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!
Batter Up!
(Did you know that Jack Norworth wrote over 2,500 songs, including "Shine On, Harvest Moon", and several other baseball songs, but none more famous than "Take Me Out to the Ball Game"?)
Dogs don't like ball games
Don DeLillo on baseball:
[...] baseball, not as a tired literary metaphor for American life but as a portal that Americans have traditionally used to transcend their lives.
Every baseball carries with it the history of the game, in a mysterious way that you don't find in football or tennis or basketball,'' he said, speaking as a lifetime Yankee fan who grew up in the Belmont section of the Bronx, his team's home borough. ''People have scrambled over baseballs, fought over baseballs, and the wonderful mystery of the Bobby Thomson home-run ball is in part what prompted me to write 'Underworld.' If we knew who had that baseball, it's possible I never would have begun work on the novel.'
Don DeLillo on writing:
There are so many temptations for American writers to become part of the system and part of the structure that now, more than ever, we have to resist. American writers ought to stand and live in the margins, and be more dangerous .
Crème Brûlée avec Crème Fraîche
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News
Bring baseball back to the Olympics!
Baseball and softball failed in separate bids to be reinstated for the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, but now they are combining their bid for 2020. They will be going up against six other sports, including squash, wake boarding and wushu. Can a sport played all over the world hold off squash to get back into the Olympics? If I were Pete Rose, I would bet on it.
From the Archive: We Are the Patriots
by Gore Vidal
As former Senator Alan Simpson said so cheerily on TV the other evening, "The Commander in Chief of the military will decide what the cause is. It won't be the American people." So in great matters we are not guided by law but by faith in the President, whose powerful Christian beliefs preach that "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."
In response to things not seen, the USA Patriot Act was rushed through Congress and signed forty-five days after 9/11. We are expected to believe that its carefully crafted 342 pages were written in that short time. Actually, it reads like a continuation of Clinton's post-Oklahoma City antiterrorist act.
The power of local politics, let's hope this is the way of the future. The quote in our blue blurb sums it up: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Meade
Court rules for towns in Pennsylvania fracking suit
A Pennsylvania court overturned key parts of the state's new natural gas development law that would have stripped municipalities of zoning rights and handed state agencies sole authority to determine where the controversial practice of high-volume hydraulic fracturing should occur. Critics of the law, Act 13, argued that it would have compelled municipalities to allow hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, almost anywhere a company requested, without taking into account surroundings such as nearby schools, homes and waterways.
A Wall Street Devil Gets Religion ... and an Apt Epitaph
He is Sandy Weill, the once-lionized dealmaker who turned our banks into financial "supermarkets" that tie us everyday depositors and Main Street borrowers to the profiteering schemes of unbridled Wall Street traders and the whims of global speculators. Thanks, Sandy — for nothing.
Greenpeace Discovers Sensitive Coral at Shell's Arctic Drill Site
Exploration vessels deployed by Greenpeace have discovered several coral species thriving on the ocean floor right where Shell is set to begin drilling in the Chukchi Sea.
Environmental groups have being fighting hard to prevent the oil company from starting its drilling operation, saying that the threat to the fragile arctic ecosystem is imperiled by the rush for offshore oil deposits.
“Discovering abundant corals in the Arctic waters right where Shell plans to drill this summer shows just how little is known about this fragile and unique region. Melting sea ice is not an invitation for offshore drilling in the Arctic, it’s a warning that this pristine environment should be protected and dedicated to science,” said John Hocevar, marine biologist and Oceans Campaign Director for Greenpeace USA.
Despite complications, Shell optimistic about Arctic oil drilling
Lingering sea ice, permit issues among hurdles company is facing
Shell recently approached the U.S. Department of the Interior to see if it could begin some pre-drilling work in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas before the barge arrives. ...
Shell's novel oil spill containment barge, a critical vessel that regulators say must be in the Arctic for drilling to begin, remains under construction at a shipyard in Bellingham, Wash. Shell, through its contractor Superior Energy Services, is retrofitting a 38-year-old barge [rust bucket], now called the Arctic Challenger. ...
