Who is Christine O'Donnell?

Christine O'Donnell walks off Piers Morgan set, David Letterman gets threatened, Channing Tatum and Matthew McConaughey to star in a stripper movie, and more in today's Daily Scoop.


Tea Party advocate and former Delaware senatorial candidate Christine O'Donnell stormed off Piers Morgan's set on Wednesday after being questioned on gay marriage.


O'Donnell became annoyed after Morgan questioned her on her witchcraft history, but became incensed to the point of leaving after the gay marriage line of questioning, according to Morgan.


"Ms. O'Donnell wasn't happy about me quizzing her re views on witchcraft and sex. But really flipped at gay marriage Qs. Ripped mike and fled," Morgan tweeted after the taping.


During the interview O'Donnell stated she was not running for office and for Morgan to ask presidential candidate Michele Bachmann about gay marriage.


O'Donnell was on the show to promote her new book, "Troublemaker.


She inflicted a shock defeat on Mike Castle, the mainstream Republican candidate, who had served nine terms in the US House of Representatives after being governor of the state.
But in the general election, she turned a race that had looked winnable to many Republicans into a thumping victory for her Democratic opponent, Chris Coons, who won by 57 per cent to 40 per cent.
The defeat, blamed by some on her Right-wing positions on social issues alienating independent voters, also came at the end of a campaign that lurched from one public relations disaster to the next.
Bill Maher, a Left-wing television host, dug out footage of Miss O'Donnell on his show in 1999 saying that she had "dabbled into witchcraft". The remark received widespread media attention.


Serious questions were soon raised about Miss O'Donnell's education record, tax returns and handling of campaign funds. She denied any wrongdoing.
Then more footage emerged of Miss O'Donnell fronting an anti-masturbation campaign in the 1990s, when she publicly declared that she believed it to be "a sin".
Despite being classed, along with other Right-wing women politicians such as Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and Kristi Noem, as a "Mama Grizzly", she attempted to play down her views on such issues.
Ultimately, however, she alienated the relatively moderate voters of Delaware to such an extent that Mr Obama's Democrats avoided the loss of another seat in the Senate, of which they retained control.
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in August 1969, Miss O'Donnell has said she grew up a liberal before becoming a born-again Christian while studying at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
She worked as a Republican campaigner in the 1990s before joining various anti-aborition and pro-creationist not-for-profit groups and becoming a television commentator.
She then set up her own media consultancy before making three attempts at the Delaware senate seat. In 2006 she finished third in the Republican primary. In 2008 she lost the general election to Mr Biden.
Her book 'Troublemaker: Let's Do What It Takes To Make America Great Again' has recently been published. She has declined to say whether she plans to run for office again.

Anderson Cooper

Anderson Hays Cooper,  born June 3, 1967 is an American journalist, author, and television personality. As of 2011 he is the primary anchor of the CNN news show Anderson Cooper 360°. The program is normally broadcast live from a New York City studio; however, Cooper often broadcasts live on location for breaking news stories.


Early life and education
Anderson Hays Cooper was born on June 3, 1967, the younger son of the writer Wyatt Emory Cooper and the artist, designer, writer, and heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, and is a great-great-great-grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt of the prominent Vanderbilt shipping and railroad fortune. Cooper's media experience began early. As a baby, he was photographed by Diane Arbus for Harper's Bazaar. At the age of 3 Cooper was a guest on The Tonight Show on September 17, 1970, appearing with his mother. At the age of 9, he appeared on To Tell the Truth as an impostor. From age 10 to 13 Cooper modeled with Ford Models for Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and Macy's.
Cooper's father suffered a series of heart attacks while undergoing open-heart surgery, and died January 5, 1978, at the age of 50. Cooper considers his father's book Families to be "sort of a guide on...how he would have wanted me to live my life and the choices he would have wanted me to make. And so I feel very connected to him. During the second semester of his senior year at the Dalton School at age 17, Cooper went to southern Africa in a "13-ton British Army truck" during which time he contracted malaria and required hospitalization in Kenya. Describing the experience, Cooper wrote "Africa was a place to forget and be forgotten in. Cooper graduated from the Dalton School in 1985. He went on to attend Yale University, where he resided in Trumbull College, and claimed membership in the Manuscript Society. He studied both political science and international relations and graduated in 1989.
Cooper's older brother, Carter Vanderbilt Cooper, committed suicide on July 22, 1988, at age 23, by jumping from the 14th-floor terrace of Vanderbilt's New York City penthouse apartment. Gloria Vanderbilt later wrote about her son's death in the book A Mother's Story, in which she expresses her belief that the suicide was caused by a psychotic episode induced by an allergy to the anti-asthma prescription drug salbutamol. Anderson cites Carter's suicide for sparking his interest in journalism. "Loss is a theme that I think a lot about, and it’s something in my work that I dwell on. I think when you experience any kind of loss, especially the kind I did, you have questions about survival: Why do some people thrive in situations that others can’t tolerate? Would I be able to survive and get on in the world on my own?"



