150 percent of the regional poverty level). And not a single agricultural worker of around the 90 surveyed said they earned enough to live on.
Palermo Villa Pizza Forced To Shut Down Production Lines Due To Employee Strike
They are also attempting to form an employee union, but Palermo Villa management has threaten employees with termination, if they join the picket line. There are about 130 employees at the plant.
Temporary services have been trying to provide workers, but many of them don’t return after experiencing the hard work at the plant. Temporary workers are paid $7.50 an hour by the agencies compared to local employees who get between $9.00 to $13.00 and hour depending on seniority or years of employment at Palermo’s Pizza located in the Menomonee Valley
David Harvey: Occupy Movement Seeks To Reclaim Cities For Its Residents
David Harvey, theorist and author of Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution, compares the Occupy movement to the Paris commune of the 19th century and concludes that its aims are similar: to take back and reshape the cities to which its members belong. He also discusses the way in which the movement has changed the political debate in the US in the wake of the financial crisis
Famous Recognizable People Can Also Be War Criminals
If the Transportation Security Administration wants to fix its poor public image, it might want to stop patting down recognizable passengers such as former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Japan Has Become A Pet Superpower
Many Japanese women like Horikoshi prefer pets to parenthood. Startlingly, in a country panicking over its plummeting birthrate, there are now many more pets than children. While the birthrate has been falling dramatically and the average age of Japan's population has been steadily climbing, Japan has become a pet superpower. Official estimates put the pet population at 22 million or more, but there are only 16.6 million children under 15.
Blog Posts of Interest
The Evening Blues -6-8-12 on Daily Kos by joe shikspack