It is hard not to think of this black and white bubbe meise while reviewing the most recent chapters in the battle over the future of the partially excavated, purportedly moribund Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in southwestern Nevada.

Setting up a showdown over federal spending, the House of Representatives today narrowly passed a bill that would replace the cuts from the defense side of the trigger, part of the debt limit deal of last year, mostly with cuts to federal workers and the social safety net.

The third-place party in the Greek elections, PASOK, has been given the opportunity to form a new government, after the first two parties failed in their efforts. Nobody expects PASOK to be successful, meaning that new elections will ensue, probably on June 17. By that time, decisions will need to be made on bailouts and budget cuts, and there will be no government in place to do it. This puts the bailout plan in significant peril, as well as Greece’s place in the eurozone.

Barney Frank and Brad Miller tried to shake up a House Financial Services Committee hearing yesterday. As per usual, Republicans wanted to go after the CFPB’s funding and subject it to the appropriations process. As it stands, CFPB derives its funding from a portion of the funding of the Federal Reserve, which comes from sources independent of Congress. The argument goes, why should CFPB be exempt from Congressional oversight in terms of its funding? The real agenda is that Republicans would then squeeze funding for CFPB to render them ineffective, or attach strings to the funding, either explicitly or implicitly.

McConnell, strangely enough, is the Senate Minority Leader but also sits on the Appropriations Committee. I guess he doesn’t want to stop the gravy train.

I think Republicans have real vulnerabilities in this fight, which will play out over several months. John Boehner has no room to maneuver. He clearly cannot pass a budget or even a continuing resolution with his preferred cuts. And if he gives in to the White House and passes something at the $1.047 trillion level, he’ll lose substantial amounts of Republicans to his right. So far in his tenure, Boehner has not secured a deal that would require large amounts of Democrats for passage. But that appears to be his only option short of a shutdown.

Kent Conrad will introduce the Bowles-Simpson plan as a baseline budget today in the Senate Budget Committee. But as he plainly tells Ezra Klein, the goal is not to get a budget resolution. The goal is to create the conditions to pass Bowles-Simpson after the 2012 elections.

Kent Conrad, the retiring Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, just announced that the markup for the FY 2013 budget will commence tomorrow. And instead of creating model legislation, he will simply take the recommendations proposed by the Chairmen of the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission, popularly known as the “catfood commission,” as the baseline.

I am happy to take on the job of teaching David Brooks about the budget so that he does not consistently embarrass himself in his NYT columns. Today he is trying to give us a balanced assessment of President Obama’s case for his budget. Here’s what he gets wrong.

The House has been trying to find offsets to replace the trigger cuts to defense spending that will hit at the end of the year. Previously, their only substitute cuts came at the expense of the federal workforce. But those were not enough to offset the defense trigger. So now they have a new target: food stamps.