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. March, 2012. Photo credit: joanneleon
Character is much easier kept than recovered.
~Thomas Paine
News
Cispa will give US unprecedented access, internet privacy advocates warn
With echoes of Sopa, critics charge that bill will overturn US privacy protections in government attempts to track hackers
Washington looks set to wave through new cybersecurity legislation next week that opponents fear will wipe out decades of privacy protections at a stroke.
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (Cispa) will be discussed in the House of Representatives next week and already has the support of 100 House members.
It will be the first such bill to go to a vote since the collapse of the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) in January after global protests and a concerted campaign by internet giants such as Google, Wikipedia and Twitter.
BP proposes Gulf spill accord terms, trial delay
(Reuters) - BP Plc reached settlements to resolve billions of dollars of claims from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and asked a U.S. judge for a long delay in any trial over remaining disputes stemming from the disaster.
The London-based oil company expects under Wednesday's agreements to pay $7.8 billion to resolve economic, property and medical claims by more than 100,000 individuals and businesses.
House moves along Restore Act to help Gulf Coast
he move, said supporters, will lead to a conference committee with the Senate that will lock in how the money _ an estimated $20 billion in Clean Water Act fines _ is distributed by the states. The vote on the transportation package was 293-127.
The House already had approved the same provision setting aside 80 percent of the fines earlier this year as part of another bill which did not move in the Senate, prompting House leadership to include it as part of the transportation bill. The Senate has passed the so-called Restore Act, which sets aside 80 percent of the fines in a trust fund and allocates the funding. If the provision does not become law, the money reverts to the U.S. treasury.
SEC Beware, Money Funds Can Bring System Down
News reports suggest that the Securities and Exchange Commission may be backing away from a reform of money-market funds. This would be a mistake.
The debate over how to overhaul prime money-market funds has focused on preserving the commercial viability of these instruments while significantly lowering the threat they pose to financial stability. The latter objective should have priority.
The threat is a run by investors who believe they face impending losses on fund shares. In the two weeks after the failure of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., institutional investors reduced their investments in prime money-market funds by about 40 percent, amounting to almost $400 billion. Only a prompt guarantee by the U.S. Treasury -- a measure that is no longer a legal option -- stopped the withdrawals.
Obama’s Atomic Solyndra
The future of nuclear power now hangs on a single decision by President Obama—and us.
His Office of Management and Budget could cave to the unsustainable demands of reactor builders who cannot handle the standard terms of a loan agreement.
Or he could defend basic financial procedures and stand up for the future of the American economy.
You can help make this decision, which will come soon.
Obama's Biggest Environmental 'Victory' Was Really a Big Win for Gas Drillers
While new regulations on power plants are a hit to Big Coal, they are a boon to the gas industry.
That sounds dandy, but ending subsidies to polluters is only half the battle, and Obama's idea of a "clean-energy future" is tenuous at best. In an attempt to round up the green vote, President Obama is trumpeting his half-hearted attempt to put the breaks on global warming by tapping energy sources here at home and regulating the industry that's doing most of the damage. Only days after the president announced he was looking to fast-track the southern portion of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, his administration released the first-ever federal standards to limit greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants.
In what's now become typical Obama fashion, the move was meant to appease environmental critics while at the same time ensure the fossil fuel industry that the so-called New Source Performance Standard would not actually hurt its bottom lines.
[ ... ]
Obama is riding on the coat-tails of these victories, which is to be expected, but what's underlying the greenhouse gas rule is a bit more sinister. As concerns about the impacts of fracking continue to grow, the power plants that burn natural gas extracted through this process of pumping a mix of water, chemicals and sand deep into the earth's crust, won't be covered by the rule. Generally, natural gas plants produce less than 900 pounds of CO2 per megawatt-hour. Indeed the limit set by the EPA was not arbitrary; it directly aids and abets the natural gas industry. Obama knows quite well that natural gas is poised to be the fossil fuel of the future and his administration and the EPA are not going to stand in the way of the big boom.
