GOP keeps up pressure on Dems to accept spending cuts

Cutting government spending is a moral imperative for the country, as is reaching agreement on those cuts now to prevent a government shutdown, House Speaker John Boehner says in excerpts of a speech for delivery Sunday night.

Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_allpolitics/~3/8UzYKyncgjc/index.html

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Governors Meet As Pro-Union Protests Spread

Many of the nation's governors are in Washington, D.C., this weekend for the annual winter meeting of the National Governors Association. The gathering comes as supporters of public employee unions are staging massive protests and legislative boycotts across the country. Host Liane Hansen talks with Washington Governor Chris Gregoire, who heads the National Governors Association.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/02/27/134103416/Governors-Meet-As-Pro-Union-Protests-Spread?ft=1&f=1014

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Boehner to stress morality in speech to religious broadcasters (Washington Bureau)

House Speaker John Boehner plans to emphasize the morality of tackling fiscal issues later Sunday when he speaks to the National Religious Broadcasters convention. "We have a moral responsibility to address the problems we face. That means working together to... Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories Stories, News Feeds and News via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/65428270?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Kathleen Parker Leaving CNN's 'Parker/Spitzer'

Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker said Friday that she's leaving CNN's prime-time "Parker/Spitzer" talk show, which will be renamed and continue with former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and others.

CNN said the decision to cut ties with Parker was mutual.

The show debuted last fall to some tough reviews and poor ratings in a time slot dominated by Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly. But the ending of MSNBC's "Countdown" with Keith Olbermann last month has given CNN an opportunity. The network has averaged 638,000 viewers in the time slot during a newsy period this month, up 24 percent from last February's show with Campbell Brown, the Nielsen Co. said.

The new show will be dubbed "In the Arena," with two conservatives — former Fox News Channel personality E.D. Hill and National Review columnist Will Cain — joining Spitzer as panelists. CNN said others will be on the show, but they haven't been named yet.

"We have been pleased with how the 8 p.m. hour has become a centerpiece of substantive, policy-oriented conversation, and we are looking forward to building on that with this new format," said Ken Jautz, the executive in charge of CNN's U.S. network, in a memo to his staff Friday.

Parker said that she wanted to concentrate on her writing and that "with the show moving in a new direction, it was time to move on." She'll provide occasional commentary elsewhere on the network, Jautz said.

Spitzer said it had been "a joy" working with Parker. Her last day on the show was Friday.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/02/26/134084247/kathleen-parker-leaving-cnn-show-parker-spitzer?ft=1&f=1014

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Exit Poll Says Ireland Leans To New Government

The opposition Fine Gael party was poised to lead Ireland's next government, according to an exit poll released Saturday, a historic political upheaval after a real estate collapse brought the country to the edge of bankruptcy.

The exit poll from national broadcaster RTE showed Fine Gael with 36.1 percent of the first-preference votes, a figure that would put them in power but not capture a majority of seats in the Dail, the lower house of parliament. The poll was released an hour before the actual counting of ballots from Friday's national election began.

Irish voters punished the governing Fianna Fail party, angry over 13 percent unemployment, tax hikes, wage cuts and a humiliating bailout that Ireland had to accept from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

The exit poll showed Fianna Fail sinking to a shocking 15.1 percent support. In elections going back to 1932, it had never won less than 39 percent.

"However bad people thought it would get for Fianna Fail, nobody thought it would get this bad," said Michael Marsh, professor of comparative political behavior at Trinity College Dublin. "That is highly significant."

The Labour Party, Fine Gael's likely coalition partner, had 20.5 percent, which would be its best performance ever.

"The political landscape of Ireland is completely and utterly redrawn," said Roger Jupp, the chairman of Millward Brown Lansdowne, which conducted the poll for RTE.

The exit poll showed a range of more than 200 independent and minor party candidates with 15.5 percent support, while Sinn Fein — the party that supported the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland — had 10.1 percent. Sinn Fein won 2 percent of the vote in 2002 and 6 percent in 2007.

Fine Gael ("tribe of the Irish") and Fianna Fail ("soldiers of destiny"), were born from opposing sides in Ireland's civil war of the 1920s, and many see little difference between them on the issues. Fianna Fail, however, was leading the government when the nation's property boom collapsed in 2007, and made the decision that taxpayers should bail out Ireland's failing banks.

Brian Cowen, the outgoing prime minister, had fallen to record low popularity and resigned as Fianna Fail party leader even before the campaign. Still, if the results hold, Fianna Fail stands to be the largest opposition party in the Dail, where it can criticize every unpopular move that a Fine Gael-Labour government has to make.

The poll was based on face-to-face interviews with 3,500 voters at polling stations on Friday, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 points. In the last election in 2007, the exit poll numbers were within a point of the official results.

The new government, like the last, will be constrained by the terms negotiated for the euro67.5 billion ($92 billion) credit line from the European Central Bank and the IMF.

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny, who will be the next prime minister, has pledged to try to negotiate easier terms for repaying the loan. He has also promised to create 100,000 new jobs in five years, and to make holders of senior bonds in Ireland's nationalized banks shoulder some of the losses.

Colette Lavelle, 46, confessed to modest hopes after casting her vote in County Mayo.

"It's very bad at the moment, hopefully it will improve, but not over the next five years," said Lavelle, who is unemployed. "We really want to get rid of the government we have at the moment because they're all corrupt and spent all the money we had."

Counting of ballots is expected to continue through Sunday as officials work through Ireland's proportional representation system. In each round of counting, the last-place candidate is eliminated, and those ballots go to the candidates marked as the second choice.

The process continues until all the seats are filled; Irish constituencies have three, four or five seats.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/02/26/134079980/exit-polls-show-ireland-leaning-to-new-government?ft=1&f=1014

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Billions lost on contracts in Iraq, Afghanistan

A new report blasts the U.S. government for wasting tens of billions of dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan by relying too much on contractors and doing too little to monitor their performance.

The interim report from the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan points out that contractors in the war zones sometimes have exceeded the number of military personnel. Numbering 200,000, contractors now roughly match the military force.

"Misspent dollars run into the tens of billions," the report said. The 64-page report was released Thursday and will be followed up next week with a hearing on how to improve contractor accountability.

Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_allpolitics/~3/VLvVhkX1K1U/index.html

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