Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times

(Updates with dead, other collapses, colour)

By Stephen Jewkes

BOLOGNA, Italy, May 20 (Reuters) - A strong earthquake rocked a large swathe of northern Italy early on Sunday morning, causing at least three deaths and collapsing rural factories and ancient bell towers in towns.

The epicentre of the quake, which struck at 4:04 a.m. (0204 GMT) and had a magnitude of 5.9, was in the plains near Modena. But it was felt in nearby regions.

One person working a night shift died in the collapse of a factory and two others were killed in the collapse of another building. Rescue officials were checking reports that other people were buried under rubble.

First television pictures taken after dawn showed serious damage to historic buildings and rural structures. Parts of a historic fortress in one town collapsed.

Thousands of people in the area rushed into the streets after the quake, felt in the major towns of Bologna, Modena, Ferrara, Rovigo, Verona and Mantua.

A series of strong aftershocks hit the area and local mayors ordered residents to stay out of their homes.

The quake was centered 22 miles (35 km) north-northwest of Bologna at a relatively shallow depth of 6.3 miles (10 km), the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The last major earthquake to hit Italy was a 6.3 magnitude quake in the central Italian city of L'Aquila in 2009, killing nearly 300 people. (Reporting by Steve Scherer in Rome and Doina Chiacu, writing by Philip Pullella; Editing by Peter Cooney and Ron Popeski)

WASHINGTON -- He barely speaks in his own first general-election ad. On the top floor of his Boston campaign headquarters, the most visible poster is one of his dad's. His party's leaders in Congress, the states and the lobbying world don't bow to him, or mention him much, even as they make moves that can't help but define his agenda for him. Arguably the key person in his campaign is Republican kingpin Karl Rove, but Rove doesn't work there.

And this is just the way Mitt Romney and his team like it. Romney is the incidental candidate in an incidental campaign. He's a bland, blunt instrument, but only an instrument, in a wider crusade dedicated to one goal: ousting President Barack Obama and reversing whatever policy victories he has won.

Goofy or creepy when off script, burdened by an ideologically muddled record and a penchant for privacy in his business and religious life, Romney has chosen to focus on everyone but himself and to surrender his campaign to a larger conservative effort.

The question is whether Romney's attempt at political self-abnegation will work. Will voters see him as selfless, shrewd and focused on the unglamorous task at hand? Or will they dismiss him as a weak, evasive figure with contempt for facts and a lot to hide?

So far, the answer isn't clear. Romney's likability and fundraising numbers are up, but he trails in the Electoral College projections. The consensus on the fall race: it's close.

There hasn't been a presidential campaign like Romney's in more than half a century -- since before 1960, when another Bostonian and Harvard graduate, John F. Kennedy, burst onto the scene.

In that year, television transformed politics into a contest between personal narratives and a search for the most convincing communicator. Also that year, presidential campaigns themselves -- the mechanics, the harried advisers, the closed-door dramas of decision-making -- took on Homeric public stature. The party was incidental in this saga; it was all about the Kennedys.

It's not all about Mitt; it's about everything but Mitt. It's not about his Boston campaign apparatus; it's about everything and everyone else surrounding it. As for the party, Mitt is glad to let them lead.

The strategy is reflected in his staff. They are not the kind to quote Tennyson.

Romney's campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, is a publicity-shy ninja of "oppo." If many voters concluded in 2004 that Sen. John Kerry was a French-fried, flip-flopping toff, Rhoades is the reason: He was head of "research" for the Bush-Cheney campaign that year. Stuart Stevens, Romney's top message and advertising man, is known for his penchant for attack spots.

There's no "Making of the President" or even "Game Change" aura here. One reason may be that the indirect godfather of the enterprise isn't on the premises. Karl Rove's influence lies in the accumulation of personal ties and changes in the way presidential campaigns are operated and financed.

Much of the top staff is composed of protégés of "The Architect." Rhoades was Rove's research aide in 2004; Stevens was a key part of the Bush advertising team in 2000 and 2004 under Rove. Romney's close friend and former gubernatorial chief of staff, Beth Myers (who is now in charge of vetting vice presidential candidates), received her start in politics working with Rove in Texas.

As the man behind the super PAC American Crossroads and its affiliate Crossroads GPS, which together are expecting to raise more than $300 million for "independent" spending, Rove may have more impact on Romney than Romney's own campaign. Federal law bars Rove and his Boston friends from talking strategy with each other. But they don't have to. They know each other's thinking and how to read the public signals.

American Crossroads will be the largest Republican-oriented super PAC and one that Rove & Co. hope will draw money and attention away from renegade operations that would drag the party off its economic message and into counterproductive attacks on religion and race.

As for GOP congressional leaders, Romney has long since tied his destiny to theirs, and far more willingly than presidential candidates generally like to do. When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell engineered a day of votes on draconian GOP budget plans, Romney was happy to stress his own, only slightly less drastic plan.

He signed onto Rep. Paul Ryan's budget in the House early and has repeated his support often. Doing so gave Romney a way to ingratiate himself with conservatives who were and are suspicious of him.

Romney's speeches and interviews rarely produce news or provide much information, and rarely seem designed to do so. His May 12 speech at Liberty University was a chance to deliver a memorable moment of eloquent faith witness. Some evangelicals professed to be pleased by what he said, but it was, in fact, nothing more than an anodyne, risk-free homily on the value of service, with one line tucked in about his belief in man-woman marriage.

When he has to answer unscripted questions, the results have been so problematic so often that he now is determined to fade into the woodwork as quickly as possible. Asked to defend an earlier comment about President Obama's relationship with the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Romney tried to erase himself from view. "I'm not familiar precisely with exactly what I said," Romney said, "but I stand by what I said, whatever it was." In other words, he is incidental to his own history.

Anti-tax lobbyist Grover Norquist depicts the Romney presidency -- if there is one -- as a kind of figurehead monarchy in which the real power will lie with Congress, and within Congress, the power will lie with tax-cutting conservatives such as Norquist.

"All we have to do is replace Obama," Norquist said in February. "We are not auditioning for Fearless Leader. We don't need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. We just need a president to sign this stuff."

If Romney objected to this view of his role, he didn't say so. And why would he object? In Norquist's view, the identity of the person who isn't Obama is incidental. And that seems to be Romney's point.

