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There I go again, leaving things on the table to be ingested as a pile of links.
• Harry Reid pushed through a cloture vote on a small business bill yesterday, going through a process that was supposed to be discontinued under the gentlemen’s agreement. The other half of that agreement is that Reid would allow amendments in exchange for no filibusters on the motion to proceed. Republicans are still filibustering, but Reid will allow an amendment to block the EPA’s greenhouse gas regulation. I love gentlemen’s agreements when only one side is composed of gentlemen.
• Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins rejected the stripping of Planned Parenthood funds. And by “rejected,” I mean “voted for them last week.”
• The official death toll in the Sendai earthquake and tsunami is above 2,400 but many more are expected, reaching above 10,000. Meanwhile, the danger at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor is unknown even to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. We know at least that the pools containing the spent fuel rods could eventually prove themselves to be a greater threat than a meltdown of the damaged radioactive cores. The 50 workers left at Fukushima must be absolutely terrified.
• The latest fad in Wisconsin, which has been occurring since the Governor announced the budget repair bill to strip collective bargaining rights, is for local governments and school boards to renegotiate contracts with their local unions before they lose the right to do so. In Madison, the mayor just announced a deal with city workers, where unions offered some concessions. This is happening in Ohio as well. It’s essentially how collective bargaining should work, with labor and management allocating resources and coming to agreements. This is the process Scott Walker had to bust up.
• Meanwhile, a complaint has been filed with the Wisconsin Attorney General, alleging that State Sen. Randy Hopper, he with the soon-to-be-ex-wife who signed his recall petition, doesn’t live in his district anymore and is therefore ineligible to serve.
• Great article from Inside Milwaukee on the prospects of the various recall elections in Wisconsin.
• Republicans will introduce a series of bills in the House to strip parts of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation. If the bill were in any way strong or up to the task of the industry, or not about to be weakened merely by the implementation process, I would care more.
• The Republicans’ own study from the Joint Economic Committee does not even guarantee that their plan to cut massive spending in the 2011 fiscal year will create jobs in the near term.
• What Jonathan Bernstein said. Republicans, when given the ability to govern in a fairly unilateral fashion, seek maximum political advantage by defunding and defanging their opponents. Democrats, when given the same opportunity, do nothing of the sort.
• As a Californian, I am unlikely to rest easy from this news, but given that I generally accept science, I might not stock up on potassium iodide.
• Energy Secretary Steven Chu told a House hearing that the Administration remained committed to nuclear power, but wants to “learn from Japan’s experience.”
• Now the White House is talking about transferring seized Gadhafi funds to the Libyan rebels so they can purchase arms and supplies, and no, I don’t know what authority they have to do this either.
• Earl Blumenauer called the firing of PJ Crowley for telling the truth about Bradley Manning’s treatment “outrageous.”
• The House is rushing a vote to defund NPR before anyone realizes that James O’Keefe’s video was heavily edited nonsense.
• At least two more dead in clashes in Bahrain, which is now under a state of emergency.
• This doesn’t mean the President will lose re-election, especially given the rapid removal of the bloom from the rose of Republican victory in 2010, but I don’t expect the same enthusiasm for Obama from the same circles. If he wants enthusiastic volunteers, he may have to pay for them.
• Congratulations to Greg Sargent for winning a Hillman Foundation award for his coverage of the Wisconsin protests. And thanks to him for mentioning me in his thank-you post.
• Rep. Dean Heller (R) will run for the seat vacated by John Ensign, which may lead to three of the four Congressional seats in Nevada being open, if Shelley Berkley (D) decides to run against him. Nevada picks up an additional seat this next cycle through reapportionment.
• Chuck Schumer has become the message mouthpiece for Democrats, but outside of coming up with a few good lines, I don’t really know what he’s doing that’s been successful.
• The Egyptian State Security agency is no more, dissolved by the new Prime Minister.
• Haley Barbour’s press secretary is out after joking about Japan in private emails. I don’t know that anyone should be fired for private email conversations.
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wouldn’t it be interesting if this passed.
translation: wait till the fuss is over, and then proceed as planned. somebody posted here, that they won’t actually build any, just keep shovelling money to his patrons in that industry. seems like a reasonable possibility.
