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You are here: Home / Open Threads / By Popular Demand, an Open Thread

By Popular Demand, an Open Thread

by Betty Cracker|  April 11, 20142:23 pm| 38 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Politics

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Well, at least one person asked for it. Also, President Obama praised outgoing HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at a Rose Garden briefing:

“Under Kathleen’s leadership, her team at HHS turned the corner, got it fixed, got the job done,” Obama said Friday in a Rose Garden ceremony. “And the final score speaks for itself.”

Scoreboard! He also announced her successor, budget chief Sylvia Mathews Burwell.

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Previous Post: « Defining Activism
Next Post: A specter is haunting the United States — the specter of oligarchy »

Reader Interactions

38Comments

  1. 1.

    schrodinger's cat

    April 11, 2014 at 2:25 pm

    That one person would be me. Thanks Betty!

  2. 2.

    schrodinger's cat

    April 11, 2014 at 2:26 pm

    My friend has a kickstarter for her next album and I have a post about it here. Take a look, I have also embedded one of her videos from her first album. Kthx!

  3. 3.

    NotMax

    April 11, 2014 at 2:34 pm

    Poor timing, with the Senate about to go on a two week break.

    Gives the GOP dirt machine that extra time to manufacture spurious allegations before confirmation hearings.

  4. 4.

    schrodinger's cat

    April 11, 2014 at 2:35 pm

    @NotMax: The Senate sure takes a lot of breaks.

  5. 5.

    Amir Khalid

    April 11, 2014 at 2:36 pm

    I saw Rio 2 today and liked it. It’s not the greatest animated movie ever made, sure. It doesn’t even try very hard. It’s just a cartoon with lots of gags, most of them funny; lots of movement and colour and authentic Brazilian atmosphere; a busy and engaging plot; and best of all, Anne Hathaway sings! It’s worth way more than its 46% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

  6. 6.

    NotMax

    April 11, 2014 at 2:37 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat

    Politickin’ is hard.

    (You can’t see it, but promise my fingers are crossed right now.)

  7. 7.

    Thoughtcrime

    April 11, 2014 at 2:37 pm

    Spiking the ball!

  8. 8.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    April 11, 2014 at 2:38 pm

    Just stumbled across this and immediately thought of His Floofiness:

    On the first day of Christmas
    my true DOG sent to me
    A Fat Cat in a Fur Tree

  9. 9.

    Mnemosyne

    April 11, 2014 at 2:39 pm

    Going to a screenwriting symposium tomorrow, then hopefully a reasonably lazy Sunday. We’ve both decided we like the apartment complex we looked at if we can get the layout we want at a not-crazy price, so now I get to start pre-packing for a move that will happen at some point in the next few months. Probably.

  10. 10.

    dww44

    April 11, 2014 at 2:41 pm

    I find it a bit ironic that since the promotion of a boycott of Koch Brothers owned products, including handy lists of their products, the only coupons being offered for grocery store paper products seem to be by Georgia Pacific. No Kimberly Clark coupons;No P & G coupons. Both in the Sunday coupon newspaper ads and the checkout printouts from my Kroger.

    The Koch brothers seem to be aware of the nascent boycott efforts and they are doubling down to keep their market share. Gonna take some effort to avoid their products, but I’m trying to do it.

  11. 11.

    Mandalay

    April 11, 2014 at 2:51 pm

    They may be cheese eating surrender monkeys but they refuse to bow to Mammon!…

    New labour laws in France now make it illegal for workers in the digital and consultancy sectors – including the French offices of Google, Facebook, Deloitte and PwC – to respond to work emails after 6pm.

    Staff will be ordered to switch off their professional phones, and companies must ensure that their employees come under no pressure to look at work-related emails or documents on their tablets or computers.

    France’s strict labour laws saw Apple fined for making staff in France work nights last year, as the law forbids shifts between 9pm and 6am unless the work plays an important role in the economy or is socially useful. Its 35-hour week, introduced in 1999, has come under threat from the increasingly widespread use of smartphones.

    At least they are not as subversive and anti-American as the Swedes:

    A city council in Sweden is set to cut the number of hours its staff members work down to just six – while keeping them on full pay.

