Penny Pritzker is expected to be confirmed next month to lead the Commerce Department….

These two moves come as the Majority Leader of the Senate Senator Harry Reid (a Democrat) threatens to use the ‘nuclear option’ in the Senate to get confirmation votes numbers down to a simple majority of 50, from a super majority of 60…

Bear in mind…..

If Reid does THIS?…..And the Democrats LOSE the Senate come next year….

The Democrats would be in Deep Shit…..

Photo….NY Times

The Senate on Thursday unanimously confirmed key Obama nominee Sri Srinivasan to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, a vote that comes amid tensions surrounding a potential Senate showdown on filibuster reform this summer.

The sweeping support for Srinivasan was no surprise — he unanimously passed the Senate Judiciary Committee last week — but the timing of the vote was. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been demanding that Srinivasan’s vote be delayed from this week until June 4, despite outcry from Democrats about the GOP purposely stalling Obama’s nominees. McConnell’s argument has been, as he said Wednesday in floor remarks, that senators not on the Judiciary Committee should “have a week to evaluate this important nomination.”

But he unexpectedly backed off that demand on Thursday. Senate Democratic and GOP aides offered different reasons why.

“McConnell caved,” declared one senior Democratic aide…

Don Stewart, a spokesman for McConnell, disagreed.

photo…chicagomag.com

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Senators may confirm Penny Pritzker next month to lead the Commerce Department, a top Senate Republican said after a drama-free hearing Thursday.

Commerce Committee senators on both sides of the aisle largely shied away from the controversies surrounding the family of Chicago billionaire and Hyatt Hotel heiress Pritzker, despite GOP criticism centering on the use of subprime lending practices and offshore bank accounts.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the chairman of the Senate Republican Conference and the Commerce panel’s ranking member, told reporters after the hearing that Pritzker would likely be confirmed.

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…from Real Clear Politics…..

The New York Times and the national media are not…..

Anthony Weiner started off his fist day of campaigning being…..Well….Anthony Weiner!….

 Ángel Franco/The New York Times

Anthony D. Weiner on the Campaign Trail: Mr. Weiner made his first public appearances on Thursday after announcing his mayoral bid on Wednesday.

He had a large crowd of media following him around in the early morning meet and greet up in New York’s Harlem…Witty, relaxed and conversational…..Weiner easily talked to people on the street that got stuck in the media whirlwind….And out talked a person trying bruise him on his past social media dumb moves…..

I like the gutsy part in Anthony Weiner running for New York City Mayor this year….With all the dumb stuff on the net, his knucklehead stuff is not much out of the exception for some of the stuff out there….And to be honest there are a LOT of politicians that ARE currently IN OFFICE that have been caught doing a WHOLE LOT worst….

He was the astute policy wonk, telling a middle-aged man that the real solution to affordable housing was to “have a tax for the very, very super wealthy apartments — $10 million ones.”

And he was the civic superman, swooping up a nanny’s stroller in his arms and carrying it down a steep flight of subway stairs. “Have a great day,” he told her, as cameras captured every second.

Anthony D. Weiner, the long exiled, ostracized and written-off former congressman, re-emerged on New York City’s political stage on Thursday as his essential self, at once gratingly self-mythologizing and charmingly self-effacing.

He told a young woman in Harlem she should remember Thursday as the day she had met him on her way to the White House. His suggested recollection: “Little bit skinny, big nose, but I liked him. And he inspired me.”

She walked away, slightly dazed.

He exhausted a subway heckler named Lori Coad who sought but failed to outsmart him, hurling question after question about education and homelessness, which he deftly parried.

“What else?” he asked her.

She brought up his raunchy tweets: “Stop going online and texting stuff, man. Leave that alone.”

“You know, we were doing so well there,” Mr. Weiner told her, in mock disappointment as the train erupted in laughter. “I a-a-a-almost got off this train with everything going fine.”

More….

Update…..There are two (Ras and Q ) polls out in the last few days….One has NY City Council Leader Christine Quinn ahead by 10% but another has her only ahead of Weiner by 6% pts ….And this is ONLY the first day of Weiner’s campaign…We’ll be following this which this Dog feels is gonna be closer than the New York City dailies let on….

He’ll make a speech in Iowa tonight…..

Walker has been making stops in the East also…

photo….livewire.talkingpointsmemeo.com

Scott Walker, the controversial governor of neighboring Wisconsin, comes to Iowa tonight amid speculation that he’d be a smash with Republicans here if he were to run for president, as some top Iowa politics watchers predict.

“He’s the guy to watch in Iowa,” said David Kochel, a longtime political strategist from Des Moines.

Walker, 45, is known nationally for the hallmark of his two years in Wisconsin’s top office: the repeal of almost all collective bargaining rights for most public employees — a strategy meant to limit public workers’ pay and benefits to save taxpayers money.