How the Goldman Vampire Squid Captured Europe
The Goldman Sachs coup that failed in America has nearly succeeded in Europe—a permanent, irrevocable, unchallengeable bailout for the banks underwritten by the taxpayers.
In September 2008, Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, managed to extort a $700 billion bank bailout from Congress. But to pull it off, he had to fall on his knees and threaten the collapse of the entire global financial system and the imposition of martial law; and the bailout was a one-time affair. Paulson’s plea for a permanent bailout fund—the Troubled Asset Relief Program or TARP—was opposed by Congress and ultimately rejected.
By December 2011, European Central Bank president Mario Draghi, former vice president of Goldman Sachs Europe, was able to approve a 500 billion Euro bailout for European banks without asking anyone’s permission. And in January 2012, a permanent rescue funding program called the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) was passed in the dead of night with barely even a mention in the press. The ESM imposes an open-ended debt on EU member governments, putting taxpayers on the hook for whatever the ESM’s Eurocrat overseers demand.
Wish they had pictures with this article.
Coast Guard stops 30th drug sub
MIAMI — When reports first surfaced in the 1990s of boat builders making submarines for cocaine smugglers in the jungles of Colombia, U.S. law enforcement regarded it as a comic curiosity. Today, with the disclosure that the U.S. Coast Guard has intercepted its 30th semi-submersible in less than six years, it's now a troubling tactic.
The Coast Guard said in a news release Wednesday that two of its cutters, the Decisive and Pea Island, chased down a sub on March 30 in the Western Caribbean. It credited collaboration with the Honduran Navy.
The Coast Guard also released an eerie photo - the bow of the sub, painted with shark's teeth - disappearing beneath the surface.
'Extreme Universe' puzzle deepens
The mystery surrounding the source of the highest-energy particles known in the Universe has grown deeper.
The particles, known as cosmic rays, can show up with energies a million times higher than the biggest particle accelerators on Earth can produce.
Astrophysicists believed that only two sources could make them: supermassive black holes in active galaxies, or so-called gamma ray bursts.
A study in Nature has now all but ruled out gamma ray bursts as the cause.
The true legacy of an utopian inventor
In the summer of 1954, Buckminster Fuller was granted U.S. patent number 2,682,235 for his invention of the geodesic dome . Over the following decade, more square kilometres of earth were covered with his trussed structures than with any single other kind of architecture - including skyscrapers - leading Time Magazine to place Fuller in the same league as inventor Thomas Edison.
Half a century later, with Fuller rarely mentioned except by way of nostalgia, you might be forgiven for wondering what ever happened to him. A well-intentioned exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Utopian Impulse, seeks to answer that question, at least from the perspective of the Bay Area.
Fuller's influence in his own time was undeniably profound. His ultra-efficient low-cost domes were taken up by the military and industry, while his signature ideas about doing more with less on "spaceship Earth" were embraced by the burgeoning counterculture. His rambling full-day lectures about "anticipatory design" were practically as popular as rock concerts.
India tests nuclear-capable missile that can reach China
(Reuters) - India successfully test-fired on Thursday a nuclear-capable missile that can reach Beijing and Eastern Europe, thrusting the emerging Asian power into a small club of nations that can deploy nuclear weapons at such a great distance.
Footage showed the rocket with a range of more than 5,000 km (3,100 miles) blasting through clouds from an island off India's east coast. It was not immediately clear how far the rocket flew before reaching its target in the Indian Ocean.
The defense minister said the test was "immaculate".
CIA Seeks Expansion of Lethal Drone Program in Yemen
Intelligence agency won't acknowledge program exists, wants more of it
If approved, a request by CIA chief David Petraeus to allow US drones to fire missiles at human targets based solely on their activities viewed from thousands of miles away, would likely accelerate a campaign of U.S. airstrikes in Yemen and increase the likelihood of innocent civilian deaths, according to a report in The Washington Post.