Personal life
Cooper has two older half-brothers, Leopold Stanislaus "Stan" Stokowski (born 1950), and Christopher Stokowski (born 1952), from Gloria Vanderbilt's ten-year marriage to the conductor Leopold Stokowski.
He lives in his home in Westhampton Beach on Long Island and a penthouse duplex on New York City's 38th Street.
In September 2009 Cooper bought a firehouse in Greenwich Village.
He said to Oprah Winfrey – while promoting his book – that he had suffered from dyslexia as a child.In August 2007 he confirmed his "mild dyslexia" on The Tonight Show to Jay Leno, who also has dyslexia. In March 2008 Cooper mentioned on his blog that he had minor surgery under his left eye to remove a "small spot of skin cancer.
Cooper has never married and has actively avoided discussing his private life, citing a desire to protect his neutrality as a journalist. His public reticence deliberately contrasts with his mother's life spent in the spotlight of tabloid journalists and her publication of memoirs explicitly detailing her affairs with celebrities. Cooper vowed "not to repeat that strategy. Independent news media have reported that Cooper is gay, and in May 2007, Out magazine ranked him second behind David Geffen in its list of the fifty "Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America. When asked about his sexuality, he stated, "I understand why people might be interested. But I just don’t talk about my personal life. It’s a decision I made a long time ago, before I ever even knew anyone would be interested in my personal life. The whole thing about being a reporter is that you're supposed to be an observer and to be able to adapt with any group you’re in, and I don’t want to do anything that threatens that. He has, however, discussed his desire to have a family and children.



Career history,Channel One
After Cooper graduated from Yale University, he tried to gain entry-level employment with ABC answering telephones, but was unsuccessful. Finding it hard to get his foot in the door of on-air reporting, Cooper decided to enlist the help of a friend in making a fake press pass. At the time, Cooper was working as a fact checker for the small news agency Channel One, which produces a youth-oriented news program that is broadcast to many junior high and high schools in the United States. Cooper then entered Myanmar on his own with his forged press pass and met with students fighting the Burmese government. He was ultimately able to sell his home-made news segments to Channel One.
After reporting from Burma, Cooper lived in Vietnam for a year to study the Vietnamese language at the University of Hanoi. Persuading Channel One to allow him to bring a Hi-8 camera with him, Anderson soon began filming and assembling reports of Vietnamese life and culture that aired on Channel One. He later returned to filming stories from a variety of war-torn regions around the globe, including Somalia, Bosnia, and Rwanda.
On assignment for several years Cooper had very slowly become desensitized to the violence he was witnessing around him; the horrors of the Rwandan Genocide became trivial: "I would see a dozen bodies and think, you know, it's a dozen, it's not so bad. One particular incident, however, snapped him out of it:
On the side of the road Cooper came across five bodies that had been in the sun for several days. 


ABC
In 1995, Cooper became a correspondent for ABC News, eventually rising to the position of co-anchor on its overnight World News Now program on September 21, 1999. In 2000 he switched career paths, taking a job as the host of ABC's reality show The Mole:
My last year at ABC, I was working overnights anchoring this newscast, then during the day at 20/20. So I was sleeping in two- or four-hour shifts, and I was really tired and wanted a change. I wanted to clear my head and get out of news a little bit, and I was interested in reality TV — and it was interesting.


CNN
Cooper left The Mole after its second season to return to broadcast news in 2001 at CNN, commenting: "Two seasons was enough, and 9/11 happened, and I thought I needed to be getting back to news. His first position at CNN was to anchor alongside Paula Zahn on American Morning. In 2002 he became CNN's weekend prime-time anchor. Since 2002, he has hosted CNN's New Year's Eve special from Times Square. On September 8, 2003, he was made anchor of Anderson Cooper 360°.
Describing his philosophy as an anchor, Cooper has said:
I think the notion of traditional anchor is fading away, the all-knowing, all-seeing person who speaks from on high. I don't think the audience really buys that anymore. As a viewer, I know I don't buy it. I think you have to be yourself, and you have to be real and you have to admit what you don't know, and talk about what you do know, and talk about what you don't know as long as you say you don't know it. I tend to relate more to people on television who are just themselves, for good or for bad, than I do to someone who I believe is putting on some sort of persona. The anchorman on The Simpsons is a reasonable facsimile of some anchors who have that problem
During CNN coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, he confronted Sen. Mary Landrieu, Sen. Trent Lott, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson about their perception of the government response. As Cooper said later in an interview with New York magazine, “Yeah, I would prefer not to be emotional and I would prefer not to get upset, but it’s hard not to when you’re surrounded by brave people who are suffering and in need. As Broadcasting & Cable magazine noted, "In its aftermath, Hurricane Katrina served to usher in a new breed of emo-journalism, skyrocketing CNN's Anderson Cooper to superstardom as CNN's golden boy and a darling of the media circles because of his impassioned coverage of the storm.
In August 2005, he covered the Niger famine from Maradi. In September 2005 the format of CNN's NewsNight was changed from 60 to 120 minutes to cover the unusually violent hurricane season. To help distribute some of the increased workload, Cooper was temporarily added as co-anchor to Aaron Brown. This arrangement was reported to have been made permanent the same month by the president of CNN's U.S. operations, Jonathan Klein, who has called Cooper "the anchorperson of the future. Following the addition of Cooper, the ratings for NewsNight increased significantly; Klein remarked that Cooper's name has been on the tip of everyone's tongue.To further capitalize on this, Klein announced a major programming shakeup on November 2, 2005. Cooper's 360° program would be expanded to 2 hours and shifted into the 10 p.m. ET slot formerly held by NewsNight, with the third hour of Wolf Blitzer's The Situation Room filling in Cooper's former 7 p.m. ET slot. With "no options" left for him to host shows, Aaron Brown left CNN, ostensibly having "mutually agreed" with Jonathan Klein on the matter.


