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Fox reports:

Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., raised a combined total of $ 2.2 million in the first quarter of 2011, outgaining presumed presidential contender Mitt Romney who raised $ 1.9 million over the same period.





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Ben Smith’s Blog

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As we noted earlier, it look like House Speaker John Boehner wants a budget deal.

The Hill reports Boehner said shutting down the federal government would be more costly than keeping it running and his party is against a shutdown.

Said Boehner: “If you shut the government down, it’ll end up costing more than
 you’ll save because you interrupt contracts — there are a lot of
 problems with the idea of shutting the government down — it is not the
 goal.”
Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire

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The national obesity crisis has made it’s way to cyberspace:

Last October, the average web page on the internet only weighed 590 KB. Then the holidays struck. Now, the average page weighs 678.

It may be time to go on a diet.

 




Outside the Beltway

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The national obesity crisis has made it’s way to cyberspace:

Last October, the average web page on the internet only weighed 590 KB. Then the holidays struck. Now, the average page weighs 678.

It may be time to go on a diet.

 




Outside the Beltway

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And those 60% are the vanguard of the death of the free West.

I don’t believe in burning the Qur’an. I believe in reading and understanding the Qur’an. But Terry Jones is not responsible by any rational measure for the murders in Afghanistan. Provocations are provocations, but we are in control of our reactions to those provocations. If someone called a freedom fighter an Islamophobic racist, the freedom fighter could try to reason with him — or he could kill him, or kill someone else — would then the person making the charge be responsible for the murders that the freedom fighter committed? Of course not. And Terry Jones is not responsible if Muslims choose to react with irrational violence over his burning of the Qur’an.

Western governments, meanwhile, should in the face of this irrational violence be defending the freedom of expression and explaining its importance. Instead, they will probably kowtow. Like the 60% of Britons voting for dhimmitude and self-censorship in this Guardian poll. Slaves choosing slavery.

Jihad Watch

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from href=”http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/31/scott-special-olympics/”>ThinkProgress:

Today, Rick Scott Will Lay Out Cuts For Developmentally Disabled And Then Attend A Special Olympics Photo-Op /> Today, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) will announce deep cuts to programs that help the developmentally disabled in his state. Scott will invoke his “emergency powers” to impose a 15 percent cut to the rates charged by group home workers and case workers that help the 30,000 Floridians with cerebral palsy, autism, and Down Syndrome.

Those who provide services to the developmentally disabled are already decrying the cuts. “This would be a catastrophe,” one advocate told the Miami Herald. “The system can’t take this. Eventually, we will have to cut jobs and reduce services.”

Scott says the cuts are necessary to address a $ 170 million deficit in the Agency for Persons with Disabilities — but at the same time, he is also proposing $ 1.5 billion in corporate tax cuts and $ 1.4 billion more in property tax cuts.

Even more galling, today — the same day his cuts are announced — Scott is scheduled to appear at a Special Olympics Torch Run with his wife and other state officials. The run is designed to promote the upcoming Special Olympics in Florida, and raise money for developmentally disabled athletes along the way:

Some people…….should just burn in hell.

Jack & Jill Politics

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The precise nature of the rebel groups the US, France, and Britain are supporting in Libya remains somewhat mysterious, which has raised a lot of eyebrows among skeptics of the operation. And, certainly, I think this is legitimate grounds for doubt. As Aswini Anburajan says:

Knowing thy allies should be as critical as knowing one’s enemies, as the U.S. learned in supporting and arming Afghan rebels in the war against the Soviets in the 1980s. The BBC reports that Nato Operations Commander, Admiral James Stavridis, has said that there are “flickers” of al-Qaeda activity among the rebels, but overall there’s a question mark in who these individuals are.

I would in some ways go stronger than this. One of the big issues is that there are pretty strict limits to how much one can really know in any given situation. When a country is occupied by a Soviet invading army or run by a nutty dictator, opposition is bound to be pretty diverse. And when opposition politics takes the form of armed combat, the resulting situation is just inherently difficult to predict. The act of combat is often radicalizing in different ways, and war itself creates novel leadership dynamics. To take a familiar—and benign—example, George Washington became the preeminent leader of the newborn American republic as a result of the prolonged armed struggle with England. That wasn’t a pre-existing fact about the conflict, it was a product of the conflict. In a less benign, but in some respects similar, way the French revolution elevated Napoleon to the heights of political leadership. Even less benign is the case of Lenin. It wouldn’t be accurate to say that as of the February Revolution in Russia that Bolsheviks were the predominant actors among the opposition to the tsar, but nonetheless within a year they were running the show.

In Libya it’s not just that there are things we don’t know about the rebel groups. We simply don’t know what’s going to happen in the days and weeks to come. We don’t know which people will get killed, we don’t know which people will emerge as heroes in battles that haven’t yet been fought. The situation is fraught with uncertainty that I just don’t think is within our power to resolve at this point no matter how hard we try.


Yglesias

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Semantic sanity into the pages of the Times — if only for one brief moment.

American Thinker Blog

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The other night I watched President Barack Obama make what I considered to be a very lame, uninformative, petulant and hypocritical speech concerning our recent incursion into Libya.

Lame because his reasons for going into Libya, in my humble opinion, were not valid.

Now I’m not at all opposed to deposing a despot, I’d like to see every cruel dictator in the world hanging from a tall tree, but where do you draw the line between Muammar Qaddafi, Kim Jong-il, Hugo Chavez, the Mullahs in Iran, the pillaging, armies in Somalia and our so called friends in Saudi Arabia, just to name a few.

They are all cruel and repressive regimes and when it comes to cruelty nobody deserves relief more than the women of the Sudan who are routinely raped by hundreds of troops, and yes I mean that literally, hundreds of soldiers rape the same woman, sometimes severing their limbs to prevent resistance.