This week, Facebook went public with the third largest IPO in history. On the downside of the ledger, Moody's downgraded more than three-dozen Spanish and Italian banks, and JPMorgan's trading losses zoomed past the original $2 billion estimate. On the political front, a pro-Romney super-PAC's plan to disentomb the Reverend Wright scandal made headlines. Some might question the wisdom of those backing a candidate who is an elder in a church known for magic underwear, baptizing dead people and a belief that Jesus visited America making religion a campaign issue -- but in a world where single-mom Bristol Palin shamelessly moralizes about the value of kids "growing up in a mother/father home," all bets are off. The controversy prompted Romney to deliver the quote of the week, saying of his stance on Reverend Wright: "I'm not familiar with precisely what I said, but I stand by what I said, whatever it was." Mitt, check your Facebook timeline!

Add your voice to the conversation on Twitter: twitter.com/ariannahuff

WHEN I listen to President Obama speak to and about women, he sometimes sounds too paternalistic for my taste. In numerous appearances over the years — most recently at the Barnard graduation — he has made reference to how women are smarter than men.

There's a lot of confusion about the ballyhooed NATO Summit in Chicago, intended as a big boost to Obama's geopolitical leadership, showcased in his hometown.

Questions about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, founded 62 years ago in the early days of the Cold War with the late Soviet Union and its aligned bloc, have abounded for decades. Especially since the fall of the Soviet Union, which removed NATO's founding rationale for existing.

But they are getting very loud again. Both in the wake of NATO's success in Libya -- which pointed up how far behind the rest of NATO with respect to US capability its European members have fallen -- and in the face of the looming debacle in Afghanistan.

Here are some big outstanding questions about NATO's future. We'll see how many get answers in Chicago.

* How will Pakistan play in the big discussion on AfPak strategy?

For months, in the wake of deadly US air strikes on a Pakistani border outpost, Pakistan refused to participate in the NATO Summit. It also refused to allow NATO supply routes for the Afghan War to operate.

Now Pakistan's President Asif Zardari has accepted Obama's offer to take part. Will there be better cooperation with the country which is a lynchpin to any solution to the Afghan War? Will Pakistan re-open supply routes? And how much will that cost?

* Are countries beginning a rush to the exits in Afghanistan?

Australia, which is not a member state of NATO, but is one of America's staunchest allies -- having agreed late last year to joint basing with US forces in Darwin as Obama moves to shift geostrategic focus to the Pacific Basin -- is going to pull its forces out of Afghanistan a year early.

How many of America's other allies will do the same?

* How will NATO members advance technologically when their budgets being tightened?

Even before the wave of austerity that has swept across Europe, military budgets were mostly declining.

Though the US followed the lead of other nations in Libya, it was US forces which provided the necessary value-added in surveillance, intelligence, refueling, targeting, and command and control needed to make the air war a success.

It was France and Britain that pushed for the Libyan intervention, along with major prodding from Gulf Arab states, but the mission would likely have failed with the US "leading from behind" as one unnamed Obama advisor famously put it.

How will NATO handle relations with groups that wish to ally, such as the Gulf Cooperation Council, and with groups that may be rivals, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and its members such as Russia and China?

The Arab states in the Gulf Cooperation Council took a very active role in the Libyan intervention. They have a very pronounced wariness of Iran. How will NATO relate with the GCC? And if there is an alliance, formal or de facto, does that draw NATO into the GCC's struggles?

* Speaking of which, does NATO have a unified position on Iran?

Negotiations are taking place over the next week between Iran and the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and between Iran and the permanent five UN Security Council members (US, UK, France, Russia, China) and Germany.

The European Union, which has a big overlap with NATO, has taken tough new sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program, which are already having a big reported effect on its petrochemical exports. Iran's petrochemical exports have plunged nearly 90 percent in the last two weeks, according to traders and shipping data, with Iranian failure to get insurance to transport cargoes due to EU sanctions. The sanctions banning European insurers and reinsurers from covering tankers carrying Iranian petrochemicals came into effect at the start of May. Similar EU measures aimed at crude and oil products will start in July.

But what about the military strike long threatened by Israel, which may, or may not, be more likely with Israel sloughing off expected election this fall in favor of a new national unity governemtn?

* Does NATO have a unified position on missile defense?

Russia, again resurgent after the fall of the Soviet Union, is a big conundrum for NATO. The alliance developed plans in the Bush/Cheney years for a missile shield, ostensibly to counter a threat from Iran which does not yet actually exist.

But Russian leaders believe the proposed shield is aimed at them. And that belief is furthered by NATO turning down Russia's offer to participate in the missile shield project.

Since Europe is heavily dependent on Russian energy, how strongly do NATO members feel about the missile shield?

* Does NATO have a unified position on its own expansion?

Russia also has taken great offense at NATO expansion up to its borders. The rush to expand NATO was on in the Clinton and Bush/Cheney years. Lately, it's seemed to pause.

Obama has undertaken a "re-set" of relations with Russia, which flourished for a time, helped in part by his easy relations with President Dmitry Medvedev. He has no such relations with Vladimir Putin, Medvedev's former boss, now back as president of the Russian Federation after a four-year stint at prime minister.

As I noted three years ago here on the Huffington Post, when Obama visited Moscow, Putin had Obama come to his sumptuous dacha in a forest outside Moscow. They discussed ballistic missile defense, and Russian dislike of America establishing bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, NATO expansion, and the question of containing Iran, Russia's decades-long friend of a sort (and centuries-long rival).

The two hour-plus meeting went long -- in part because much of it was taken up by a Putin monologue -- and Obama ended up late for his major address of the week at the New Economic School back in Moscow.

Having lectured Obama and made him late for the first time ever for one of his major addresses, Putin went over to visit a famous motorcycle club. Which was pointedly headed to a big motorcycle rally in Ukraine, a country which Putin was intent on keeping out of NATO, where pro-US politicians lost the subsequent election.

There really is no shortage of fundamental questions surrounding NATO. It will be interesting to see how Obama spins up the impression of a success.

You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.

William Bradley Huffington Post Archive

George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, are expected to return to the White House later this month to be honored by President Barack Obama with the unveiling of their official portraits that will hang at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The White House confirmed on Friday that the Bushes are slated to revisit their Washington home of eight years on May 31 for a rare joint appearance between the current and past president.