Syndicated talk show
Warner Bros. and Telepictures announced in September 2010 that Cooper had signed an agreement to host a nationally syndicated talk show. The New York Times' Brian Stelter reported on Twitter that the new Warner Bros. daytime talk show will be named "Anderson and is to premiere in September 2011. As part of negotiations over the talk show deal, Cooper signed a new multi-year contract with CNN to continue as the host of Anderson Cooper 360°.


CBS
Cooper has been a correspondent for the CBS News program 60 Minutes since 2007 while concurrently serving as a CNN correspondent.
Broadway
Cooper can be heard as the voice of the narrator for the 2011 Broadway revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, directed by Rob Ashford and starring Daniel Radcliffe.
Writings


A freelance writer, Cooper has authored a variety of articles that have appeared in many other outlets, including Details magazine.
In May 2006, Cooper published a memoir for HarperCollins, Dispatches from the Edge, detailing his life and work in Sri Lanka, Africa, Iraq and Louisiana over the previous year. Some of the book's proceeds are donated to charity. The book topped the New York Times bestseller list on June 18, 2006.

Anderson Cooper Has Laughing Fit Discussing Gérard Depardieu

Anderson Cooper got a bad case of the giggles on air last night on Anderson Cooper 360° when he was attempting to explain why Gerard Depardieu has been added to his “Ridiculist.”


Natalie Morales could sympathize with Anderson this morning on the Today show claiming she’s famous for getting a case of the giggles on air.


Anderson cracked up at his own joke last night while making fun of Gerard’s headline news that he relieved himself on an airplane in front of passengers.


Gerard reportedly couldn’t wait 15 minutes for the flight to take off to use the bathroom, so he unzipped his pants and urinated on the carpet!


While reporting on Gérard Depardieu's public urination on a plane, the CNN anchor lost a bit of control himself on his show Wednesday night – practically collapsing in a fit of giggles while lobbing pun after pun at the French actor's expense.


What tickled Cooper in particular was the joke that at least Gerard went No. 1 and not "Depard-2."


Rubbing tears from his eyes, Cooper, 44, could barely speak toward the end of the segment, though he somehow managed to mutter an apology to viewers. "Sorry, this has actually never happened to me," he said.


Depardieu, 62, surely could have said the same.

GOP candidate Michele Bachmann: I'll bring back $2 gas

NEW YORK - President Michele Bachmann has a promise: $2 gas.

"Under President Bachmann you will see gasoline come down below $2 a gallon again," Bachmann told a crowd Tuesday in South Carolina. That will happen.

Sure, politicians promise all kinds of things on the campaign trail. But Bachmann, a leading contender for the 2012 Republican nomination, is wading into truly tricky territory.

The price Americans pay at the pump is tied to the crude oil market -- a global system largely beyond the reach of Washington.

It's certainly true that prices -- now about $3.50 a gallon on average -- have risen since President Obama took office.

"The day that the president became president gasoline was $1.79 a gallon," Bachmann said. "Look what it is today."

Of course, that's not the full story.

When Obama took office, the country was mired in a terrible economic contraction.

"That was in the 4th inning of the greatest recession of our lifetime," said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service.

During recessions, demand for gasoline plummets as trucks pull off the road, companies cut back on travel and laid off workers drive fewer miles.

You have to be careful what you wish for because the recipe for cheap prices these days is economic disaster,“ Kloza said.

Since early 2009, the economy has recovered somewhat and demand for crude has risen. It has even spiked in the developing world -- especially in China, India and South America.

Kloza said that increased crude demand is the principal driver behind higher gas prices.

“We're going to have to recognize the rest of the world has this increasing appetite for oil,“ he said. “If we go below $2 a gallon, it probably means there has been a lot of wealth loss and we are in a deflationary period.“

There are some measures that could be taken to lower gas prices, according to Phil Flynn, a senior market analyst at PFG Best.

A stronger dollar would take pressure off prices, and reducing the number of miles Americans drive in gasoline-powered cars would also weaken demand.

“I never say never,“ Flynn said. “But whether or not Bachmann can do that in four years is a tall order.“

Bachmann did not lay out a specific plan to drop prices on Tuesday. But her campaign website says that as president, she would ease restrictions on drilling and roll back federal regulations on the shale gas industry.

