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 meta 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!
Gertrude Jekyll Rose, on my balcony
~ From Gertrude Stein's Book 'Geography and Plays' (1922), and the 367-line poem "Sacred Emily."
When asked what she meant by the line, "a rose is a rose is a rose," Stein said that in the time of Homer, or of Chaucer, "the poet could use the name of the thing and the thing was really there." As memory took it over, the thing lost its identity, and she was trying to recover that - "I think in that line the rose is red for the first time in English poetry for a hundred years." [in this case pink]
Drop in any time
day or night
to say hello.
News
Antarctic: Grand Canyon-sized rift 'speeding ice melt'
But how the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets respond to warmer temperatures is the biggest unknown by far in trying to predict how fast the waters will rise over the coming century and beyond.
A total melt of either sheet would raise sea levels globally by several metres.
University of Texas to Review Report on Gas Fracking Impacts
[The previous report was released Feb. 16, by Dr. Groat, who did not reveal this:]
As a board member, Groat receives 10,000 shares of restricted stock a year, according to company reports. His holdings as of March 29 totaled 40,138 shares, worth $1.6 million at the July 19 closing price. He also receives an annual fee, which was $58,500 in 2011, according to filings. Houston- based Plains Exploration is fracking in shale formations in Texas, company spokesman Ed Memi said in an e-mail.
Stolen Matisse 'recovered in US'
The painting worth $3 million was stolen approximately a decade ago from the Caracas Museum of Contemporary Art - in Venezuela.
In 2003 the museum discovered the original artwork had been replaced with a forgery after an art collector reported it was being offered for sale to agents in New York.
Up to 50 arrests at funeral for dissident Oswaldo Paya in Cuba
A video of the confrontation showed hundreds of passersby watching in stony silence. One woman is heard off-camera shouting "Viva Fidel!" But she does not get the usual "Viva!" response from the crowd and someone tells her, "No one is paying attention to you."
During the funeral mass, Paya's daughter, Rosa Maria, declared that she holds the Cuban government responsible for any harm that comes to her family "because of the repeated threats against the life of my father" over the years.
Consumer brands Helping Bankroll Attack Ads
and other right-wing causes.
Blog Posts of Interest
Artists against Fracking
WHY IS FRACKING DANGEROUS?
STOP THE FRACK ATTACK DC AND NY. Mark Ruffalo and Josh Fox
STOP THE FRACK ATTACK. DC AND NY. MARK RUFFALO AND JOSH FOX from JFOX on Vimeo.
FRACKER TRACKER Interactive Map
Tom's Dispatch
Tom Engelhardt writes:
Tomgram: Noam Chomsky, The Great Charter, Its Fate, and Ours
One thing is clear: whatever the ACLU and others do, we now live in a post-legal America, a world in which no act (other than whistleblowing), however illegal, within the national security state can be successfully prosecuted in court. This has clearly been part of a process by which, since 2001, American liberties have been turned in for “safety.”
Noam Chomsky writes:
Destroying the Commons
How the Magna Carta Became a Minor Carta
The significance of the companion charter, the Charter of the Forest, is no less profound and perhaps even more pertinent today -- as explored in depth by Peter Linebaugh in his richly documented and stimulating history of Magna Carta and its later trajectory. The Charter of the Forest demanded protection of the commons from external power. The commons were the source of sustenance for the general population: their fuel, their food, their construction materials, whatever was essential for life. The forest was no primitive wilderness. It had been carefully developed over generations, maintained in common, its riches available to all, and preserved for future generations -- practices found today primarily in traditional societies that are under threat throughout the world.
The Charter of the Forest imposed limits to privatization.
Senator Bernie Sanders
The Senate Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights held a hearing Tuesday on "Taking Back Our Democracy: Responding to Citizens United and the Rise of Super PACs" Here is Sen. Bernie Sanders' testimony:
The Road to Oligarchy
Evening Blues by Joe Shikspak
Our luxuriously appointed new web site hand-crafted entirely out of interesting insights and occasional flashes of brilliance by monks in an 11th dimension monastery, will be launching in a neighborhood near you. Watch the skies or maybe just this space.
Just kiddin'.
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"Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation."
~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
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