Almost here. Go enjoy the disturbingly good weather, drink a beer or just lie on a grassy southwest-facing hillside and feel the sunset on your face.
Open thread.
by Tim F| 79 Comments
This post is in: Dog Blogging, Open Threads
Almost here. Go enjoy the disturbingly good weather, drink a beer or just lie on a grassy southwest-facing hillside and feel the sunset on your face.
Open thread.
by JPK| 33 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Mighty Diamonds, “Go Seek Your Rights” (1976)
This came up a few times this week and sounded so good. Talk about your own songs of the week, or treat as an open thread.
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Excellent Links, Foreign Affairs, Open Threads
Well, here’s a new extremely political campaign for the horse-race addicts to worrit. The World Bank, “an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programs”, will be choosing a new president in June. All former WB presidents have been Americans, because of the Golden Rule: Those that have the gold, make the rules. Felix Salmon, Reuter‘s finance blogger, reports that this year’s race is different:
Lesley Wroughton has the wonderful news: two very highly qualified non-American candidates — Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Jose Antonio Ocampo — are going to be nominated to be president of the World Bank. This really puts the pressure on the White House to knock it out of the park with their nomination, because Ngozi, in particular, is broadly regarded both within and outside the Bank as being pretty much perfect for the job. She’s a whip-smart economist, she’s honest, she’s imaginative, she’s dedicated, she’s expert at navigating the Bank’s labyrinthine bureaucracy and politics, and she’s passionate about the way that the Bank can really make the world a better place…
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Now that Ngozi’s in the running, the US is going to find it incredibly difficult to nominate a relatively low-profile person like Susan Rice, because it’s almost impossible to make a credible case that Rice is a superior candidate to Ngozi on the merits. And other big names seem to be falling away:U.S. Senator John Kerry and PepsiCo’s Indian-born CEO Indra Nooyi also made an Obama administration shortlist, according to a source, although Kerry has publicly ruled out the job and Nooyi is no longer in contention, according to another source.
This is really bad news, because by a process of elimination it more or less forces Obama to go with Larry Summers. Larry would be a dreadful nominee, and a worse president, in a job whose primary prerequisite is diplomacy. And before he’s even nominated, there’s already a website up, ForgetLarry.org, devoted to campaigning against him for the job. It covers pretty much all the bases, although it weirdly misses the Russia/Shleifer scandal: for that, check out Cathy O’Neil’s post from a couple of weeks ago.
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I’ve talked to a fair number of people about this position, including a few who are quite sympathetic to Larry, and not one of them thinks that he would be good in the post. If the US forced the world to choose between Larry and Ngozi, it would have to expend an astonishing amount of diplomatic capital to twist the requisite number of arms to get him the job, just because no one would actually want to vote for him. Their hearts would be with Ngozi…
I certainly don’t know enough about international economics to judge anybody’s fitness, but I do know enough recent history to agree that Larry Summers should not be considered for any position other than ‘premiere test subject in the Soylent Green factory’. (I can’t be the only person planning never to forgive Summers for his ‘thought experiment’ suggesting that toxic industries should be shipped to “less developed countries”, where life and the environment were cheap.) Felix Salmon’s suggestion for the ideal candidate, on the other hand, is going to enrage a certain portion of the Obama Administration’s self-described base. Anybody with a better grasp of the topic want to help the rest of us understand?
And what else is on the agenda for the end of another workweek?
Early Morning Open Thread: Global FinanceeringPost + Comments (70)
by John Cole| 40 Comments
This post is in: Excellent Links
Heard this two days ago in the grocery. It was faint at first, while I was checking out the avocados, then when I walked down the spice aisle, I knew what I was hearing:
It’s been banging around my over-sized cranium for two days, and after thirty minutes of fruitless attempts to sleep tonight with this song playing over and over again, I thought I needed to share. There’s just something haunting about the female vocalist singing “All I know—we’ve got to change what’s happening, Something good could happen.” Unlike most ear worms I want to get rid of, I just love this song for some reason, but I felt I needed to share so I could sleep.
I’m a giver like that, you know.
Also, too:
Ahh, Athens, GA. One of the best 5 days of my life. Up there with Madison, WI, and Austin, TX.
Your Late Night Ear Worm- Where’s My Umbrella EditionPost + Comments (40)
This post is in: Cooking, Open Threads
From our Food Goddess, TaMara:
It’s suppose to be record warm temperatures this weekend, so it’s not quite soup weather. I do expect either at least one more big snow or some spring rains (hopefully), so it is still soup season in my mind. I love soups and fall-winter-spring lunches are often homemade soup. Quick and easy to take to work and reheat. I make a big pot on Sunday and it usually gets me through the week, add fruit or salad and lunch is cheap and healthy.
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This week I made a pot of Creamy Potato Soup and almost immediately knew what I really wanted was the Italian potato soup I usually make. So that is my plan this evening, to put together a pot of this:
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Zuppa Toscana8 oz ground beef or (4 0z ground beef & 4 oz spicy sausage)
6 green onions, chopped (including greens)
2 tsp crushed garlic, divided
6 -8 medium potatoes, sliced thin (do not peel)
3 cups chicken broth (or equivalent)
3 cups water
2 cups milk
2 tsp to 1 tbsp dried basil, crushed
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
salt & pepper to taste
1 cup spinach or kale, chopped
grated Parmesan
Large dutch oven or saucepan
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Heat pan and brown ground beef, onion and 1 tsp garlic. Remove and set aside. Add chicken broth, water and potatoes to pan, bring to a boil and cook until potatoes are tender. Add meat mixture, spices and milk and let simmer on medium-low, stirring occasionally to makes sure milk doesn’t scald. Just before serving, add spinach or kale and let simmer 2 minutes. Serve with grated Parmesan.
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Now hit the comments and share your favorite soups, potato or otherwise. Next week: Chicken & Vegetables
by John Cole| 96 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Have at it.
This post is in: Because of wow., Post-racial America, Assholes, Teabagger Stupidity
Time to move the Ni-CLANG clock one minute closer to midnight:
John Hood, president of the conservative North Carolina-based John Locke Foundation, has apologized for a very special graphic that one of his bloggers, “Hot Talk WRNN co-host Tara Servatius,” included in her post for the think tank’s blog this week. What is the controversy? All it did was show “President Obama in chains and drag with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.” What is the controversy? Everyone loves Kentucky Fried Chicken! And look, Tara Servatius says she “didn’t think about the racial implications of the picture when I posted it. I simply don’t think in those terms.” She’s a fun one.
It’s really just absolutely killing them that Obama is black. They’ve all completely lost their minds in incoherent rage, and they are so filled with repressed hostility that every now and then they lose track of the plot and something like this slips out.
And how is it even remotely possible that you wouldn’t think of the racial implications of Obama in chains and drag with a bucket of fried chicken between his legs? How?