While increased oil and gas drilling in the United States may create good-paying jobs, reduce reliance on foreign oil and lower the trade deficit, it would have little impact on gas and oil prices.

That's because the amount of extra oil that could be produced from more drilling in this country is tiny compared to what the country -- and the world -- consumes.

Plus, any extra oil the United States did produce would likely be quickly offset by a cut in OPEC production.

According to a 2009 study from the government's Energy Information Administration, opening up to drilling areas off the East Coast, West Coast and the west coast of Florida would yield an extra 500,000 barrels a day by 2030.

The world currently consumes 89 million barrels a day, and by then would likely be using over 100 million barrels.

After OPEC got done adjusting its production to reflect the increased American output, gas prices might drop a whopping three cents a gallon, the study said.

New presidential bus attracts attention, criticism

Yesterday presidential contender Mitt Romney on a Chicago radio station reacted the president’s road trip and promised speech on jobs, “I think the reason he’s taking the time to wait for his next speech on the economy is that he frankly doesn’t know what to do. I mean, he hasn’t spent his life in the private sector. He doesn’t understand that jobs come and go and he’s looking for help.”

Normally, you’d chalk that up to campaign rhetoric, but in this case Romney has aptly articulated President Obama’s problem. He’s entirely in over his head. With the economy in the dumps and his own approval rating sinking, Obama is panicking and becoming increasingly incoherent in his prescriptions for economic recovery.

We are in a crisis. But the president is going on vacation. We need a pro-jobs agenda fast. But he’s waiting until September to make a speech. We need to curtail the debt, but he’s coming back with another stimulus plan. (Because the first one was such a success in taming unemployment?) He’s previously confessed that there weren’t those shovel-ready jobs, but he’s going to announce plans for roads and construction projects. He acknowledges that employers are struggling so he’s proposing another temporary payroll tax cut. But his big news will be an even grander bargain on the debt with huge new tax hikes.

The bus has been in the works for years. In the past, the Secret Service leased buses for presidential travel, but had to retrofit them to add security measures and enhanced communications. Then the buses would have to be stripped again — "at great expense," White House spokesman Jay Carney said — once they were no longer needed.

Obama's bus sports large, impenetrable windows and flashing blue and red lights like a police cruiser. It was impossible to miss, especially as it roared down two-lane highways en route to small towns along the president's three-day tour. On Tuesday alone, the bus traveled 216 miles.

It has also attracted another kind of attention: Republicans can't stop bringing up its cost, making the bus sound like a boondoggle. In the new age of austerity, a million-dollar bus is an irresistible target — especially because it was built in Canada rather than the U.S.

"This is an outrage that the taxpayers of this country would have to foot the bill so that the campaigner in chief can run around in his Canadian bus and act as if he is interested in creating jobs in our country," Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Tuesday.

Other conservatives were snarkier. Dana Loesch, a "tea party" activist and CNN contributor, wrote Tuesday on Twitter: "Nothing says, 'Let's tour America and talk about jobs!' than a big, black, hearse mobile of doom."

When the Secret Service decided to order custom-made buses, it wanted a particular model only available from Quebec-based manufacturer Prevost, said Ed Donovan, a spokesman for the agency.

"The vehicle had to support the weight of security and communication equipment that we had," Donovan said in an interview. "Our understanding was that that was the only model that could do it."

Donovan said the Secret Service ordering a custom-built bus gave the agency "a level of security that we couldn't achieve by doing it the other way."

President George W. Bush rode on a bus from the same Canadian manufacturer for a spring 2004 "Yes, America Can" campaign tour through the Midwest.

Donovan said the Secret Service had been using buses since at least 1980, when the agency provided one for President Reagan's travels.

McDonnell, State ends fiscal 2011 with $545M surplus

Virginia will have a $544.8 Million Surplus for Fiscal Year 2011. Gov. McDonnell announced the news this morning to during his annual summer address to the Joint Money Committees of the General Assembly.


“I am pleased to report today that, through bipartisan cooperation, we have ended the 2011 Fiscal Year with a surplus of over half a billion dollars,” said the Governor in a press release. “This is the second year in a row that we have posted a budget surplus. We have done this by budgeting conservatively, keeping taxes low, reforming how state government works, and investing wisely in core functions of government crucial to private sector job creation and economic development.”


$310.7 million of the funds resulted from unanticipated revenue gains, along with $234.1 million in various state cost-saving measures. A portion of the surplus will be put into the state’s piggy bank.


Under Virginia law, much of the surplus money is already allocated. Roughly $132.7 million will go toward the state’s rainy day fund, raising the balance to $440.5 million in fiscal 2013, and $50.3 million will be set aside for the Water Quality Improvement fund for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.


The governor also wants to use $7.4 million for supplemental funding for sheriff’s offices and a portion of the money to pay back the Virginia Retirement System.


By law, two-thirds of the unappropriated surplus balance, or $67.2 million, will go to the Transportation trust fund.