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Clad in purple socks, a nod to Louisiana State University's trademark purple and yellow, and standing beneath a shimmering disco ball, veteran newsman Bob Schieffer told graduates of the LSU's Manship School of Mass Communication that journalism was changing and politics were dying, but being a reporter is still the most fun you can have.

In an ultimately uplifting speech, the longtime CBS News reporter and current moderator of "Face the Nation" did not shy away from offering his personal opinions about our "broken" political system, which, he said, has reached a state of unbreakable gridlock.

"There's something wrong," Schieffer said, "when this much money has become the overpowering force in our politics."

He spoke about the skyrocketing price of campaigns -- "Obama and Mitt Romney are both planning to spend about a billion dollars each" -- and how the flood of money has made compromise between the parties that much harder. People who work on campaigns, he said, now find themselves "ashamed" at the end of their runs, rather than "happy or sad for what has happened."

"There's no penalty anymore for the dirty campaigning," he told the graduates. "In the old days, people on the losing side had to go back and live in their communities. But now those consultants don't have to live with their loss."

As for his own profession, Schieffer said that although the state of the industry is changing and jobs are scarce, journalists are more important than ever.

He reminded graduates that being a television reporter wasn't even possible when he was a boy, just as being an astronaut wasn't yet a viable aspiration. He told stories about working closely with Walter Cronkite, scoring his first scoop on Gerald Ford, and the time he watched Lyndon Johnson toss his hat into a crowd of admirers in Fort Worth, Texas. And then, many years later, he met the young campaign worker who has been assigned to retrieve LBJ's hat after he tossed it out.

Schieffer said much of his success was based on luck and being in the right place at the right time. Decades ago, he had entered the CBS news building uninvited, only to be called in for an interview because they thought he was somebody else.

"Lucky? Yes, it was lucky. I was very lucky," he said. "My tip to you is the harder you work, the luckier you get."

Schieffer has long been passionate about journalism education. He helped found the journalism school at his alma mater, Texas Christian University, which now bears his name.

Jim Treacher, The Daily Caller
Unless you’re a credulous rube, it sure does look like Obama told his literary agency that he was born in Kenya for some reason. And the false information wasn’t corrected until April 2007, a couple of months after he launched his presidential campaign. “But wait,” you protest. “How do you know Obama wrote that? How do you know he ever even saw it? Shut up!” Well, we all know that Obama is the exception to every rule, so maybe he’s the exception to this one too. Author and television producer Steve Boman writes at...

Cate Plys, Northwestern Magazine
No wonder you can date pictures of Rahm Emanuel by the darkening circles around his eyes, the way botanists count tree rings. Most people settle for half-circles under their eyes. The famously competitive Emanuel goes the full 360 degrees. Chicago’s new mayor never stops, and sleep is seemingly optional.A look at Emanuel’s daily schedule, courtesy of a Chicago Reader investigation, shows why the mayor is in a hurry. The down-to-the-minute itineraries typically track him from breakfast meetings through dinner receptions. In three months the phrase “lunch with a...

Bill Kristol, Weekly Standard
For our part, we’d like to see a decisive triumph for Romney and his running mate over two formidable representatives of contemporary liberalism, rather than a discounted victory over a flawed ticket with only one strong candidate. So we sincerely suggest to President Obama: Dump Joe Biden. We’re sure the thought has occurred to the president. He knows his undisciplined vice president did him no service by popping off about same-sex marriage on Meet the Press, thereby forcing Obama to engage the issue prematurely. Instead of making his announcement of his...

Thomas Sowell, Investor's Business Daily
Now that census data show -- for the first time in American history -- the number of white babies born exceeded by the number of babies born to non-white minorities the question is: What does this mean for the future of American society?Politically, it means that minorities who traditionally vote overwhelmingly for Democrats can ensure that the country veers ever further to the left over the years, making America more like the welfare states of Europe, whose unsustainable spending led ultimately to finical crises and widespread riots.

Noam Scheiber, The New Republic
The Wall Street Journal has an intriguing story today about the anxiety in the White House over $2 billion-and-counting loss that JP Morgan announced last week. At first blush, the reason for the angst isn't entirely clear. After all, the loss would seem to strengthen the case for financial reform, which, as it happens, the president signed into law two years ago, and which Mitt Romney opposes. To the extent that JP Morgan revives the debate over financial reform, it would seem to benefit Barack Obama.  

Jamelle Bouie, American Prospect
The defining feature of the Republican presidential primaries was the constant Sturm und Drang over Mitt Romney’s ability to win Republican voters. Pundits claimed that Romney had a “ceiling” with conservatives in the party, and opponents like former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum routinely assailed the front-runner as a candidate whose commitment to conservatism was short-lived and inauthentic—a human “Etch A Sketch,” in the words of Romney’s own campaign spokesperson. But when Romney locked up the nomination...

Bill O'Reilly shared some criticism of the Republican party with Rachael Ray during a lighthearted chat on her Friday show.

The Fox News host appeared on Ray's program to talk about his recently-released biography of Abraham Lincoln. Before that though, Ray wanted to know what the election season has been like for him.

O'Reilly agreed that it was a big year, and that he had to watch both sides of the aisle very carefully. He had some harsh words for Republicans, saying, "I'm not a big Republican Party guy either. Because I think they're disorganized and they don’t cooperate and they don't try to get things done for the folks.”

He said that he was "pulling back" and telling his viewers that he would be tough on both candidates. "I think politicians in general have gotten away from helping people and I don't like that," he explained.

When Ray asked whether he would ever consider running for office, O'Reilly's answer was a firm "no."

"No, it's just too much money involved and you have to go make deals with these people for money and I don’t like to do that," he explained. "And I enjoy what I do. He described his current job as "to watch the powerful" and "keep them in check."

With that in mind, Ray asked him to imagine what he would do if he were president for a day. O'Reilly said that he would tell people "to put aside this partisan garbage" and compromise. "If I were there for two days, I would deport a lot of people," he joked.

O'Reilly also addressed whether he would ever appear on "Dancing With the Stars," who he would want to play him in a movie and what his hidden talent is.

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is promoting a new plan to encourage the development of better, cheaper prescription drugs: an innovation fund rewarding companies for inventing important new HIV and AIDS medications. In exchange for accepting an innovation award, drugmakers would agree to sell their new medicines at low prices.

