July 16, 2013

The 7 nominations in the Senate today.

http://democrats.senate.gov/2013/07/16/senate-floor-schedule-for-tuesday-july-16-2013/

The Senate stands in recess until 10:00am on Tuesday, July 16, 2013.
Senator-elect Markey will be sworn into office at 10:00am on Tuesday.

As a reminder to all Senators, during Thursday’s session of the Senate, cloture was filed on the following items in the following order:

Executive Calendar #51, the nomination of Richard Cordray, of OH, to be Director, Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection;

Executive Calendar #100, the nomination of Richard F. Griffin, Jr, of DC, to be a Member of the National Labor Relations Board;

Executive Calendar #101, the nomination of Sharon Block, of DC, to be a Member of the National Labor Relations Board;

Executive Calendar #104, the nomination of Mark Gaston Pearce, of NY, to be a Member of the National Labor Relations Board;

Executive Calendar #178, the nomination of Fred P. Hochberg, of NY, to be President of the Export-Import Bank of the United States;

Executive Calendar #99, the nomination of Thomas Edward Perez, of MD, to be Secretary of Labor; and

Executive Calendar #98, the nomination of Regina McCarthy, of MA, to be Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

We anticipate the first cloture vote to begin at 11:00am. (Note: 71-29, to proceed with the nomination of Richard Cordray.) If cloture is invoked on any of the nominations, there would be up to 8 hours for debate prior to a vote on confirmation of the nomination, except for the Perez nomination, which would have up to 30 hours of post-cloture debate. If cloture is not invoked on a nomination, the Senate would proceed to vote on cloture on the next nomination.

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I thought "Obama will toss out two other NLRB nominees, Richard Griffin and Sharon Block, and replace them with two new people." (according to various "reporting" agencies)

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Will they just bring the names to a vote and vote them down since they're on the schedule?

July 6, 2013

Idiocy on the internet, ash on my car, and the wildfire down the road. (update 6: 14,108 acres)

First, the wildfire isn't just down the road, it's about 20-25 miles away as the crow flies or about 40 miles by road.

For those who haven't yet heard, we're having quite the summer here in southern Nevada.

The wildfire to which I refer is labelled the Carpenter 1 fire and is now at almost 11,000 acres and 0% contained. 10,935 acres to be "exact." That's up from the 9,031 acres that was reported yesterday and 2,000 acres reported just a few days ago. It's been growing by leaps and bounds. Here's the INCIWeb link: http://www.inciweb.org/unit/43/

About 520 people and their pets have been evacuated from two communities; one on the "Vegas side" of the mountain and the other on the "Pahrump side" of the mountain.

As of these reports, no property or human lives lost. I can't speak to the wild life on the mountain.

A link to a .pdf that shows the general area of the Spring Mountains/Mt. Charleston area on page 2: http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/nv/field_offices/las_vegas_field_office/wilderness/wilderness_fact_sheet.Par.25694.File.dat/Mt.%20Charleston%20Wilderness%20Fact%20Sheet%20Web%20Opt.pdf

Various government agencies, local and community organizations and individuals are helping with pets and horse boarding for the evacuees.

INCIWeb reports "12 crews, 26 engines and five watertenders" (that was yesterday; may be more or different config. today). The local r/w rag, aka the rj, reports (paraphrased so DU doesn't get sued) 12 "Hot Shot" crews. One of their headline writers even blamed the fire for causing a "red flag" weather warning. First, Hot Shot crews are a very specific type of wildland-fire fire fighter and 2, I'm pretty sure the "red flag" weather came about because of our excessive and dry heat which caused dry thunderstorms.

Dry thunderstorms: http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/elevated-wildfire-risk-continu/14844983

Link to a pretty good map showing the size of the fire and it's location relative to Vegas and Pahrump: http://www3.8newsnow.com/maps/canyonfire/

Back to INCIWeb: (snippets)

Current Situation

Total Personnel 422
Size 10,935 acres

Fuels Involved Pinyon Juniper
Fire Behavior Extreme long duration crown runs, spotting and rapid rate of spread.

Significant Events

Fire continues to exhibit extreme behavior. Transfer of command from a type III organization to Great Basin IMT 7 (Marty Adell).

Growth Potential High
Terrain Difficulty Extreme

Fire Behavior Forecast: Extreme fire behavior is likely. Torching of trees or long range fire spotting, with fire rates of spread predicted in sage brush of 5 mph are predicted.

Weather: Partly cloudy in the afternoon with isolated thunderstorms. Wind gusts to 40 mph possible. Temperatures cooler, in the 70s to 80s. Relative Humidity is 15-20%.

(I fixed some spelling)
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Idiocy on the internet: (I've been reading a lot of articles and these are some of the comments)

The fire was started/not contained because...government conspiracy!
The fire was caused by metals in the ground in Arizona.
Question as to why the Forest Service left; was it because of sequestration? (Note: it was because they were replaced by the next shift and the changing Incident Management Team)
People were not "asked" to leave, his friend was "ordered" to leave or be arrested. (I don't have TV or cable yet I've seen the reports since the first day of the fire, July 1st.)
The federal government was taking advantage of this disaster to "order" people around and remind them who's in charge.
One woman interviewed, one of the last off the Mt. Charleston side, never saw firefighters or planes dropping water/retardant. (I guess her TV/internet were/are broken; I've been watching reports of both for days. Hmmm, maybe it's a moon landing scenario?)
The government's been warning this kind of thing could happen; does that mean they caused it? (this idiot has never heard of fire science or forest science or, well, science, I guess.)

There are a lot more comments like that at the various articles. Very sad and horrifically terrifying.
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Finally, there was ash on my car, and still falling slightly, when I left for work yesterday morning about 5:30am local time. Others around the northern part of the valley "nearest" the fire reported the same. Very weird feeling.

I'm watching this closely and reading a lot, as you can tell.

East of the Mississippi y'all got your winter.

Out west, we have drought and a fire season that is now 2 months longer than historically recorded. Oh yeah, and excessive heat warnings and brown/black-outs.

We call it summer, which is also longer and hotter, earlier than in the past.


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INCIWeb updated 5 minutes ago: (just snippet of changed piece)

422+fire personnel engaged on the fire.

There are 12 crews on scene, 6 of which are Type 1 Hotshot crews, the most highly trained. The Hotshot crews we have are the same type as the crew recently lost in Arizona.

As of the morning of July 6, there are the following air assets on the fire:

· 5 Type 1 (heavy) helicopters
· 4 heavy air tankers
· 1 VLAT (Very Large Air Tanker. Based on a DC-10). It can drop 11,700 gallons per load.

There are 6 water tenders and 25 engines on scene, with 25 engines on order. The area is very rugged and inaccessible to engines and other motorized vehicles.

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Additional from INCI about 2 minutes ago:

There are 6 water tenders and 25 engines on scene, with 25 engines on order. The area is very rugged and inaccessible to engines and other motorized vehicles.