Threat to David Letterman posted on jihadist website

Threat posted on an al-Qaeda message board has called on U.S. Muslims to cut out David Letterman’s tongue and break his neck in response to a joke the comic made about terrorists on his late-night CBS show.


“Is there not among you a Sayyid Nosair al-Mairi ... to cut the tongue of this lowly Jew and shut it forever?” read the message, written by a frequent poster on the message board who goes by Umar al-Basrawi. Al-Mairi killed Jewish Defense League founder Meir Kahane in 1990. Letterman, however, is not Jewish.


Al-Basrawi took particular issue with jokes Letterman had made about Osama bin Laden and Muhammad Ilyas Kashmiri, a senior al-Qaeda leader who was killed June 3.


“The concern is that there is someone who will read it, agree with it and say, 'I want to be the Sayyid Nosair of 2011 and kill David Letterman,’” said Adam Raisman, an analyst for Site Monitoring Service, a private intelligence organization that spotted the post.


Al-Basrawi wrote that Letterman had made reference to both Osama bin Laden and Kashmiri and said that Letterman had "put his hand on his neck and demonstrated the way of slaughter."
"Is there not among you a Sayyid Nosair al-Mairi ... to cut the tongue of this lowly Jew and shut it forever?" Al-Basrawi wrote, referring to El Sayyid Nosair, who was convicted of the 1990 killing of Jewish Defense League founder Meir Kahane. Letterman is not Jewish.
Al-Basrawi, which is likely to be an alias, has made some 1,200 postings to the Muslim website, said Adam Raisman, an analyst for the Site Monitoring Service. The private firm, part of the Site Intelligence Group, provides information to government and commercial clients on what jihadists are saying on the Internet and traditional
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media. Raisman said the online forum is often used by al-Qaida.
Muslim extremist groups in the past few months have increased calls for people to take violent action against certain targets in the West, he said.
"The concern is that there is someone who will read it, agree with it and say, 'I want to be the Sayyid Nosair of 2011 and kill David Letterman,'" Raisman said.
The FBI is also looking into the threat, said Jim Margolin, spokesman for the bureau's New York office. "We take every potential threat seriously," he said.
Neither CBS nor a Letterman spokesman, Tom Keaney, would comment on the threat. CBS would not make available a transcript of Letterman's monologue on the killing of Kashmiri.
Letterman has been the target of criminal threats in the past. A former CBS News producer was jailed for trying to extort $2 million from Letterman in 2009 by threatening to expose the host's sexual dalliances with members of his staff. A former painter at Letterman's ranch in Montana was jailed following a 2005 plot to kidnap the TV funnyman's nanny and son.
A radical Muslim group last year warned the creators of "South Park" that they could face violent retribution for depicting the prophet Muhammad in a bear suit on the Comedy Central cartoon. Author Salman Rushdie spent years in hiding after Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini urged he be killed for blasphemy after writing the book "The Satanic Verses.

Stormy Skies for Obama Vacation

Before going on vacation today, President Obama wrapped up his Midwestern bus tour and gave a hint about his new plan to get America working again.


"There's no reason for us not to act right now. And over the course of the next few weeks, I'm going to be putting out more proposals to put people to work right now," said President Obama.


He wants to create jobs by building up infrastructure and slash four trillion dollars in spending; that includes entitlements.


But he's not revealing specifics until early September.


"Why don't he tell us today?" asked one man.


That's what the GOP Presidential candidates are asking.


Too little too late," said Mitt Romney.


Presidential Candidate Rick Perry said, "The President's actions are killing jobs in this country."


Washington won't be working again for a few weeks.


Congress is taking a summer recess and beginning today, so is the President with his family.


By splitting the plan into future savings in exchange for current spending, the president means to protect his long-sought tax increases. Republicans will push had for a tax simplification that closes loopholes but uses that money to bring down rates and spur growth in a revenue-neutral fashion. The president wants that income preserved to finance more demand-side stimulus now.
Regular readers will recognize this as a steroidal version of a J. Wellington Wimpy – I would gladly give you debt reduction on Tuesday for new spending today.
The president will want the debt commission to focus on the debt alone. Republicans will want the discussion about taxes to include economic growth.
Obama promises to ladle on specifics when he returns from his trip, and does so with a warning to John Boehner. Obama says his plan will essentially reflect the deal he and Boehner were working on when debt-limit negations went kablooey. This will be a way for Obama to try to undercut Boehner’s clout in his caucus, leaving to Boehner to dispute or deny details of a plan that will cause fiscal conservatives to roar with indignation. (Of course, Obama own dispirited base won’t like it much either.)
Assuming Obama does have a pile of specifics to defend heading into three months of brutal fall budgetary battles – first the looming expiration of the temporary spending plan passed in the spring on Sept. 30 and then the findings of the super committee after Thanksgiving – he may come to yearn for these dog day doldrums.