    The controversial economic experiment will see municipal workers in Gothenburg, the country’s second-largest city, become guinea pigs in a trial lasting at least one year.

    The council’s ruling coalition of left-wing Social Democrat and Green parties has proposed reducing one department to 30-hour working weeks while keeping another unchanged as a control.

  12. 12.

    Mnemosyne

    April 11, 2014 at 2:53 pm

    Also, since this is an open thread, I thought I’d alert people that friend of the blog(ger) Wiley Cash’s first novel, A Land More Kind Than Home is today’s Kindle Daily Deal — only $1.99.

  13. 13.

    Josie

    April 11, 2014 at 3:06 pm

    Since Ms. Burwell was so easily confirmed for her former position, it should be interesting to see the pretzels the Republicans turn themselves into in order to vote against her for this one.

  14. 14.

    NotMax

    April 11, 2014 at 3:11 pm

    Just realized Passover is coming up, which means have to lay in a full year’s worth of Matzo Farfel* while it is on the shelves to make one of life’s satisfying culinary pleasures – matzo brei.

    One of the very few foods which demand a decent amount of salt, which the recipe linked curiously omits.

    My preference is for a scrambled version including some onion rather than the omelet style. But either way, yum yum. Thousands of variations – another method is to start toasting the dampened matzo pieces in the pan before pouring in the eggs. An alternative school of cooking thought goes for a sweet version, omitting onion and adding some sugar and extra butter, then serving with sour cream and applesauce.

    *Handier to keep around as it now comes in resealable canisters, and no crumb mess from breaking up whole matzo by hand.

  15. 15.

    SatanicPanic

    April 11, 2014 at 3:12 pm

    @Amir Khalid: That’s a relief, I’m taking my son to see it this weekend

  16. 16.

    Roger Moore

    April 11, 2014 at 3:18 pm

    @Josie:
    It shouldn’t be hard. Now they have some job performance to hold against her.

  17. 17.

    catclub

    April 11, 2014 at 3:25 pm

    @Roger Moore: Yes, being in charge of a budget that has a deficit falling faster than any since the post WW2 era. The GOP hates having no gigantic budget deficits to rail against.

  18. 18.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    April 11, 2014 at 3:27 pm

    @dww44: P&G puts out their own coupon circular once a month. The last one was in the 3-30 paper and included Bounty and Charmin. Printables are regularly available.

    What’s amusing me is that Barilla products are constantly on sale the last few months. Almost as if the stores are having trouble moving them. Hmm.

  19. 19.

    catclub

    April 11, 2014 at 3:29 pm

    Anyone interested in the leaked CIA Torture report? I saw a summary at Political Animal.

  20. 20.

    aimai

    April 11, 2014 at 3:33 pm

    This is the first year in 16 years that I am not doing passover. We aren’t really having passover at all since Mr. Aimai and the oldest child are heading down to visit two colleges that accepted her and they won’t get back until late on Tuesday night. Its hard to get enthusaism up for a tiny four person passover anyway. I’m thinking that I might just do one for the hell of it on Friday night at the end of the week. What with the eclipse of the moon surely g-d won’t care if we muff our lunar calendar.

  21. 21.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    April 11, 2014 at 3:35 pm

    @Mandalay: The France thing is wrong; the Guardian appears to have mistranslated what happened and then used their mistake to crow about the lazy French:

    1) It isn’t a law; it’s just a contract negotiated between a union and employers, though the coverage is industry wide rather than firm specific;

    2) It doesn’t cover nearly as many people as the Guardian thinks, probably only about 25,000 rather than the 1 million they claimed;

    3) It doesn’t forbid working after 6pm, unless your work day starts at 5am. Instead, it says that the covered workers can’t work more than 13 hours in a day and need an 11 hour break between shifts;

    4) It isn’t clear that there’s any sort of enforcement mechanism.

    So The Guardian pretty much botched the whole thing.

  22. 22.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    April 11, 2014 at 3:36 pm

    @catclub: I haven’t seen that the whole report has been leaked, just a summary.

  23. 23.

