The WonkLine: May 9, 2011

Memphis faces a “large-scale disaster” from Mississippi flooding, and floods have ravaged much of east Arkansas, southern Quebec, Manitoba, and Namibia.

Senate Democrats are moving a bill this week to eliminate $21 billion in subsidies over ten years for the Big Five oil companies and direct that money to paying down the deficit.

“Governments approved on Monday a U.N. report projecting that renewable energies such as solar, wind or hydropower could leap to supply almost 80 percent of the world’s demand by 2050, with the right policies.”

“Senior Republicans said Friday that they are committed to a controversial overhaul of Medicare and will continue to support it as part of their deficit-reduction plan despite strong White House opposition.”

FactCheck.org argues that “Rep. Paul Ryan spreads some false and misleading information in a series of “Setting The Record Straight” web posts.”

“Energized by Republican gains in the last election and still stinging from the passage of President Obama’s healthcare overhaul, conservative lawmakers in statehouses around the country have put forward a torrent of measures aimed at restricting abortion.”

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) will head to New York today “to lay out a strategy for raising the debt ceiling to a crowd heavy on Wall Street players who are anxiously watching the fierce debate over the debt ceiling unfold.”

“Home values posted the largest decline in the first quarter since late 2008, prompting many economists to push back their estimates of when the housing market will hit a bottom,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The median value of salaries, bonuses and long-term incentive awards for CEOs of 350 major companies surged 11% to $9.3 million” in 2010.

A lobby day rally for marriage equality at New York’s capitol is expected to see well over a thousand attendees.

Large sums of money will be channeled into anti-LGBT campaigns through a new campaign called “Ignite an Enduring Cultural Transformation.”

Over 100 graduates of the University of Michigan Law School walked out of Sen. Rob Portman’s (R-OH) commencement speech because of his votes against same-sex marriage and adoption.

In an interview with 60 Minutes, President Obama said he and his team were “surprised” that Osama bin Laden had been living near a villa in a city that houses Pakistan’s military academy.

Dick Cheney said yesterday that he would reinstate the use of waterboarding if he were president.

Egyptian Foreign Minster Nabil Elarby says that U.S.-Egyptian relations post-revolution “are going to be closer than ever.”

The Fourth Circuit will become the first Court of Appeals to hear a challenge to the Affordable Care Act tomorrow morning.

The Louisiana Supreme Court will decide whether flying a symbol of slavery and white supremacy outside a state courthouse prejudices the decisions reached inside that courthouse.

Over 100 Michigan Law students walked out of their own graduation to protest their anti-gay commencement speaker, Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH).

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