Howard Dean has declared that the Bush political machine will destroy new Republican frontrunner Rick Perry long before Democrats need to worry about him, and the gathering conventional wisdom in Washington is that he’s right.
The sharp criticism for Perry’s remarks about treating Federal Reserve Chairman “ugly” if he were to engage in another round of stimulus cash conjuring ahead of the 2012 election from George W. Bush loyalists Karl Rove and Tony Fratto reminded political reporters what they had long known – Bushworld and Perry people are not on good terms.
The best evidence of that came in 2010 when Rove aided Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in her unusual primary challenge to Perry. Hutchison’s failed bid busted Texas Republican politics wide open as GOPers scrambled to pick sides or run for cover and proved the level of animosity between some on Team Bush and the operation around Perry, now governor for a decade.
That friction has been transported to the national level as Americans discover that while Bush and Perry may sound the same, they are very different people. One is Andover, the other is Paint Creek Rural School. One was an fighter jock in the reserves, the other flew cargo planes in the career military. One is Republican nobility the other is a plains Democrat turned populist Republican.
On policy they differ too. Where Bush was a nuanced “compassionate” conservative, Perry is a blunter instrument with down-the-line conservative views.
But the contrast that matters now isn’t between Bush and Perry, but between Perry and Romney. As the race rapidly winnows to a two-man slugfest, the political professionals, big donors and activists who helped elect Bush twice face the question of Mitt versus Rick.
A leading indicator of how conservatives from Bush World will fall is Ray Sullivan, who ended up as Perry’s gubernatorial chief of staff after his rapid rise through the Bush ranks, including stints working for Rove and Hutchison. Sullivan is leaving his official post to serve as a senior adviser and message man to Perry’s presidential campaign.
Bush campaign operations honcho Sal Purpura has signed on as Perry’s treasurer and there are rumors of other notable crossovers to come.
One place to keep a close eye is on those who either endorsed Perry against Hutchison or stayed silent on the race. Bush confidante and former Commerce Secretary Don Evans and Bush campaign manager and FEMA Director Joe Allbaugh both backed Perry and will be ones to watch. Another potential prize for Perry would be Karen Hughes, the communications guru who helped package Bush’s successful message. She’s stayed out of the fray so far, and would be a key signing for the Perry Camp.
“This isn’t about old rivalries, this is about making the right choice at a critical moment for this country. Governor Perry is the antidote to Obama fatigue,” one longtime Bush loyalist told Power Play. “There are many of us who look forward to helping him make that case.

European Banks Have Huge Reserves, So What's the Worry?

$2.5 trillion U.S. money market funds industry -- which supplies short-term dollar funding to banks -- has retreated from the euro zone in recent months, concerned that the continent's debt crisis is spiraling out of control.


That and the drying up of interbank lending has led to a trebling of dollar funding costs for euro zone banks in the last month. One bank was forced to borrow dollars at the European Central Bank on Wednesday.


In a dramatic shift, the U.S. branches of foreign banks became net borrowers of dollars from their overseas affiliates for the first time in a decade, Federal Reserve data released last week showed.


The Fed's New York branch -- which oversees U.S. units from many European banks -- is now asking for more information about whether the banks have reliable access to the funds needed to operate in the United States, the Wall Street Journal said.


New York Fed officials "are very concerned" about European banks facing funding difficulties in the United States, a senior executive at a major European bank who has participated in the talks told the Wall Street Journal.


sources say that the draw down in reserves has continued over the last few weeks. One group inside a major US financial institution estimates that the reserves are now down to just $600 billion.


That is still a very, very large amount of reserves—far beyond anything that would have been in place prior to the financial crisis. But it is the pace of the drawdown that is prompting inquiries from banking regulators, according to a source.


Banks do not ordinary need to lend out of their reserves to issue loans to customers. Instead, they typically back the loans they make to customers with funds borrowed from other institutions, including other banks and money market funds . When banks start lending out of reserves or dipping into reserves to pay for operations, it may indicate distress in the market for interbank lending.


Still, Wall Street sources I spoke with emphasized that their is no immediate need to panic. Reserves are still at extremely high levels, indicating that it is unlikely that banks will experience funding problems. What's more, by keeping an eye on reserve levels, Fed officials can detect potential problems.


"If there's a problem with one institution, the Fed officials will see the reserve draw down and can start talks with bank officials and European banking regulators," one Wall Streeter explained.

Tampa Bomb Plot Teen's Friend Says He Was 'Just Venting'

Peter Fulham of Slate is reporting that Florida police said on Tuesday that they had foiled a potentially "catastrophic" mass murder plot by an expelled student in a Tampa school district.

Police arrested the suspect, Jared Cano, 17, after receiving a tip from a Florida resident about a possible plan by Cano to set off explosives at Freedom High School on the first day of school, CNN reports.

A search found that Cano had outlined a plan to kill two students and two principals. Authorities also found materials including timing devices that could be used to build a bomb with "catastrophic" results.

Jared Cano wrote a manifesto that detailed his plans for an attack starting at 5 a.m. next Tuesday, the first day of classes at Freedom High School in Tampa, Fla., the school Cano was expelled from in March 2010. The unnamed friend was at the home of Cano when he was arrested on Tuesday.

