It was a straignt party line vote on the EPA’s rejection of California air quality standards on C02 emissions, which the record now shows was a political and not a scientifically driven ruling.
If it hits the floor, it will doubtless be filibustered.
If it passes, it will doubtlessly be vetoed.
Not surprising, and given that it passed with veto proof majorities, it should be overridden.
The House Armed Services Committee just authorized $566 million to develop the F-136 engine.
I’m not sure how much of this is pork, and how much of this is a real belief that the savings and engine improvements derived from the F-100/F-110 competition in the 1980s can be repeated.
The Senate went with only $36 million, so the question is how it will resolve in conference.
It looks like that will be one of the conditions set down by the Senate Republithugs to allow the bill housing bailout to the floor.
Senator Dodd’s bill also creates a housing trust fund with resources from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to build or preserve rental housing for extremely low and very low income people. Senator Shelby wants those funds to be used to pay for the new FHA program instead.
I’m not sure what upsets me more, the ‘Phants balancing the budget on the back of people who are closest to being homeless, or the fact that I’m not surprised by their venality and evil.
In order to get through the Senate, Chris Dodd (D-CT) has to get Dick Shelby (R-AL) agree on the bill, otherwise it’s filibuster city.
Dodd is now saying that they are close to a compromise on the bill.
Not clear on what is on the table, though Shelby appears to be getting more rigorous regulation of the GSEs (Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac) as a part of the deal.
It’s good policy, though I would go further and make the rich pay for the whole war, and good politics, because it forces Republicans to vote against veterans benefits or vote for a ½% increase on taxes for couples earning more than $1 million.
Heh.
Unfortunately, the article does not give much in the way of specifics, but my guess is that a lot of this is politics, as the Democrats benefit if the bill passes into law, or is vetoed by bush.
While this will undoubtedly be an appeal, Jamie Leigh Jones has won a round in federal court when US District Judge Keith Ellison ruled that rape is not work related, and so not covered by the arbitration agreement.
One hopes that the Congress will start looking at the laws that it passed to allow this sort of atrocity.
About 3 months ago, I noted that the NAHB was putting a moratorium on political donations to punish Congress for inaction.
Well, it looks like they are back in the bribe campaign donation business again.
They are claiming that it is because they have a tax credit to lobby on, but in reality I think that it’s because no one in Congress really cared that much.
The lesson to be learned is that members of Congress are less concerned about your donations to them than they about the potential of you donating to their opponent.
After raising the limits for loans that purchased by Fannie and Freddie, which carry a lower interest rate, in February, Barney Frank is now looking into why so few of the new “non-jumbo jumbo” loans have been made.
The raising of the cap from $417,000 to $729,750 was intended to help property move in high cost markets, like Frank’s district.
The simple reason that he is not seeing much in the way of these loans is because banks are not lending to anyone.
We are seeing an unprecedented tightening in mortgage lending standards, and so very few loans are being made.
In the home mortgage packages, one of the things that the lareg home builders have been lobbying for is a tax change to allow them to carry operating losses forward to profitable years, but it increasingly looks like this will not be a part of any mortgage bill.
There are a number of reasons, the first of which was that the Senate version of the bill has been lambasted by everyone as a bailout for builders and mortgage lenders, and the second is that the threat by homebuilders to cut off political donations overplayed their hand.
Basically, because of the level of pay for play in this action, it made standing up to the homebuilders a political win, because it shows “character”.
The Senate Armed Services Committee has passed a Defense Authorization bill which funds 20 additional F-22s, but does not fund additional C-17s. (more details at link)
Half way there. We don’t need either, though the F-22 funding also includes $497M for shutting down the F-22 line too.
The idea is to leave both options open to the next president.
Hopefully, the next president will have the guts to kill the white elephant that is the F-22.
It’s better than the Senate version, but still favors the lenders and homebuilders too much.
Thankfully, they were able to prevent the Republicans from adding amendments to make it even worse.
This is a major step, because reinstating the judges fired by Musharraf required a supermajority.
One wonders if the Supreme Court there will now rule on the legality of his election as president of Pakistan.
That’s the effect anyway, the actual bill would prohibit contractors from participating in CIA interrogations.
The bill would also require the CIA to follow Pentagon rules and to disclose all detainees to the Red Cross.
Needless to say, Bush will veto.
Well, first it appears that Bush and His Evil Minions™ are coordinating with the Telcos to lobby, and are trying to move heaven and earth to make it so.
I can only conclude that in addition to evidence of illegal wiretaps, that the telcos have information of something much worse, my guess would be that there was specific spying done on political opponents.
If they mutter terrorism to a jury, it is unlikely that a jury would convict them, or that a judge would give them anything more than a slap on the wrist, but if, and there are indications of this, that there is evidence of spying on their opponents, it becomes a whole new ballgame.
If it is discovered that Bush, Cheney, and Rove were spying on Democrats communications, we just might see that impeachment that is “not on the table”, or serious prosecutions starting in 2009.
There have always been rumors that they wiretapped Kerry’s senior adviser for national security affairs, James Rubin, by surveilling his wife CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour for “national security reasons”, and using the inevitable of intercepts of him for political purposes.
My guess is that these activities were far broader and deeper than just one reporter or one candidate.
The Democrats victory in 2006 may very well have been helped along by the NY Times finally breaking the story on the wiretapping, and the telcos getting skittish enough to stop asking “how high” when Bush asked them to jump.
It may all be moot however, as Steny Hoyer and Jay Rockefeller appear to be doing their level best to create full immunity for the phone companies, which would prevent the real story from coming out. Ever.
I’m simply not clear on why Hoyer and Rockefeller are so gung ho about this, unless, of course they were in some way criminally complicit with the program.
What is interesting is that, for now at least, the Vichy Blue Dog Democrats have been remarkably uninterested in getting immunity passed.
As I’ve said before, I think that they headed home after it did not pass the house, and instead of the storm of criticism they expected, they got high fives from the voters, which gave them some backbone.
It looks like Congress, knuckling under to knuckle heads, will continue to fund the fraud that is abstinence only education.
The reputable studies all show no effect on teen sex or pregnancy, and there are indications that it may increase the incidence of STDs, but the anti-sex right won’t let facts get in their way on their jihad against common sense.
The problem is that there is no political upside to being honest with our children.
Barney Frank’s bill is better than the Senate version, but I think that any bill that does not allow for restructuring of mortgages through bankruptcy is a lose.
First, it appears that Steny Hoyer is working a capitulation compromise on a FISA update, but interestingly enough, the Vichy Blue Dog Dems are not in the least bit interested in talking to Republicans about immunity.
What the Vichy Blue Dog Democrats realize, and what the Quisling Hoyer does not, is that their constituents have their back.
When the Vichy Blue Dog Dems went home, they were not inundated by angry phone calls, they were given high fives for standing up to the least popular president ever.
Not one step back.
This is no surprise. Bigots are the core constituency of the Republican party, so they killed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would have eliminated the loophole which allows employers to discriminate against their employees on the basis of race, sex, religion, and national origin risk free.
That sound you hear is Abraham Lincoln spinning at 57,423 rpm.