Drugs developed over the past two decades have dramatically improved life expectancy for those living with HIV, but the medications remain unaffordable in many nations hit hardest by the epidemic. High drug costs also hamper relief programs In the U.S., where 2,759 low-income Americans are currently on waiting lists seeking treatment, according to the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors.

"One of the great moral issues of our day is that there are people in our country suffering and in some cases dying because they are not able to afford a medicine that can be produced for pennies per treatment," Sanders said during a Tuesday hearing in Congress. "The simple fact is that the prices of patent medicines are a significant barrier to access to health for millions of uninsured and underinsured Americans and people die because of it."

Drug prices are dramatically inflated by the restrictive American patent system, which grants companies long-term monopolies on new drugs they develop. The problem is particularly acute for AIDS drugs, which require decades of constant use to be effective. During the hearing, Sanders discussed one such drug, Atripla, which he said costs roughly $25,000 a year for a single patient in the U.S., where it is marketed jointly by Gilead Sciences and Bristol-Myers Squibb. In countries that allow generic drugs to compete with Atripla, treatment is just $200 a year.

Each patient enrolled in the taxpayer-funded AIDS Drug Assistance Program costs an average of about $9,400 a year, said Mohammad N. Akhter, director of the Washington, D.C., Department of Health, at Tuesday's hearing. HIV medications cost more than $300,000 per person over the course of a single patient's lifetime. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 50,000 Americans are diagnosed with HIV every year.

Drug companies say patents allow them to recoup the hefty costs associated with researching and developing new drugs and winning regulatory approval to sell them. But public health experts say the existing system leads to needless death. Although many countries reject patents for important medications, developing nations face intense political pressure to adopt American-style drug patents in order to receive trade perks and other economic benefits from the U.S.

"Current incentive systems fail to generate enough research and development, in either the private or public sectors, to address the health care needs of developing countries concluded an April report by the World Health Organization. "There is therefore an economic case, based on market failure, for public action. There is also a moral case. We have the technical means to provide access to lifesaving medicines, and to develop new products needed in developing countries, but yet millions of people suffer and die for lack of access to existing products and to those that do not yet exist."

Sanders has introduced legislation that would offer companies a big up-front prize for developing new, innovative AIDS drugs. In return for the big payday, pharmaceutical firms would agree to allow generic versions of their medicines to hit the market immediately. The fund would total $3 billion for its first year.

"Moving from a patent system to an effective prize system, using the power of the competitive marketplace to ensure the efficient dissemination of medicines, is a critical step in creating [a] more efficient innovation system," Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said at Tuesday's hearing.

Despite the big prize fund, some economists said they expect the plan would actually reduce the federal budget deficit. By making much cheaper generic versions of expensive drugs available to government programs like Medicare and Medicaid, Sanders said he hopes to ultimately save taxpayers money. According to economist Dean Baker, Americans pay a total of $270 billion more each year on prescription drugs than they would without patent-granted monopolies on medicine. The Congressional Budget Office has not scored Sanders' proposal for its budget impact, and is unlikely to do so barring pressure from Democratic Party leadership.

Sanders' proposal enjoys support from public health experts. Pharmaceutical companies that profit handsomely with the status quo are resistant.

And so is the Obama administration. The White House agency responsible for negotiating trade pacts, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, is currently pushing for restrictive intellectual property standards that would not only cement the American drug financing system abroad, but actually go further in establishing intellectual property-based monopolies on medicine abroad. The trade representative is currently negotiating intellectual property and other issues with eight nations, in a deal dubbed the Trans-Pacific Partnership. House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) leaked the text of the draft intellectual property chapter to his website on Tuesday, out of separate concerns that the trade representative's position would undermine Internet and technology innovation.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative emphasizes that it is seeking to eliminate tariffs on medicines, which should play some role in lowering prices, but said that robust intellectual property standards encourage the development of useful new drugs.

Intellectual property rights "provide important incentives for the invention and development of new medicines to treat a wide range of diseases and conditions -- medicines that should and do become available for generic production," trade representative spokeswoman Carol Guthrie told HuffPost. "The United States is working with stakeholders across the spectrum to strike the right balance" in the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

"It's a nightmare for global health advocates," said Judit Rius, U.S. manager of Doctors Without Borders Access Campaign. "It's one of the biggest threats we've seen promoted by the U.S. government to the sustainability of public health in the developing world. ... They say they are trying to save more lives, treat more people as soon as possible with newer and better drugs." But the intellectual property proposal in the Trans-Pacific Partnership "would delay access to these drugs for a very long time," Rius said.

Watch recorded video of the hearing.

MIAMI -- Sen. Marco Rubio has close ties to a colleague accused of questionable financial dealings. The freshman senator also once was enmeshed in a controversy over the use of the state party's credit card for his personal expenses. And he has faced increased scrutiny over his personal background since bursting onto the national political scene, including conflicting details of his parents' immigration from Cuba and his recently disclosed ties to the Mormon faith.

Will issues like those in Rubio's personal and political background hold back one of the GOP's fastest-rising stars? That's a question being debated in Republican circles in Washington, Florida and elsewhere as the Cuban-American senator with solid conservative credentials works to raise his profile beyond Florida, if not position himself for a national role within the GOP.

"Marco Rubio is a huge star in the Republican Party in much the same way that Barack Obama was in the Democratic Party between his convention speech in 2004 and his candidacy for the president," said Steve Schmidt, a top adviser to John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. "There are a lot of plusses when you look at Marco Rubio as a potential vice presidential candidate, but there are also unknowns."

Rubio, who all but certainly has political aspirations that extend beyond the Senate, frequently is mentioned by Republican insiders as an attractive candidate to be Mitt Romney's running mate partly because the party needs to attract Hispanic voters in battleground states like Nevada and Florida in November.

While Rubio denies any interest in the No. 2 slot on the ticket this year, he's working hard to stay in the national spotlight. He recently gave a major foreign policy address in Washington, he's talking about writing a bill to allow some young illegal immigrants to remain and work in the country without citizenship, and next month he'll release a memoir.

The country is only just starting to get to know Rubio and his political vulnerabilities, though Florida residents know both well.

Rubio's relationship with fellow freshman lawmaker Rep. David Rivera, now facing a federal probe into tax evasion, and the credit card controversy surfaced during his 2010 Senate campaign. And they didn't have much effect. But that doesn't mean the country as a whole would overlook those eyebrow-raising issues.