The policy of so-called "signature strikes" is already in place in Pakistan, and allows the CIA to authorize airstrikes based on what they see as "signatures" of militant behavior — such as loading or building explosives — or when operatives on the ground behave in "known patterns" that signify an al-Qaeda leader may be present.
At least 36 killed in wave of Iraq blasts
(Reuters) - More than 20 bombs hit cities and towns across Iraq on Thursday, killing at least 36 and wounding more than 100, police and hospital sources said, raising fears of sectarian strife in a country keen to show it can now maintain security.
In Baghdad, three car bombs, two roadside bombs and one suicide car bomb hit mainly Shi'ite areas in what looked like coordinated attacks, killing 15 people and wounding 61, the sources said.
Iraq excludes Exxon Mobil from May energy auction over its deals with Kurds, official says
BAGHDAD — Iraq’s oil ministry said Thursday that the U.S. oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp. is not allowed to bid in the May energy auction because of its oil deals with the northern self-ruled Kurdish region in Iraq.
The Texas-based Exxon signed six deals with the Kurds last October to search for oil in six areas, bypassing the Baghdad government, which maintains that it must ratify all deals. Some of the deals cover areas located in a land claimed by both Kurds and Arabs.
Bahrain activists vow "days of rage" for GP
Anti-government protesters in Bahrain are planning "days of rage" directed at this weekend's Formula One Grand Prix, while security forces have rounded up dozens of activists in a clampdown on the opposition in the Gulf Arab nation.
Bizarro world.
Russia slams NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan
BRUSSELS (AP) — Russia's foreign minister sharply criticized NATO's plan to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan by 2014, saying Thursday that coalition troops should remain in the country until Afghan government forces are capable of ensuring security.
"As long as Afghanistan is not able to ensure by itself the security in the country, the artificial timelines of withdrawal are not correct and they should not be set," Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
Sudanese Fear Return to War as Al-Bashir Threatens South Sudan
An oil dispute between the two countries and the occupation of Heglig have led to a cut in crude production to less than 100,000 barrels a day from the 490,000 barrels a day before the south’s independence. Most of the crude is pumped by the China National Petroleum Corp., Malaysia’s Petroliam Nasional Bhd. and India’s ONGC Videsh Ltd.
Bashir threatens to 'cut hand' of aggressors
Sudan's president has said he will "cut" the hand of aggressors and retake the disputed oil-producing Heglig region as his country continues to clash with its southern neighbour South Sudan.
[ ... ]
Bashir threatened on Wednesday to overthrow the "insect" government in South Sudan following the attack on Heglig, Sudan's most important oil field, by troops from the south who seized it eight days ago.
"Our main goal is liberation of the southern citizens from the SPLM," he told members of Sudan's ruling National Congress Party.
The Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) is the ruling party in South Sudan.
Sudan's president says he will not surrender an inch of land as he vows to retake oil-rich Heglig from South Sudan.
More apologies.
US quick to condemn 'reprehensible' photos of troops with Afghan corpses
President Obama orders investigation and defence secretary makes several apologies as US officials try to limit damage
US military and civilian leaders have attempted to douse the latest scandal involving US troops in Afghanistan by swiftly condemning photographs which showed paratroopers grinning and posing with insurgents' mangled corpses.
President Barack Obama on Wednesday demanded an investigation and for those responsible to be held accountable, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters. "The conduct depicted in those photos is reprehensible."
New Afghanistan war photos part of a long, controversial tradition
WASHINGTON — In the picture, victory is portrayed by the winner’s arms thrust wide in celebration, a boot near the head of a fallen enemy.
It’s not another photograph of U.S. troops in Afghanistan showing another “serious error in judgment.” It’s a painting that still hangs in the Kansas Statehouse in Topeka, and it shows Civil War-era anti-slavery crusader John Brown expressing the joy of victory after a brutal fight.