How about the people of North Korea who have lived on a starvation diet for half a century, had to cut down all the forests in their country to keep from freezing to death and are afraid to raise their voices above a whisper in opposition to the silly looking idiot they have to call, ”Dear Leader?”

If you want to look around you can find people who are much more helpless than the rebels of Libya and much worse treated people without oil who don’t have a NATO coalition to make sure it keeps flowing.

Which makes me think that Obama’s decision was prompted more by politics than protection.

Uninformative, because what the war-weary people of America want to know is, will American lives be at risk is it in our national interest, how long are we staying and how much is this going to cost.

The truth of the matter is that it is definitely not in our national interest, we are not threatened by Libya and they are not a big oil supplier to the U.S.

It was in France’s national interest since they are a primary source of oil for them, so in my humble opinion, France should have taken care of the problem without involving America.

Obama had every excuse to turn the French down. It’s not as if they had a lot of troops in Iraq orAfghanistan and they have plenty of military capability to knock off Qaddafi’s little toy army.

Petulant, because Obama had to try to make everybody remember how many years we’ve been in Iraq and draw the analogy to how soon we’re going to get out of Libya.

Don’t count your chickens before they hatch, Mr. President. That can of worms is still open.

Hypocritical because I thought from Obama’s point of view any move against a Muslim nation was used as a recruitment tool for terrorists.

And lastly but most dangerous of all:

What are you going to leave behind, Mr. President? How are you going to keep al-Qaeda and the Islamic crazies from taking over the government in Libya and for that matter Egypt and all the other nations that are revolting in the Middle East?

You’re not going to be able to put American troops in all these countries to insure democratic elections, the French dang sure ain’t gonna do it and if you’re looking for the United Nations to do anything meaningful you may as well be waiting for a Brahma bull to give birth to twin llamas.

I personally think you made a big mistake, Mr. President. I don’t think we were needed, I don’t think we accomplished anything and I think you set a dangerous precedent that you cannot live up to.

What you’ve done is aid our enemies, to hasten the day when the area is taken over by radical Muslims who are blood enemies of America.

And when they start stoning women, cutting off fingers and heads and repressing the population are you going in to free the people?

You’ve bitten off a lot, Mr. President. Lets see if you can chew it.

NewsBusters.org blogs

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According to the latest statistics, CEO pay last year rose by 27 percent, while worker pay rose by just 2 percent. The median corporate CEO made $ 9 million last year, pushing CEO pay nearly back to its pre-recession level. But even CEO pay pales in comparison to that of hedge fund managers:

Last year was very lucrative for some of the biggest and best-performing hedge funds’ chiefs. Wealth was so concentrated that a mere 25 people pocketed a total of $ 22.07 billion, according to this year’s annual ranking by AR Magazine, which tracks the hedge fund industry. At $ 50,000 a year, it would take the salaries of 441,400 Americans to match that sum.

Making matters worse, hedge fund managers benefit from preferential tax treatment that middle-income Americans don’t. Due to what’s known as the carried-interest loophole, the income that hedge fund managers receive if their funds make money is treated as capital gains — rather than ordinary income — and gets taxed at the capital gains rate of 15 percent. Even though the pay is performance-based compensation (just like any other performance-based bonus made by any other worker), hedge fund managers receive a tax break on that income.

This results in hedge fund managers paying less in taxes on this income than middle-class workers, who are subject to a 25 percent top marginal tax rate:

Congress has debated closing this particular loophole over and over, but has never actually followed through. At a time when vital and popular programs are being placed on the altar of deficit reduction, removing this tax break for some of the richest people in the country seems prudent.

Wonk Room

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But Manchin says it could get 15 Democrats in Senate.


The battle over an amendment to essentially strip the EPA of regulatory authority it arrogated to itself over the last two years deepened today when Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) blasted Republicans for abandoning his temporary measure.  Speaking from the Senate floor, Rockefeller angrily called the McConnell-Inhofe bill “theological,” “immature,” and warned that it had no […]

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Hot Air » Top Picks

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“There is no force so powerful as an idea whose time has come.”
Sen. Edward McKinley Dirksen of Illinois, 1896-1969.

And I believe that the time has come for a balanced budget amendment. And as Human Events exclusively reported yesterday, all 47 Republican senators agree with me. And I think Dirksen, one of the greatest public servants Illinois ever produced, would agree too.

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Marathon Pundit

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OregonLive.com
Jimmer Fredette named AP player of the year
CBS News
Jimmer Fredette (32) of the Brigham Young Cougars shoots over Chandler Parsons (25) of the Florida Gators in the second half at New Orleans Arena on March 24, 2011 in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Getty Images/Streeter Lecka) HOUSTON – Jimmer Fredette is
Fredette earns AP Player of the Year awardSalt Lake Tribune
Jimmer named AP's player of the yearAlbany Times Union
BYU basketball: AP names Fredette player of the yearDeseret News
The Faster Times –Jackson Clarion Ledger
all 279 news articles »

Sports – Google News

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TAPPER: Regarding the massacre at Mazar-e-Sharif that you read the statement from the president about, I’m wondering, that began as a protest against Pastor Terry Jones burning the Quran, or involved in a protest that burned the Quran. And I’m…



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Political Punch

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WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) – A pickup of 216,000 jobs in March is good news for President Obama’s bid to keep his own job.

With unemployment edging down to its lowest level since March 2009, President Obama is well-poised to take some credit and enjoy the political after-glow of job growth, political experts say. The unemployment rate dropped to 8.8%, an entire percentage point lower than it was four months ago.


CNN Political Ticker

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