"Floridians may be numb to these hits because of the rough-and-tumble nature of politics in the state, when it's looked at by a national audience it may not be as palatable," said Abe Dyk, a political strategist who managed the 2010 Senate campaign of Rubio's Democratic challenger.

Rubio and Rivera met in 1992, during the campaign of former Republican Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a fellow South Florida Cuban-American. The two rose through the ranks in the statehouse with Rivera oftentimes playing bad cop to the more congenial Rubio.

During the legislative session, they shared a Tallahassee townhouse, which a bank began foreclosure proceedings on in 2010. Rubio made only partial payments on that mortgage for five months in 2010, even as he held jobs as a consultant, professor and TV commentator. He has said the missed payments were due to a dispute over the terms of the mortgage.

State officials closed a criminal probe into Rivera's personal financial dealings without filing charges but didn't clear him entirely. They cited Florida's brief statute of limitations and its lax campaign finance laws for not charging him with living off of his campaign funds and failing to disclose his income.

In the last year, Rubio has publicly kept some distance from Rivera and has said that his friend has some issues he must address on the campaign trail. Still, Rubio threw a small Washington fundraiser for Rivera last week. So far, Rubio hasn't faced blowback from his friendship with Rivera.

"It's tough to say how that will play out," says Emilio Gonzalez, a consultant who served in the Bush administration and sees Rubio as a potentially formidable presidential candidate in 2016.

If Rubio were to end up on the GOP presidential ticket or mount his own national campaign in the coming years, he all but certainly would face questions about the scandal over the use of state GOP funds when he was the speaker of the Florida House.

The head of the party, Jim Greer, was forced to resign following revelations he and his second-in-command charged $1.5 million on party credit cards, much of it on luxurious hotels, fancy restaurants, chauffeured sedans and lavish entertaining. Greer's trial is set to start July 30, just ahead of the Republican convention, and many Republican observers anticipate he will detail unethical use of party money by other high-ranking GOP officials.

Rubio himself spent more than $100,000 on the party card between 2006 and 2008, paying off about $16,000 in personal expenses and claiming the rest as official party business. His records from 2005, when he was lobbying to become Florida House speaker, never were released. When asked about using the party card for personal expenses, Rubio has said he sometimes just pulled the wrong card out of his wallet and he has called it a "lesson learned."

He also has had to answer criticism for how he spent money donated to two political committees he formed - including payments to relatives. He has acknowledged the bookkeeping for at least one of the accounts was sloppy.

And then there's the fuzziness around his family's background.

Rubio long claimed his parents fled Fidel Castro's regime. But it was recently disclosed that they arrived several years before Castro took power – although they quickly embraced the Cuban exile community as Castro turned toward communism. Rubio has said the dates he gave were based on his parents' recollections.

There's another part of Rubio's upbringing that long had gone undisclosed, and the revelation is one that could turn off evangelicals who make up the base of the GOP.

Rubio was baptized as Mormon when his family lived for a few years in Las Vegas, thanks to the influence of cousins who belonged to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Rubio returned to the Catholic Church as a young teen, and as an adult he has also frequently attended Baptist services.

When it comes to the vice presidency, Rubio's greatest liability may be one only time can resolve.

"I suspect that the Romney campaign is going to pick someone who is viewed as unquestionably qualified for the office," said Schmidt, who was intimately involved in McCain's selection of Sarah Palin. "To the extent that (Rubio's) in his first term, he's in the first two years of his term and he's 40 years old probably doesn't help him."

___

Farrington reported from Tallahassee, Fla.

Follow Laura Wides-Munoz on Twitter: (at)lwmunoz

Ben Shapiro, Big Journalism
Never mind that the agency used the “born in Kenya” biography until 2007. Never mind that authors who have worked with the agency state that the agency asks that authors pen their own biographies. Never mind that Obama has routinely padded his biographical details to appeal to particular audiences. Nothing to see here. Michael Shear, at the New York Times, was in full defense mode: “Perhaps the darker side of politics is always close to the surface … the conservative Drudge Report Web site published a headline: “BORN IN KENYA,”...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- A military judge is considering whether to split off one or more of the defendants and hold separate trials for five Guantanamo Bay prisoners charged in the Sept. 11 attacks, a lawyer for one of the men said Friday.

The judge, Army Col. James Pohl, proposed the change in a written order in part because of the difficulty trying to schedule hearings for five defendants and multiple lawyers at the U.S. base in Cuba, said James Connell, a civilian attorney for defendant Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali.

Pohl also questioned whether one trial for all five defendants would create a conflict with evidence that could help one defendant while hurting another, Connell said.

The judge's order is sealed. As part of the order, the prosecution was ordered to show cause why the cases should not be severed.

The Pentagon will not release the order until it has passed through a security review, said Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, a spokesman for the Guantanamo military commissions.

"There are some very specific ethical constraints that prohibit the prosecution from litigating cases in the press," Breasseale said.

Previously, Connell had said he wanted his client's case severed from that of the others, who include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the attacks, and the prosecution wanted them all tried together. Both sides are barred by the rules from disclosing their wishes at this point and will be filing legal motions by the end of the month.

The five men were arraigned together on May 5 on charges that include murder and terrorism. They could be sentenced to death if convicted. The next pretrial hearing in the case is scheduled for June but lawyers for several defendants have requested a postponement.

So, it's official. Disco is dead. The passing of Donna Summer brings to a close an era in American music that... well... if you didn't live through it, it's hard to explain. Especially the outfits people wore in public. And making John Travolta a movie star (although he did atone somewhat, by genuflecting to the 1950s immediately thereafter, in Grease).

Music history aside, it was a somewhat eclectic week in politics. The House -- in one of their rare moments when they actually meet and attempt to get something done -- passed a bunch of bills which have exactly zero chance of becoming law. Well, at least they had fun, right? Republicans were doing their usual clown routine out on the campaign trail, including questioning Obama's commitment to America and (once again) his birth certificate.

Sigh. The more things change, the more the clown makeup remains the same, I suppose. On a lighter note in clowning around, it seems arriving at a red carpet in a dog crate on top of a car is now chic. Heh.

Chicago is about to become "Protest Central" this weekend, for a meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The G-8 meeting was also supposed to have happened in Chicago, but was instead hastily whisked away to Camp David in the Maryland mountains, where popular protest is impossible (Camp David is definitely not a "free speech zone," to put it in Orwellian terms). This likely won't deflate the balloon of protest in the Windy City, but we'll all just have to see what happens over the weekend.

