Filibuster to be busted

This might be the week that the Senate goes nuclear on Presidential nominations.

Amid acrimony, Senate moves toward historic vote to change its rules
 

"Reid said he planned to use a party-line vote to change the Senate’s rules so that nominees can be confirmed by a simple majority, thereby doing an end run around a Republican blockade of nominees to key boards that oversee Wall Street and labor relations.

The method for changing the rules would require a ruling from the presiding officer, likely to be Vice President Biden, declaring filibusters on such Cabinet or agency nominations invalid, followed by a vote requiring 51 votes to uphold the ruling."

It's in the Republicans power to fix this.  They can confirm several nominees this week and show that they still can cooperate.  If they don't, they deserve to lose the power they've been wieldng.

And the Democrats do, too.  Presidential nominees shouldn't be filibustered.  It's about running the country like a business.  But as we've seen, the Republicans don't want the country to run well, and they hope the ruling party in the White House will get more of the blame.  So far, this strategy isn't working.

Update on the Russian meteor (and subsequent meteorites)

Remember the asteroid/meteor that exploded over Russia early this year?  Well, they've done some analyses of some small pieces of it -- and guess what, it's a space rock.  Actually, a chondrite. 


Russian Chelyabinsk meteorite pieces go under microscope

In other Russian meteorite news, if you remember that they found a big round hole in a lake under the big boom, the performance of a bottom survey found an apparent much bigger piece of the rock.  But they haven't brought it up yet.

Huge chunk of meteorite located in Urals lake

 Also, apparently it wasn't hard to find pieces of this rock in the snow:

Chelyabinsk mega-meteor:  Status Report
[This article, by the way, says that they don't know if what's on the bottom of the lake is a piece of the meteor body at all, and it's covered with silt.)

"Meanwhile, even simple Russian peasants quickly realized that rocks falling from outer space are worth plenty of rubles. Although deep snow covered the region at the time, winter's blanket actually made finding fragments relatively easy. Eager searchers simply looked for small, deep tunnels in the drifts. A few seconds digging by hand down into the snow frequently revealed a piece of stone. Some holes became partly filled with icy particles that adhered to the meteorite and sintered together into relatively hard cylinders, yielding the weird cosmic snow cones like those seen at right."

So, they've found little pieces of the space rock and it was definitely a space rock.  But the big find might still be on the bottom of the lake.   Considering how much money it would be worth, I expect some entrepeneur to go fishing for it eventually.

What's the most telling statistic here?

The HuffingtonPost had an article about a poll comparing the public's assessment of who is more to blame for the inaction and massive inertia at the heart of our Government.  The results here should be noted by the Senate GOP that's getting very worried about the Dems changing the filibuster rules so as to allow the duly-elected President the ability to actually run the government effectively - clearly something that the GOP doesn't want to have happen.

Here's the article:

Poll: GOP More To Blame For Gridlock, But Both Parties At Fault 

This headline is certainly not surprising.  But I read the article looking for real indications of the public's perceptions.   And here's what I found:

" Voters also wanted to see the president and congressional Republicans come to a compromise. Fifty-three percent said Obama was doing too little to work with Congress on important issues, while 68 percent said GOP legislators were compromising too little with Obama."

That's a pretty big gap.  And the fact is, it's not that they are compromising too little with Obama;  it's that they aren't compromising (or even negotiating) at all with Obama.  And that's  the recipe for unworkableness.   And that's why the nuclear option on nominations is most definitely on the table.

There isn't much more to say...

except Nina AGDAL, doing wet the right way.

 

Maybe nuclear engineers should move to Japan

I should have expected this, but yet I'm still somewhat surprised by it. Japan's post-Fukushima nuclear aversion is fading given the difficulty of ramping up renewables. 

Japan's growth in renewable energy dims as nuclear strives for comeback

"The regional utility's decision to limit its purchases of solar power cannot be assigned to grid capacity alone. The decision was taken in large part due to Hokkaido Electric's expectations that all three idled reactors at its Tomari nuclear power plant will eventually go back online. Power demand in Hokkaido at its minimum is just 3 gigawatts. The three Tomari reactors have a combined power generation capacity of 2.07 gigawatts, leaving a difference of roughly 1 gigawatt if they are returned to service. But if utilities revert to relying on nuclear power to levels before the Fukushima disaster, that could leave very little room for the emerging renewable energy industries to grow."

 Plus, the article also notes that Japan is aggressively marketing the building of nuclear plants overseas, including even in Britain.  So Japan is not out of the nuclear energy sector, by a long shot.

 

What I think about, sometimes

OK, apparently George Clooney scratched his two-year itch, and he and Stacy Keibler are now no longer  'dating'.   Now, I'm making a presumption here, but I think that during most of George's relationships, he and his significant other engaged in coital activities.  Just a hunch.  [Actually, this was semi-confirmed when another article reported that George and Stacy hadn't gotten horizontal in the good way for months, implying that earlier in the relationship they had.  Which does not surprise me in the least.] 

George apparently has been through this before and may somehow be used to it, but if I was to break up with someone the likes of Stacy (or previously, Elizabetta Canalis), I don't know how psychologically I would handle the awareness that I would no longer have the opportunity to see Stacy Keibler nude anymore.  [Example here - this was her backside from the book on cute culos. Which translates as beautiful butts.]

That would shatter a lesser man than George, and I admit to being much his lesser. I don't know how I could remain on an even keel.  I'd binge on something.

The nuclear option on filibusters is nearing

Sounds like next week will be the one to watch in the Senate on Presidential nominations and filibuster reform.  First of all, Mitch McConnell is strident in saying that the Dems shouldn't do it, which means that he's getting scared to dickens that they're going to.

Mitch McConnell:  Democrats manufacturing nomination crisis

Are you kidding me, Mitch?  You can actually say the following without blinking at its mendaciousness?

“We see the other side cooking up phony nomination fights because they want to go nuclear,” McConnell said Tuesday. “They know their core argument — that President Obama’s nominees are being treated less fairly than those of Bush — is essentially at odds with reality.”

But fortunately, I think the Dems are going to call Itchy Mitchy's bluff.  

Reid flirts with nuclear option despite GOP shutdown threat

"The decision on whether to proceed with the controversial tactic depends on how votes on stalled nominees play out next week. If Republicans allow several of them to proceed with up-or-down votes, Democrats might have less rhetorical ammo to force a rules change."

So, will the Republicans allow enough votes on nominees to forestall the pushing of the nuclear button?  A lot of me hopes that they don't.

Now, in case you don't want to click on the link, here's the meat of what may or may not happen, and why.

"The nuclear option, so dubbed because it could cause a meltdown in bipartisan relations, entails changing the Senate’s precedents with a simple majority vote sustaining or overturning a ruling of the chair.

Reid signaled to Republicans Thursday morning that he would use it if they continue to filibuster Obama’s nominees.

He disputed Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) argument that he had promised in a colloquy earlier this year not to use the nuclear option after the Senate reached an agreement to streamline business.


Reid has since panned that deal as a failure.

“One look at the Senate’s executive calendar shows that fundamentally nothing has changed since Sen. McConnell and I entered in our supposed agreement,” he said.

Reid noted there are 15 executive branch nominees ready to be confirmed after waiting “more than 260 days,” he said."

You can't run a government effectively like that, and the Repubs know it, which is why they're doing it.  So they need to be slapped.   The time for waiting is over.