Shocker: “Game Change” creators gave $200,000 to Democrats, $0 to Republicans

In case the official statement of SarahPAC didn’t make it clear enough that the creators of HBO’s “Game Change” had little desire to hear or tell the Republican side of the story of the 2008 election, the news now is that the film’s top stars and executives have collectively donated more than $200,000 to Democrats and Democratic causes, but have given Republicans and Republican-leaning causes $0. The Hollywood Reporter notes the contributions of several leading minds behind the movie:

• Ed Harris, who plays Sen. John McCain, has given $9500 to Democratic candidates, and since 1998, the actor has also donated $11,975 to liberal special-interest groups like MoveOn.org, Emily¹s List and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. His donations to Republicans and conservative causes: Zero.
• Woody Harrelson, who stars as Steve Schmidt, chief strategist for McCain-Palin, has given $4,300 to Democratic candidates, and donated $3,500 to liberal causes like GreenVote and the Hollywood Women¹s Political Committee. Republican anc conservative donations: Zero …
• Producer Tom Hanks has given away over a hundred grand to the Democratic party, and since 1994, Hanks has also donated $36,500 to liberal causes like Midwest Values Pac, founded by Democratic Sen. Al Franken. Republican and conservative donations: Zero.
• Julianne Moore, who stars as Palin, donated $2,250 to the Democrats, and $7,500 to special-interest groups like the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic White House Victory Fund. To Republicans and conservative causes: Zero.

The film’s co-executive producers have also made significant contributions. This comes as no surprise; it would be far more newsworthy if a Hollywood cast and crew gave primarily to Republicans. Still, it underscores a need for conservatives to play a larger part in the crafting of the cultural narrative. If we object to Hollywood’s dramatic rendering of the McCain/Palin campaign, we should kick ourselves that we didn’t think to render it dramatically first.

Read the rest here.

The intense campaign to cut advertising to “The Rush Limbaugh Show” took another turn Thursday when one of the first companies to pull its ads reportedly asked to return to the radio show — only to be told by Team Limbaugh that the conservative host no longer would give his endorsement.

A Limbaugh spokesman said that California mattress company Sleep Train asked to restart a “voiced endorsement” from Limbaugh that it had publicly cut off last week. The company said at the time that it “does not condone such negative comments toward any person.”

Several activist groups have called for companies to drop their ads after Limbaugh called a Georgetown law school student a “slut” and a “prostitute” for her support of a proposal to mandate birth control in standard healthcare coverage.

Sleep Train’s departure from the program had been billed by some observers as particularly significant because the mattress retailer had been with Limbaugh show for 25 years. Yet the tone of Sleep Train’s withdrawal statement last Friday hinted it might not be pulling out for the long run.

“As a diverse company, Sleep Train does not condone such negative comments directed toward any person,” Sleep Train said at the time. “We have currently pulled our ads with Rush Limbaugh.”

Still, Washington Post blogger Erik Wemple called Sleep Train’s decision “an act worth crediting,” saying that lost ads would have more of an effect on Limbaugh than “well-crafted expressions of outrage from the usual organs.”

Limbaugh spokesman Brian Glicklich on Thursday forwarded a copy of an email that he said had been sent to Sleep Train Chief Executive Dale Carlsen. In it, Glicklich wrote that Limbaugh had personally received the company’s requests to resume advertising on his show.

“Unfortunately,” Glicklich wrote, “your public comments were not well received by our audience, and did not accurately portray either Rush Limbaugh’s character or the intent of his remarks. Thus, we regret to inform you that Rush will be unable to endorse Sleep Train in the future.”

Read the rest here.

Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer

Dwight Schrute would be jealous: A new study suggests that women can detect snakes faster during the premenstrual phase of their menstrual cycles.

The quirky character on the sitcom “The Office” has plenty of theories about both snakes and menstruation, including a color-coded chart for the cycles of his female co-workers, but even he didn’t see this one coming. Study researchers say the idea makes sense, as fluctuating hormones can influence the amygdala, a brain region responsible for fear and anxiety.

During the luteal phase, or premenstrual portion, of the menstrual cycle, women are quicker at detecting photos of snakes, a threatening stimulus, than they are during the early and late follicular phase of the cycle, when the ovaries prepare to release an egg.

The luteal cycle begins with ovulation, the time of maximum fertility, suggesting that heightened anxiety might be adaptive in helping pregnant or potentially pregnant women stay safe, researchers report today (March 8) in the Nature journal Scientific Reports. The luteal phase is also the time when some women experience premenstrual syndrome, or PMS, an array of symptoms that can include everything from breast tenderness to irritability to anxiety.

The study is preliminary, and women’s cycles were calculated based on the dates participants gave for their last periods, not on direct hormone measurements, meaning further research is necessary to confirm the results.

In the study, Kyoto University Primate Institute researcher Nobuo Masataka and his colleague, Masahiro Shibasaki, asked 60 healthy, naturally cycling women ages 29 to 30 to look at grids of nine photos and to touch the photo in each grid that contained a snake. The other photos were of flowers, a neutral, non-scary image. In general, people are quicker to react to scary snakes than they are to pleasant flowers. [7 Shocking Snake Stories]

Each woman completed the experiment twice over two to three months. Twenty women participated during the early follicular phase of their cycle, or the fifth day after the start of the menstrual period, and during the late follicular phase, or the 25th day of the cycle right before ovulation.