House Republicans passed a budget bill which hikes spending further than what they already agreed to -- yes, you read that right, Republicans are spending too much money -- because it is the one budget item that they'll never ever consider cutting: the Pentagon. They'll happily slash money for the poor, for the retired, and for the hungry... as long as we can build Ronald Reagan's missile defense system to protect us against the Soviet Union (which, someone really ought to tell Mitt Romney and the rest of the Republicans, no longer actually exists).

Americans Elect suffered a spectacular failure this week. These were the Wall Street kids who wanted to play in the big presidential sandbox, by buying ballot access in all 50 states so that they could run a "balanced ticket" of one moderate Republican and one moderate Democrat. However, it seems Americans aren't all that interested in the pipe dream of the Beltway chattering class for some sort of non-partisan "centrist" ticket, and not enough people voted online for anyone -- not even, astonishingly enough, Ron Paul -- for them to qualify for the next round of voting. C'mon, guys, just end the window-dressing attempts and go ahead and offer the ballot access you've already won (in over half the states) to Michael Bloomberg, which was really the whole reason you created this fake-grassroots movement in the first place, OK? Stop pretending you weren't going to do this anyway, and just jump in with both feet.

Enough of this looking backward, though, let's move forward to the rest of this week's nonsense.

 

We've got to award an early Honorable Mention to all the folks in Wisconsin who are working hard to recall their odious governor. The matter is still very much up in the air, and the election is right around the corner. Wisconsin groups are doing the best they can with what they've got, and a story leaked out that they were a bit miffed at the lack of support from the national Democrats for their campaign. Since then, fundraisers have been announced, and support seems to now be a bit more forthcoming.

This is a big deal, not only for the people of Wisconsin, but on the national level, as well. This election is going to happen long before November, and it will be read as having national implications no matter which way the chips fall. If the recall fails, Republicans will crow and push anti-worker legislation even harder at the state level. If the recall succeeds, Democrats will chalk up a huge victory (only the third governor ever recalled in American history), and feel the wind beneath their wings nationally. So it really behooves Democrats in Washington to support this effort to the hilt, because the stakes are much larger than just one state.

But we have two Most Impressive Democrat of the Week awards this week, for Senators Chuck Schumer and Bob Casey, who introduced a populist-anger bill they charmingly titled the "Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy" Act, or (... wait for it... drumroll...) the "Ex-PATRIOT Act." This measure was introduced over the outrage at the news that one of Facebook's founders, Eduardo Saverin, renounced his American citizenship to avoid paying taxes -- right before his company was about to go public. Not only was the bill appropriately named (for once -- Democrats usually aren't so good at this sort of thing), but Schumer got off a great line explaining the bill: "Eduardo Saverin wants to defriend the United States of America just to avoid paying taxes. We aren't going to let him get away with it." Good one, Chuck -- nice use of "defriend," there. Heh.

Whether the bill succeeds or not, it was a nice political stunt to see. It's easy to work up some populist outrage against this sort of thing, because it taps into what it means to be an American -- and also the differences between how an average American views his or her citizenship and how a billionaire views the same thing. It's not only a 99% argument, it is actually a 99.99% argument. And it's not often Democrats get to push the "American exceptionalism" button in such a fashion.

Schumer and Casey's timing was excellent, too -- because Facebook is guaranteed to be the top story in today's news. If I might be allowed to mix a few metaphors, it was striking while the iron was hot and using the sparks to light a fire in some political hay.

OK, maybe that was just a little too over the top, sorry for the lapse. It won't happen again. Well, at least not until the talking points.

Seriously, though, this sort of tactic is usually used quite well by Republicans, and usually bungled when Democrats attempt it. But it has to be said, Schumer and Casey did an excellent job this time. The move by Saverin is so outrageous that it is impossible to politically defend by anyone. The only question is whether the media takes note or not.

For their efforts, and for so successfully playing this political card, Senators Chuck Schumer and Bob Casey are this week's two Most Impressive Democrat of the Week award winners.

[Congratulate Senator Bob Casey on his Senate contact page, and Senator Chuck Schumer on his Senate contact page, to let them know you appreciate their efforts.]

 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid apparently woke up this week and realized that the Republicans are abusing the filibuster in the chamber he is supposed to be running. Oh, sure, progressive Democrats had begged him to reform the filibuster rules back when they had a chance to -- with a simple majority vote -- over a year ago, but Harry wasn't convinced, back then. Now he has realized his mistake, and publicly said so on the Senate floor.

Well, good for you, Harry! It's a day late and a dollar short, but we always like to see people evolve in the right direction, politically. Maybe next time, you should listen a bit harder when progressive Democrats come a-knockin' at your door.

Since we can't very well hand Reid even a (Dis-)Honorable Mention for seeing the light, we will just mention it in passing and move right along.

Instead, we have to look back four weeks ago to find our Most Disappointing Democrat of the Week for this week, down in North Carolina. Back then, we handed out only a (Dis-)Honorable Mention to state party chairman David Parker. Parker was charged with badly handling a sexual harassment scandal against a state party official (not Parker himself), and the only reason he didn't get a MDDOTW was because Parker did the right thing, and handed in his resignation.

Now the news comes that the party committee who hires the party chairman actually voted to reject his resignation and reinstate him, much to the embarrassment of many Democrats -- especially those concerned with the upcoming national Democratic convention to be held in the state in only a few months' time. Parker then "unresigned" and accepted his job back.

So we've got a Most Disappointing Democrat of the Week not only for David Parker, but also for the Democratic Executive Committee of North Carolina. This is not what we need right now, folks. Parker himself, speaking to the press, summed the situation up much better than we could ever hope to do: "Well you crazy people, is this the Democratic Party or what?"

Sigh. Or what, indeed.

[Contact North Carolina Democratic Chairman David Parker on his official profile page (email address at bottom), and the North Carolina Democratic Party on their official contact page, to let them know what you think of their actions.]

 

Volume 211 (5/18/12)

Kind of a grab bag of talking points this week. As always, these are offered up to be used by all and sundry to advance the Democrats' positions and frame the issues the way they truly should be framed. Whether you're a politician on a Sunday morning chat show or just a guy hanging around the water cooler at work, try a few of these out in the coming week.