The big, noisy fight over union rights put Walker in the national spotlight for 15 months, through protests at the Wisconsin Capitol that attracted as many as 25,000 people at a time, a failed attempt by Wisconsin Senate Democrats to block a vote on his legislation by holing up in another state, then Democrats’ all-out effort to oust Walker from office.

In summer 2012, Walker became the first governor in the country to hold his seat in a recall race — and he won a bigger margin than when he was elected in 2010…..

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The National Republican Senatorial Committee is now sending staff to support Gomez in the last month before the special election to fill Secretary of State John Kerry ‘s  US Senate Seat….

National Republicans have dispatched staff to Massachusetts to assist with the Senate special election that has become tantalizingly close.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has committed at least four staffers to help nominee Gabriel Gomez in the final weeks of the June 25 contest. The moves come amid fresh polling that showed Gomez running just behind Democratic Rep. Edward J. Markey in this solidly Democratic state.

Money remains a major hurdle for Gomez to overcome against the well-funded Markey. So the NRSC sent two fundraisers to help Gomez open some financial doors. Sarah Morgan, a regional political director, arrived Wednesday to organize volunteer efforts over the next few weeks. And Kevin McLaughlin, a senior adviser, is in Boston to assist with communications and general strategy.

The NRSC donated $45,400 — the maximum allowable contribution from a national party to a Senate candidate — to the Gomez campaign on April 30, the day he won the GOP primary. But a spokesman would not comment on whether any more funding would be headed Gomez’s way.

“Announcing our strategy to win in Massachusetts is a recipe for defeat, so we’ll leave punditry to the pundits,” NRSC spokesman Brad Dayspring said. “Massachusetts is always an uphill climb, but Gomez is a refreshing candidate who is winning over independents looking for something new in Washington. Navy SEALS can climb mountains and Gomez has a legitimate chance to win the race.”

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Update…..

Markey Widens Lead in Massachusetts

A new Emerson College poll in Massachusetts finds Rep. Ed Markey (D) is widening his lead over Gabriel Gomez (R) in the U.S. Senate race to 12 points, 45% to 33%.

A similar poll earlier this month had Markey leading by just six points.

Secretary of State John Kerry has been talking in the Middle East and he IS getting worried requests from some leader’s in the region for the US to ‘do something’ to help Assad be gone…..That something is arm the rebels…..

Added to that is a report from The Cable.Foreign Affairs that the main  rebel group wants enough heavy weapons to balance against the Assad military as a condition for peace talks on the civil War in Syria…

I think it’s NOT the way to go here ….But this Dog feels it’s just a matter of time before the US steps in to up the military anti in the conflict….It does Not help things that there are reports of the Russians supplying the Syrian’s with more rockets despite the Israeli attack’s on a rocket storage location a little while ago….

Please notice I have mentioned the US, Russia and Israel in this already…..This is NOT just the Middle East players already…..

Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday that the United States was increasingly concerned that the escalating fighting in Syria might slip across the border with Lebanon and destabilize that country.

“We’re deeply concerned about this spilling over into Lebanon,” said Mr. Kerry, who came to Jordan to attend an 11-country meeting on the deteriorating situation in Syria.

Lebanon, Mr. Kerry added pointedly, is “at risk.”

The decision by Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia and Iranian ally, to join the battle for the strategic city of Qusayr in Syria, and the prospect that the Syrian rebels might respond by carrying the fight to Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon, has alarmed the Obama administration.

Mr. Kerry said that several thousand Hezbollah members were operating in Syria. Members of Iran’s paramilitary Quds force and Iraqi Shiite militia members, some of whom have been encouraged by Iran to fight in support of the government of Bashar al-Assad, are also in Syria, other American officials said, who like several other United States officials quoted spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The White House has been increasingly concerned that the fierce fighting in Qusayr and the sectarian violence in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli will lead to a wider regional conflict….

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Secretary of State John Kerry‘s goal of bringing the Syrian rebels and the Assad regime to the negotiating table next month has hit a major snag. In a letter obtained by The Cable, Gen. Salim Idris, the commander of the rebels’ Supreme Military Council, says that the United States must establish “strategic military balance” between the rebels and Assad as a precondition to any peace talks.

The letter does not detail specifics, but Dan Layman, media relations director at the Syrian Support Group, a licensed U.S. advocacy group with extensive contacts to the Free Syrian Army, said the demand requires anti-aircraft and anti-tank weaponry such as 90 mm rockets, recoilless rifles, and ideally man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS).

“He’s looking for game-changing weapons,” said Layman. “I think he knows he’s not going to get MANPADS, but weaponry that can take on regime armor in addition to small arms is a must.”

The Obama administration does not currently support shipping U.S.-purchased weapons to rebels, however, and there’s no sign this will happen before next month’s U.S.-Russian proposed peace talks in Geneva. (Though the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted yesterday to arm some Syrian rebel groups, there’s no indication when the bill will move to the Senate floor.) In recent days, U.S. officials have called the proposed Geneva conference “the most serious effort in the last two years to get the Syrian government to sit down and negotiate with the Syrian opposition.”

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