Your thoughts welcome.

Some final items:

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* Chesapeake Energy has announced the sale of all its Fayetteville Shale holdings, including pipelines, to an Australian-based global concern, BHP Billiton Ltd., for $4.75 billion cash. The release is here.

* Steve Benen in Washington Monthly has food for thought. Thanks to Republican talking points and the complicity of media at every level, the sole political discussion is about cutting spending. Not unemployment. Not the lowest taxes on the rich in decades. Not the prosperity in the Clinton years with higher tax rates and balanced budgets. No, now it’s all about cutting government spending (and the jobs that go with much of it.) The media have been manipulated.

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.. pesky Americans may think jobs and the economy are the most pressing national issue, but the political world has no use for such parochial concerns. The establishment has moved on.

This reached a farcical level on “Meet the Press” when Republican strategist Ed Gillespie insisted that President Obama is “out of touch.” Why? Because the president is committed to creating jobs, promoting innovation, and cultivating economic development through high-speed rail.

To be “in touch,” apparently, is to consider such priorities unimportant.

* Gov. Mike Beebe, bless him, is generally defending preservation of public services, though he’ll give up a good chunk of ground in the process. And of course there’s Republican Rep. Justin Harris, who certainly opposes cuts in government childcare programs that line his pockets. And junketing Republican Rep. John Burris, who would hate to see cuts affecting his favorite alcohol rehab program. And there are more of these, each special in their own way, with Republican support.

* Four dead, three of them children, in a Jonesboro house fire.

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