 

   Home-grown austerity

This is such an obvious one, I'm actually surprised nobody else seems to have thought about it. Why use a different term for Europe and the U.S., after all?

"Republicans' plans for our economy can be summed up as more budget cuts, all the time. But you know, we have a word for that sort of thing, when talking about other countries: austerity. The Republicans want to slash budgets with a meat axe, and impose austerity measures on every part of society except the wealthiest one percent, who somehow are exempt from all of this austerity. But you know what? They should take a look at Europe and see how austerity on steroids is working for them over there. America faced the financial crisis and passed Obama's plan. Europe went all-austerity-all-the-time. Guess which economy is growing now? Ours. We don't need to travel the road Europe is traveling, but if the Republicans get all the austerity they are hoping for, that's exactly what will happen."

 

   Do you really want to go there, Mitt?

This one is also pathetically easy to connect the dots, one would think.

"I see that the people trying to elect Mitt Romney have been considering using Jeremiah Wright ads against President Obama. My question is: Do you really want to go there, Mitt? Do you really want to set the standard for attacks on a candidate's religion? Perhaps you are unaware of American history -- I would suggest you look up the Senate hearings on seating Reed Smoot, of Utah. A century ago, the United States Senate spent years taking 3,500 pages of testimony from 100 witnesses on every aspect of Mormonism they could think up questions to ask about. Do you really want to declare that we've returned to that era, Mitt? Personally, I thought America had evolved a bit since then, but you've already brought up Reverend Wright in an interview, so I guess you've decided that a candidate's religion is fair game. That's sad, and it's disappointing."

 

   Republican War on Women continues

Once again, it's not even the odious laws which place the government between a woman and her doctor, but it's just the sheer disrespect Republicans can't help but showing in the process.

"House Republicans just barred a woman from testifying in a committee, once again. This time it was a stringent abortion law they wanted to impose on the District of Columbia, and the Republicans refused to extend a common courtesy the House normally shows to their own members. The House member from D.C., Eleanor Holmes Norton, was denied an opportunity to address the committee on a law which targets her district -- even though such testimony is normally allowed. It's not so much a bunch of old men trying to get between a woman and her doctor, as it is about basic respect -- and you can bet women voters are noticing this sort of thing."

 

   Partisan games before women

GOP War on Women, continued...

"Instead of passing the bipartisan Senate version of the renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, the House Republicans decided to play politics with the bill instead, to water down protections for women against violence. They are putting their own partisan gamesmanship ahead of protecting women, and I find it disgusting. Every other time the VAWA came up for renewal in the past, it would garner a bipartisan vote in both houses. This time around, the Senate passed it with a large bipartisan vote. But the House Republicans would rather play politics on a version of the bill which President Obama has already said he will veto, rather than joining with their Senate Republican counterparts in putting something in this country -- anything, in fact -- before their own desire to play partisan games. Shame on them for doing so!"

 

   JP Morgan's near meltdown

Knock this one out of the park, while the iron's hot. Or, choose your own mixed metaphor -- but get this message out there.

"Republicans have been arguing for years that there's too much 'regulation' on Wall Street -- even after they almost destroyed the American economy because of little or no regulation on the insane risks Wall Street was taking. Republicans tell us over and over again, 'Just let Wall Street run like a casino -- it'll be no problem, because they'll regulate themselves.' This is hogwash, and what we are witnessing at JP Morgan should be seen as a canary in the coal mine. The Dodd-Frank regulations that Democrats passed have not been fully implemented yet. The regulations are still being written, and at every turn Wall Street bankers and their Republican buddies have been blocking everything they can, so that commonsense rules aren't applied to them. The Republicans fighting against these rules should take a long, hard look at JP Morgan -- which has paid millions to lobby against the rules -- and ask themselves if that is really what they want to encourage Wall Street to do again. Wasn't one financial crash enough for them? Then why are they bending so far over backwards to facilitate another?"

 

   Bain-ful

The Obama reelection team fired a salvo against Romney's experience at Bain Capital this week. This is smart politics, and we are likely to see more of it soon. Romney is perceived by the public as being some sort of financial private-sector guru who knows what to do about the American economy. Obama began to launch a full-scale frontal attack on this perception, which is good news. I have to admit, the core of this particular talking point came from an excellent blog post by Robert Creamer at The Huffington Post.

"Mitt Romney says he knows how to create jobs because of his private-sector experience at Bain Capital. But nothing could be further from the truth. Bain is not in the business of 'creating jobs' -- they are in the business of 'creating wealth' for their shareholders. They take over a business and use accounting tricks to insure that Bain makes money no matter what happens to the company. Sometimes the company does well, and hires people. Sometimes it goes bust, and lays everybody off. In either case, Bain walks away with millions of dollars. This is the experience Mitt Romney is supposed to bring to the White House? No wonder he pals around with people like Meg Whitman, whose own company is about to lay off over 30,000 people. Do you think Meg's salary goes down one dollar for destroying these jobs under her watch? Nope. That's the world these people live in -- whether the company and the jobs survive or not, they continue to line their pockets. America simply can't afford someone with this sort of outlook in charge of our economy. It would be an unmitigated disaster."

 

   Good enough for me, good enough for my money

This one may cross some sort of line. Then again, it may not. Innocent deniability is the way to go, should Mitt Romney's name come up in response. You have to refrain from throwing in items like "an elevator for my cars" for this to work, however.

"I personally find it astounding that any sane person would voluntarily give up their American citizenship for any reason, and to hear someone do it just to save money is flat-out disgusting to me. These people live in a different world, apparently. They own multiple houses all over the world, they treat national borders as some sort of inconvenience, and they seek tax havens where they can live with others of the tiny fraction of the one percent who can afford such luxuries as a fluid concept of citizenship and national pride. As I said, to me this is outrageous, but then I've never had millions of dollars in a Cayman Islands or Swiss bank account, so I guess I see things differently. But I do know one thing: you could not pay me enough money to ever -- ever -- give up my American citizenship for any reason whatsoever. America's good enough for me, and it's good enough for me to keep my money in, as well."