BP just got a deep water drilling permit from Barrack. Each day, the mountain of proof of what he really represents grows, like a garbage dump.
“…teens and 20-somethings were quickly smitten by this different-sounding, different-looking kind of candidate.” – Washington Post
Yes, we were all -literally and/or figuratively- a bunch of silly little children. If only we had the wisdom to listen to the insane, babbling Right!
Obama blew a historic opportunity. Shame on him, and maybe if he lowers himself enough by begging for votes around the country he’ll get a second chance. But, considering his personal development in the first part of his presidency, he simply does not deserve a second chance. Let the nutjobs throw the nation over a clif -again!- so progressives can have another go at reform.
Here’s Michael Moore on actions in Michigan.
Assurance from Homeland Security, delivered from the top:
Napolitano: US drills for disasters like Japan’s LINK.
By the way, Randy Hopper’s trying the I-do-so-live-in-my-district gambit by claiming he has an apartment in Fond du Lac. Except the address given for the place leads not to an apartment, but the $600,000 mansion of one of the top employees in Hopper’s media company!
I shit thee not.
edit
Barbour’s Press Secretary — a public employee writing emails from his workplace addressed to work colleagues to accompany the press clips he collects as part of his official job description on the state governor’s payroll — wasn’t writing private emails, as I just explained.
Randy Hopper
His name still makes me laugh every time I think that the reason he couldn’t be found at home was because he was, um, elsewhere in another woman’s bed.
Yeah, Janet, I vividly remember the last emergency drill I participated in as a citizen of, once, California and, now, Oregon. Also, previously: North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. Like, never.
That’s the thing about smitting: you can get unsmit just as quick.
Here’s what the baggers have done in Ohio.
Ohio’s schools chief is forced to resign
Delisle lacks support of Kasich’s appointees to school board
LINK.
And here’s what they’re intending to do to young females:
Ohio House passes new restrictions on abortions for minors LINK.
from @BBCWorld on twitter
“0056: Japan’s central bank has injected a further $43bn (£26.75bn) into the money markets to ease the impact of quake, the Associated Press reports”
And another one bites the dust.
Miami-Dade voters recall Mayor Carlos Alvarez
With 75 percent of the precinct votes counted, 88 percent voted to oust the mayor. Just 12 percent were in favor of allowing Alvarez to finish his term. LINK.
Here’s the skinny:
“But it turned out that Alvarez, one of the few Miami politicos with a reputation for probity, was at the same time raising high-level staffers’ salaries as high as 15% while calling for a 5% cut for county workers; he also used his government car allowance to help pay for a new luxury BMW 550i Gran Turismo. Couple that with the fact that the Miami-Dade County Commission, which passed Alvarez’s tax hike, is widely considered a feckless body – many of its members recently ran up hundreds of thousands of dollars in police overtime costs with the all-too-common practice of using cops as their personal chauffeurs – and you can expect a bruising backlash.” LINK.
One month after two executed prisoners unsuccessfully raised the same concerns, the DEA seized Georgia’s stash of lethal injection drugs apparently because they were expired and may have been imported illegally.
Oh well.
http://www.ajc.com/news/dea-seizes-georgias-supply-873788.html
One might add to your list that today is the 8th anniversary of Rachel Corrie’s death in Gaza. Here’s a poem I created from her last email to her parents:
The Recall Elections Blog debuts.
Beautifully done! My hat’s off to you.
evidence please?
IRS Gives $356 Million to Companies that Owe Taxes
“According to the IRS, 11% of the 535 companies with contracts at the agency (or 61 businesses) were delinquent in paying federal taxes totaling $10.6 million.”
LINK.
Does anyone have a link to information about O’Keefe’s latest work of fiction?
It’s another indictment of the lamestream media that they continue to accept the garbage that O’Keefe creates.
You don’t have to listen to the right… you can listen, instead, to people who have looked at Obama’s astrological chart.
That moon in the 7th house was a dead giveaway that he would be all talk and no action, not to mention someone who many people projected their ideals on…
Hope this helps.