"He wouldn't go and do something like that. He'd say he's going to in the heat of the moment but that's his way of venting, I guess," Cano's friend told ABC Action News in Tampa. "I think he was just venting anger on a piece of paper."

The two friends would often play video games at the home where Cano lives with his mother, and were planning to do just that on Tuesday when police arrived at the home to arrest t he teenager. The friend said that he initially thought the arrest may have to do with marijuana charges, a drug Cano publicly admits to admire on his Facebook page; he has also been arrested for possession of marijuana in the past.

Police said on Wednesday they recovered bomb making material from the home including fuses, timers, shrapnel, accelerant and plastic tubing -- though no firearms were found.

Cano's friend says that he does believe that his friend could have written a manifesto detailing such a plan to kill dozens at his former school, but it would only be a way for Cano to vent his frustration and anger.

"He doesn't know how to vent," the friend told ABC Action News. "I told him, 'Dude, go in your room, scream in your pillow or something.'"

According to Christopher Farkas, Freedom High School principal for the past three years, Cano was suspended from that school in March 2010 for an off-campus incident. Police confirmed that he was expelled from school for his previous burglary.

Police said they have no reason to believe that anyone else was involved in the bomb plot. They reported that the family had been cooperative. Castor said that Cano's mother, who he lives with, didn't know that her son had materials to build a bomb in his room.

Cano has been charged with threatening to throw, project, place or discharge a destructive device. He also faces charges for possession of bomb-making materials, cultivation of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of marijuana.

"The number of casualties they could have caused, the bomb team described it as serious injury including death," Tampa Police Chief Jane Castor said. "He had the ability to do some serious harm at Freedom High School on the first day of school … He had a fuel source, fuel sources; he had shrapnel; he had tubing to make the pipe bombs and he also had fusing and timing devices."

Police said that Cano specified in his manifesto his goal of surpassing the number of students who were killed and injured during the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.

The arrest on Tuesday came just hours after an anonymous tipster alerted police about Cano's alleged plot. After the tip came into Tampa Police Department's call center that Cano was plotting to bomb the school, detectives immediately called a bomb squad to his apartment.

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Principal Farkas said in a press conference that he did know Cano, and that "there are threats that happen" involving the school, but that "95 percent of time, they're not real." He admitted to not realizing that Cano posed any real threat.

"Being in this business long enough, it's hard to say that you don't … you can almost expect anything," he said. "It's hard to have surprises nowadays. But the reality is ... No I didn't pick that kid up.

Local reaction to the president's vacation

Fresh off three days of barnstorming in the Midwest, President Obama will spend the morning at the White House in two closed-door meetings, first with his senior economic advisors in the Oval Office then with his national security team in the Situation Room.

In the afternoon, Obama heads to the island oasis of Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts, where he’s expected to spend the next 10 days vacationing with his family.

The trip, the Obamas’ third consecutive to the Vineyard, comes in spite of some criticism from Republicans and members of his own party that he remain in Washington to focus on the economy.

"We've got to be doing every single thing we can, every minute of every day" to help the American people,” Obama told a crowd Wednesday in Alpha, Ill., the last stop on his bus tour.

White House press secretary Jay Carney has said Obama will continue to work on the economy even while he is away.

"I don't think Americans out there would begrudge that notion that the president would spend some time with his family,” Carney told reporters last week.

He added, "There's no such thing as a presidential vacation. The presidency travels with you. He will be in constant communication and get regular briefings from his national security team as well as his economic team. And he will, of course, be fully capable if necessary of traveling back if that were required. It's not very far.

If I were president today, I wouldn't be looking to spend 10 days on Martha's Vineyard. Martha's Vineyard is in my home state of Massachusetts, so I don't want to say anything negative about people vacationing there, but if you're the President of the United States and the nation is in crisis - and we're in a jobs crisis right now - then you shouldn't be out vacationing."

But outside North Station in Boston, some commuters who were on their way to work today had a different opinion.

"He deserves a vacation, come on -he works hard!" said one commuter.

"We all need vacations. He works hard and there's lots of pressure on him. But I'm sure he'll be working there anyway." said another.

President Obama has taken less vacation time than his Republican predecessors. A CBS News study found, at this point in his term, President Obama has taken 61 vacation days. George W Bush had taken 180 days off at this point of his presidency, and Ronald Reagan had taken 112 days off.

Still, when it comes to presidential vacations… timing is everything.

"I think everyone's entitled to a vacation, but given the circumstances right now, his focus should be elsewhere." said one Boston commuter, "Given the economy and the fact that we have wars going on right now. It's a double edge sword.

Waters to Obama, Pay attention to us

Black caucus members on Tuesday told a mostly Black audience to “unleash” them to confront President Barack Obama on the issue of jobs during the Congressional Black Caucus “For the People Jobs Tour” town hall in Detroit, MI.