 

Chris Weigant blogs at:

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
Become a fan of Chris on Huffington Post
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
All-time award winners leaderboard, by rank

 

The Republican leaders in Congress have mostly defined themselves by what they're against, but now they've announced what they're for -- the most popular parts of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

I can only imagine the political identity crisis this is causing within the GOP. Their hallmark is opposing anything the President supports, even if it started as a Republican legislative proposal, and now they've plunged themselves into a partisan political abyss of their own making: they are supporting the key provisions of the president's signature legislative achievement, a law the Republicans have derisively and incessantly called "Obamacare" for two years. It turns out that the party realizes that may not have been such a good idea. So they're now pretending to come up with what amounts to their own version of Obamacare.

As Politico reports: "If the law is partially or fully overturned they'll draw up bills to keep the popular, consumer-friendly portions [of Obamacare] in place -- like allowing adult children to remain on parents' health care plans until age 26, and forcing insurance companies to provide coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. Ripping these provisions from law is too politically risky, Republicans say."

These provisions are not just popular and central to the law. They are among the few elements of the ACA that are inextricably tied to and, some say, dependent upon the individual responsibility provision, also known as the individual mandate. Yet the Republicans and their extremist friends in the corporate special interest crowd are challenging that provision and the entire law at the U.S. Supreme Court. You can call this irony or hypocrisy or both.

The simple fact is that Obamacare expands coverage to more than 30 million people and eliminates the worst insurance company abuses for those of us with coverage. It stops insurance companies from denying our care and jacking up our rates whenever they please. Apparently the Republicans have noticed that these things are good and popular with voters.

The GOP's political schizophrenia was evident in the quick backtrack by Speaker John Boehner and Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, who responded to the Politico report by stridently saying they would repeal the entire law, no matter what. Recognizing the political quicksand he was entering, Ryan offered uninsured families a single strand of hope: while the GOP has no intention of crafting actual legislation that could help actual people, which the ACA does every day, the Republicans may deign to share their "vision" with the huddled masses.

Republicans' political back-flips are staggering and make Mitt Romney, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, look consistent by comparison. While telling their diehards they're repealing Obamacare in full, they're misleading the public and telling them they can keep the provisions that protect them from insurance company abuses. Many of the Obamacare provisions the Republicans say they'd like to keep are ones that are already in effect. If the court were to fulfill the desperate hopes of Republicans in Congress and overturn Obamacare, the Republicans would then try to immediatelly reinstitute much of what the court will have overturned. That's stunning and bizarre.

For two years the Republicans have promised to "replace" Obamacare as part of their non-stop repeal campaign. A fake plan like this is hardly a "replacement."

Just like their promise to protect Medicare, the talk about preserving the good stuff is an election year lie. The Republicans will always put the big corporations before the consumers they represent. They have an extremist agenda, and they're pursuing it at all costs. They've been driving an assault on women's health care, on health care in general, on every program central to the goal of opportunity and shared prosperity for all. Now that the election is getting closer, their right-wing agenda doesn't seem like such a great idea.

Boehner's words show that the GOP has discovered that hating the people they represent is bad politics. But how can the party reconcile that realization with its fundamental desire to do whatever big corporations say? They have to lie to the voters.

The Republicans in Congress and Mitt Romney will never do anything to help the middle class. They want to end Medicare as we know it. They support insurance company discrimination against the sick. They are waging an enthusiastic war on women and students and middle-class taxpayers. They want to give massive tax breaks to the 1 percent and protect outrageous things like big tax subsidies for the oil companies. Anyone inclined to entrust our nation's health care to this duplicitous party that exists to front for people who have grown rich off the status quo should remember that.

WASHINGTON -- The reelection campaign of President Barack Obama reported raising $25.7 million in April, down from $35 million raised in March.

While the campaign raised fewer dollars last month than the previous one, its support from small donors remained high with 43.7 percent, or $11.23 million, coming from donors giving less than $200 in total.

Big donors were still a source of support with donors giving $2,500 and above contributing $3.69 million in April.

The employment categories that typically dominate presidential campaign finance filings continued to show big contributions. The leading donor group in April was Retired with $2,595,175. Self-Employed was a close second contributing $2,313,319 and the Not Employed category came in third with $1,682,106 in contributions.

Among individuals who listed an actual employer, tech companies and law firms dominated. The top tech firms in terms of employee giving were Microsoft ($51,747), Google ($28,061), and IBM ($13,768). Law firm donors included Bass Berry & Sims ($22,100), Blank Rome ($12,315), and WilmerHale ($13,359).

A few finance company employees gave their share to the Obama campaign: Goldman Sachs employees gave $14,150 while JPMorgan Chase employees combined to give $10,593.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's reelection campaign spent more than $14.6 million in April, ending up with more than $115 million cash on hand, according to a filing it made with the Federal Election Commission on Friday afternoon.

The numbers show a campaign taking in far more money than it is spending, though that may change with massive television ad campaigns beginning in May. The filing also shows that the campaign is banking on person-to-person contact and staff-oriented campaigning to help overcome what it expects will be bigger spending by Mitt Romney's campaign on television advertising.

The Obama campaign spent more than $2.45 million in April on payroll, not including the $1.19 million in payroll taxes the campaign paid. The campaign also paid just under $150,000 in rent during the month, picking up the tabs for the Democratic Party in battleground states and in non-battleground states that include South Carolina, Oregon, Washington, Louisiana and Vermont.

The president's reelection team is projected to spend $25 million on TV ads during May. In April, the campaign spent just $1.79 million in "media buys" as well as more than $344,000 in "media production." More money, in fact, was spent in online ads, for which the Obama campaign cut checks totaling $2.37 million in April.

Telemarketing was another major Obama campaign expense, at more than $917,000. In addition, the Obama campaign made a one-day $23,216 payment to Mobile Commons in Brooklyn, N.Y., for "text messages."

The FEC filing included some quirky expenses, including two payments that seem to have been aimed at shoring up relations with the progressive base. A $790 payment was made for "media production" services to Planned Parenthood Action Fund (a campaign official clarified that it was for an employee of the pro-choice organization to participate in a campaign video), while check for $899.95 was made for "conference and training fees" to Netroots Nation, the online progressive gathering slated for this summer in Providence, R.I.

The campaign cut checks totaling $1,497 to the Department of the Treasury for photography services, travel and lodging. The president's reelection headquarters in Chicago is a Mac office. More than $31,000 was spent on computer maintenance with Apple Inc. during April.

The president's campaign appears to be helping Romney with his claims to being a job creator. Obama for America spent $1,247.78 at Staples -- the office supply chain that Romney holds up as an example of a successful investment made by his former private equity firm, Bain Capital.