    PurpleGirl

    April 11, 2014 at 3:37 pm

    @NotMax: I had my back surgery at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan. The morning I was to leave Matzo Brei was on the menu for breakfast and at first they weren’t going to give me breakfast. But I called to the patient advocate that I wasn’t leaving until the late afternoon and I wanted breakfast. I wanted the Matzo Brei. It was brought to me. Yay. (They also did bring me lunch.)

  24. 24.

    amk

    April 11, 2014 at 3:48 pm

    @Josie: The gopers can twist all they want. Harry has nuked them preemptively.

  25. 25.

    Joel

    April 11, 2014 at 3:50 pm

    If you ever wondered who James O’Keefe worked for…

    Wisconsin state Senate President Mike Ellis (R), who has held elected office in the state since 1970, on Friday dropped his bid for reelection, according to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Ellis made the move two days after he was featured in conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe’s latest hidden-camera video project. . . .

    In the video, Ellis can also be heard criticizing Gov. Scott Walker (R). The Journal Sentinal reported that Ellis “frustrated” many fellow Republicans last year when he fought to “curtail [Walker’s] plans to expand voucher schools statewide, a battle that resulted in a watered-down version of Walker’s plan getting signed into law.”

  26. 26.

    opiejeanne

    April 11, 2014 at 3:52 pm

    Could someone please remind me of the name of the book written by John Cole’s friend? The name was something like A Land More Kind than Home.

    I saw it mentioned earlier on another thread and can’t find it now.

    Thanks.

  27. 27.

    catclub

    April 11, 2014 at 3:52 pm

    @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Yeah, just a summary.
    But it is friday afternoon, so we can hope. Maybe next friday, which is Good Friday.

  28. 28.

    Mnemosyne

    April 11, 2014 at 4:01 pm

    @opiejeanne:

    See #12 in this very thread. With a link!

  29. 29.

    Jay C

    April 11, 2014 at 4:10 pm

    @catclub:

    The GOP hates having no gigantic budget deficits to rail against.

    So? They’ll just have to content themselves railing against smaller ones!

    As long as the Federal Government anywhere, at any time, is helping any American in the lower economic quintiles in any form whatsoever, there will be some Republican officeholder railing against any “deficit” whatsoever. Hell, back in the late ’90s the Republicans railed against budget surpluses ! Why should they stop now?

  30. 30.

    kc

    April 11, 2014 at 4:10 pm

    Where has front pager Kay been? I like all our FPers, but I’ve been missing Kay’s accounts of dedicated people doing the hard work on a local level. Hope all is well with her.

  31. 31.

    Gene108

    April 11, 2014 at 4:10 pm

    @catclub:

    Any deficit greater than zero, with a Democrat in the White House, is a budget deficit Republicans can complain about.

    They only deal in absolutes. They do not do nuance.

    For example, the debt (sum of deficits) is bigger under Obama than Bush, Jr. Therefore Obama had been more reckless with spending than Bush,Jr.

    Never mind the state of the economy and budget when each took office .

  32. 32.

    Mike E

    April 11, 2014 at 4:11 pm

    My 1st full day after registering Republican and I can feel the bile rising…must…yell…at…clouds

  33. 33.

    WaterGirl

    April 11, 2014 at 4:12 pm

    @opiejeanne: His second book is even better!

    This Dark Road to Mercy

  34. 34.

    opiejeanne

    April 11, 2014 at 4:12 pm

    @Mnemosyne: thanks! I’m in a restaurant with family and didn’t have time to search.

  35. 35.

    Bob In Portland

    April 11, 2014 at 5:57 pm

    One step closer to a loose federation.

  36. 36.

    opiejeanne

    April 11, 2014 at 6:19 pm

    @WaterGirl: already? Cool. Thanks.

    Just finished “Raising Steam” by Terry Pratchett, need something new.

  37. 37.

    opiejeanne

    April 11, 2014 at 6:20 pm

    @Mike E: why did you register Republican? I missed the explanation.

  38. 38.

    Older

    April 11, 2014 at 7:50 pm

    @aimai: Don’t older people whose kids have all left home get together with friends of like kind*, so they can laugh about the youngest person being 47?

    *not me, I don’t have any friends

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