Donors pledge $4.48 billion to rebuild Gaza...

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) – International donors pledged $4.481 billion on Monday to help the Palestinian economy and rebuild Gaza after Israel's three-week offensive, insisting their funds bypass the territory's Hamas rulers. Gulf Arab states, the United States and the European Commission made significant pledges. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit told a news conference the pledges were new and would be paid over the next two years. The United Nations and aid agencies said rebuilding the coastal enclave was a daunting task so long as border crossings with battered Gaza remained closed. "The situation at the border crossings is intolerable. Aid workers do not have access. Essential commodities cannot get in," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told donors at a one-day conference on Gaza in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh....Link

'Pretty sad' that Limbaugh is GOP leader....

Demonstrating again his propensity to go out on a limb, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) had some choice words of criticism for Rush Limbaugh, the conservative media talk show host who was the star attraction at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference. In a phone interview Monday morning with CNN’s John Roberts, Paul said of Limbaugh “He is a leader. He does say the right things now and I think a lot of people like to hear what he’s saying but I think it’s also a little bit polarizing and confrontational and I think that’s why the Democrats are bragging that Limbaugh now speaks for the Republicans so I guess the Democrats think its to their advantage if he’s leading the charge.”....Link

Jonah Lehrer: Inside My Mind...........

Link

Ron Paul: We killed a million Iraqis..........

The conservatives attending this week's Conservative Political Action Conference are generally hawkish when it comes to foreign policy, but they applauded Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) on Friday when he told them the US has no choice but to get out of Iraq."Part of the reasons why we lost this last election was the foreign policy issue," Paul insisted. "Generally speaking, the presidential candidate who argues the case for less war-mongering will win the election."......Link

Rand Paul May Run....................

Ex-Bush Economist: Blame The Fed.......

Part of the problem in making sense of the Crash of 2008, and all this economic turmoil, is figuring out what really happened. What caused this? What went wrong? And the really big one: Who's to blame? John Taylor, a professor of economics at Stanford University and a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, answers that question in a new book published this week called Getting Off Track: How government actions and interventions caused, prolonged, and worsened the financial crisis. As you might guess from the title, Taylor concludes that blame lies primarily with the Federal Reserve's unreasonably low interest rates for much of the last decade. He also points an accusatory finger at "the failure to rein in Fannie and Freddie" (meaning Rep. Barney Frank and other Democratic congressional enablers) and "the lack of clarity in the operation" of last fall's financial bailout plan (meaning the Bush administration, plus congressional leaders who drafted the legislation).... Link