California Rep. Maxine Waters expressed her and other Black Caucus members’ dilemma of having to walk a line, TheGrio.com reports:

“We don’t put pressure on the president,” said Waters. “Let me tell you why. We don’t put pressure on the president because ya’ll love the president. You love the president. You’re very proud…to have a black man [in the White House] …First time in the history of the United States of America. If we go after the president too hard, you’re going after us.”

At a town hall in Detroit on Tuesday, Waters said that members of the CBC are “getting tired” of continuing to support the president even as the economy continues to flounder, with the effects of a long-term recession magnified in many African-American communities.

The president visited predominantly white communities in Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois on his bus tour this week, Waters also noted at the town hall, saying: “We don’t know why on this trip that he’s in the United States now, he’s not in any black community…we don’t know that.”

On Thursday, mentioning the tour on MSNBC, Waters picked up a newspaper. “Take a look at this headline in the Wall Street Journal: ‘Obama aims to keep white voters on board.’ Well we want to be on board, too.”

Waters also tried to explain her Tuesday remarks, which had cable news and the blogosphere alight on Wednesday. “The economy, the loss of jobs, the pain is real. We’re talking about indisputable facts,” she said. “We’ve got to be in the discussion. We want to be part of the solution. We cannot continue to go on watching everybody talk about what the solutions are without us being included in it.”

Supporters ask her and other members of the CBC if they’re meeting with Obama to discuss unemployment, but Waters said that they “have not been privy to which way the president is going and why he’s doing it” on jobs and the economy.

“It’s time for us to step up and note that our communities are not being dealt with and to make sure that this administration understands that we cannot continue to go on this way,” she said. “Whatever the plan is that’s going to be unveiled in September, we intend to be a part of that. We have ideas. We want to include those in the plan that the president unveils. Here we are.

Christine O'Donnell Is Pretty Sorry About That Whole "I'm Not A Witch"

Christine O’Donnell shot to national infamy last year when a TV spot leaked that featured her informing voters that she was “not a witch.” Decades before, during one of her frequent appearances on Bill Maher’s show Politically Incorrect, she had confessed that she once “dabbled in” the occult while dating a boy who was into witchcraft. The witch ad was an instant viral sensation, parodied on Saturday Night Live and endlessly on YouTube.

O’Donnell lost her insurgent Delaware Senate race to Chris Coons by a large margin. And as her new memoir, Troublemaker: Let’s Do What It Takes to Make America Great Again, proves, she thinks the witch video had a lot to do with it, even as she reveals layer upon layer of evidence that shows she was never likely to win in the first place.

Troublemaker is a shorter book than its large print has manipulated it to appear. But even with its modest running time, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to sit through the sometimes excruciatingly dull childhood anecdotes and endless political shoptalk. We’ve picked out the tastiest quotes, revelations, and themes so you don’t won’t have to.

She never wanted to tell you she’s not a witch.

O’Donnell loses no time in recounting the backstory of the “not a witch” ad, telling it in little snippets spliced between the opening chapters. Maybe a concerned editor suggested this gimmick as an intervention for the crawling pace and superficial narrative of the chapters about O’Donnell’s early life.

As O’Donnell tells it, she never wanted to record the witch ad. When her campaign manager pitched it to her, he said, “You’re going to hate this, Christine, but hear me out.” She did hate it, and kept hating it even as he all but tricked her into recording a few takes. They had written another ad she preferred, that featured her supporters’ stories of economic hardship. But even as she intoned, “I’m not a witch,” ostensibly to see how it sounded on camera, she says she was violating her better judgment. She “cringed” when the line showed up on the teleprompter, but she actually “wanted to scream.” She felt in her bones that something would go wrong, and later that night, she met with a group of pastors and asked them to pray. “I think I just made a terrible mistake,” she told them.

A conservative activist best known for advocating abstinence, O'Donnell stunned the Republican establishment by beating former Delaware governor Michael Castle in the GOP primary.

O'Donnell wrote she was blindsided when comedian Bill Maher aired an old clip of her admitting "I dabbled into witchcraft."

She claims media consultant Fred Davis pushed her to film the "I am not a witch" commercial. She said the ad was leaked and posted on the Internet before she could put her foot down.

As a result, O'Donnell was skewered by "Saturday Night Live" and subjected to so much ridicule that it sank her already troubled campaign.

Reached by the AP, Davis said only: "I wish her well with her book, and her future. That was a very unusual campaign."

Also, the AP obtained emails that suggest the O'Donnell campaign actually approved the witch commercial and planned to post it on YouTube the same day it hit TV.

O'Donnell, 41, also rips some of her fellow Republicans in the book. She accused Castle of pressuring people to not donate to her campaign - a charge he denies. And she claimed Karl Rove, who was President Bush's political guru, undermined her.

Rove was one of the leaders of the "liberal influences" that "severely tarnished Bush's legacy among true Constitutionalists," she wrote. "It was Karl Rove's style of Machiavellian, unprincipled realpolitik that destroyed the Republican brand."

During the campaign, Rove called her a kooky candidate who had a track record of saying "nutty things.