Federal officials declined to discuss that request but say Shell won't get its drilling permits until the containment system has been tested in the water. ...
Feel the Burn: Making the 2012 Heat Wave Matter
But meteorological conditions alone do not determine whether a given heat wave is a global warming landmark; a shift in public awareness and political response is required as well. [...] neither of the main presidential candidates is providing leadership. Nobody expects it of Mitt Romney, [...] But President Obama is the great disappointment. In an April interview with Rolling Stone, he said he’d make climate change a campaign issue, but he has been shamefully silent as the heat wave dominates headlines. [...]
Actually, Obama has been worse than silent. Instead of championing—and fighting for—an ambitious program for a green economic revival, he has buckled to pressure from a fossil fuel industry that dismisses any attempt to protect the environment as a “job-killer.”
News from Canada, Native people on both sides of the border vs Enbridge
B.C. natives willing to 'go to the wall' against Enbridge pipeline
The proposed Enbridge pipeline is the largest issue ever faced by B.C.’s aboriginal community, native leader Stewart Phillip declared Monday, as he vowed a long, protracted fight, including blockades and mass protests, against the project, if it is allowed to proceed.
“Our people are prepared to go to the wall against this. There is no doubt about that,” warned Grand Chief Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs. “There is absolutely no way we will tolerate a project that would violate the environmental integrity of our traditional territories along the pipeline route and along the B.C. coast.”
Minor spill bad news for Enbridge as Northern Gateway fight escalates
“Enbridge is fast becoming to the Midwest what BP was to the Gulf of Mexico, posing troubling risks to the environment,” said Rep. Ed Markey, the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee in a statement.
Harvey Scott, the treasurer for Keepers of the Athabasca, a predominantly first nations group, said the spill is proof that existing infrastructure needs to be inspected and maintained before new projects proceed.
Blog Posts of Interest
Gore Vidal in 1948, photo by Carl Van Vechten
Gore Vidal, dead at 86 by Meteor Blades
Mr. Vidal was, at the end of his life, an Augustan figure who believed himself to be the last of a breed, and he was probably right. Few American writers have been more versatile or gotten more mileage from their talent. He published some 25 novels, two memoirs and several volumes of stylish, magisterial essays. He also wrote plays, television dramas and screenplays. For a while he was even a contract writer at MGM. And he could always be counted on for a spur-of-the-moment aphorism, putdown or sharply worded critique of American foreign policy.
Charles McGrath, New York Times
Check out Steve's tomato, "Big, bright and red"
Minimalist Photography 101 by stevej
Minimalist, Contemporary and Experimental Photography
Evening Blues by Joe Shikspack
Listen to the blues music he provides while you check the non-Romney news.
Subhankar Banerjee: Shell Game in the Arctic
From Tom Dispatch
The Obama administration has been no less reassuring. There will be a genuine federal inspector on board those drill ships 24/7. And whether you’re listening to the oil company or our government, you should just know that it’s all a beautiful dream, nothing more. When a spill happens, and it’s minus 35 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind’s howling at 65 miles per hour, and sea ice is all around you and moving, the idea that a highly trained dachshund or federal inspector will be able to do a thing is pure fantasy. Believe me, I’ve been there under those conditions and if the worst occurs, this won’t be a repeat of BP in the Gulf of Mexico (bad as that was). Help will not be available.
k d lang with a voice like silk
Excerpts from a recent k d lang interview
be yourself, creativity shouldn't be focused on the outcome, celebrate the fact that you get to be creative. Looking at it as a means to an end destroys it. Look at yourself and see yourself in your community, our daily life is important, so is interdependence. What we do is not important, it's how we do it.
My career: I've been lucky and I've worked hard.
We are ready for some serious change. We are ready to take up the tools of a free and analytic press to peacefully undermine the stranglehold of the kleptocrats on our battered democracy. We are ready to expose and publicize their greed, lies and illegal machinations and hold their enablers in government and the media to account. Are you in?
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
~ Margaret Mead
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