Another 20 participated during the early follicular phase and the luteal phase, day 13 of the cycle right around when ovulation occurs. A third group of 20 participated during the late follicular phase and the luteal phase.

The results revealed that women detected flowers equally as well throughout their cycles. But they were quicker to see snakes during the luteal phase compared with the late follicular and early follicular phases. On average it took about 1,128 to 1149 milliseconds to spot the snake during the luteal phase, which was about 200 milliseconds faster than the average snake-spotting speed during the follicular phases.

There was no difference in snake-detecting ability between the early and late follicular phases.

Citing other hormonal studies, the researchers speculate that heightened levels of the hormone progesterone could increase anxiety. This hormone is particularly high in the luteal phase of the cycle. Other hormones, including estradiol and cortisol, also vary with the menstrual cycle and could play a role in this increased awareness of danger, the researchers wrote.

Source

In all, 11 Democrats joined 45 Republicans to support the pipeline. Only the fact that 60 votes were needed for passage saved the White House from an embarrassing defeat.

Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) wryly congratulated Obama on his lobbying efforts.

“That was very strong work by President Obama himself, making personal calls to Democrats,” Lugar said. “He understood that a majority of the American public and a majority at least of the Senate are strongly in favor of this project.

“So I suppose you give credit to the president for once again blocking something, but I don’t think the president really wants to do that indefinitely,” he added.

“We got a majority in the Senate,” said amendment sponsor Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), who noted that two senators — Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and John Thune (R-S.D.) — were absent. “So we would have had 58 votes had all Republicans been able to be here.”

Republicans promised that the issue, which has been a staple of the campaign trail since Obama first attempted in November to punt the decision until 2013, will not go away.

“We’re very close to the 60,” Hoeven said. “It’s hard to say exactly which members maybe would have supported without White House intervention, but I think the important thing is that the support is there, and the support is there because the public wants this to happen.

“The pressure is just going to increase on the administration to get this project done,” Hoeven added.

The 11 Democrats who crossed party lines to support the amendment were Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Begich of Alaska, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Jon Tester of Montana and Jim Webb of Virginia.

Landrieu said she was not among those getting a call from Obama. And she was not surprised to see 10 Democrats join with her to cross party lines.

BY CHRISTIAN BERTHELSEN

NEW YORK—A tepid report on natural-gas inventories was enough to send futures swooning Thursday, closing at another 10-year low.

The reaction in the market shows just how bearish traders have become about the prospects for natural gas, which is suffering through a dismal end to the heating season because of a supply glut caused by robust production and slack demand. Gas is a key component in heating, and demand typically rises as temperatures fall.

Read the rest here.

Stephen Albanese/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Gavin Rossdale with a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles.

Fender Musical Instruments Corp., the largest seller of guitars in the U.S., plans to sell as much as $200 million worth of shares in an initial public offering in bid to bring more Eric Clapton to China.

The guitar maker and its investors will sell shares, the Scottsdale, Arizona-based company said today in a regulatory filing. JPMorgan Securities LLC and William Blair & Co. LLC are advising on the proposed offering. No further details were announced. San Francisco-based Weston Presidio Capital is the largest investor with 43 percent of the shares.

Fender, which traces its roots to 1946, makes the Stratocaster, or “Strat,” one of the most popular electric guitars and models inspired by musicians such as Clapton and John Mayer. The company, which increased sales 13 percent to $700.6 million last year, sees growth coming from emerging markets such as China and India as guitar-based music becomes more popular in those nations.

“We intend to extend our reach to a broader global consumer base,” Fender said. The brand is “closely associated with the birth of rock ‘n’ roll and has a strong legacy in music and in popular culture.”

Read the rest here.

David Shulman is a retired Wall Street executive who is now a senior economist at the UCLA Anderson Forecast. He is also affiliated with Baruch College (CUNY) and the University of Wisconsin.

The economic news has been pretty darn good of late. Employment is up and consensus estimates are looking for about 200,000 new jobs to be reported for February this Friday on top of the 241,000 jobs created in January. The unemployment rate is coming down, consumer confidence is up, and automobile sales were at a 15 million run rate in February, the highest in five years. What’s not to like?

Make no mistake, the economy is getting better, but we shouldn’t be misled by the seasonally adjusted data the government reports. Why? Normally economic activity is constrained in the winter months by cold weather, which limits outdoor work and at times prevent people from getting to work–think construction and office closings. The government’s statisticians adjust the data to reflect this very real phenomenon.

However, the National Oceanics and Atmospheric Administration just reported that we experienced the fourth warmest winter in history. Compared to last year, this winter has been absolutely balmy with the national average temperatures six degrees and five degrees warmer than last January and February, respectively. All of a sudden the seasonal adjustment factors which are looking for winter weakness don’t work the way they are supposed to as the unusually warm weather makes it look like the economy is going into over-drive.

In terms of the automobile sales, just think of what winter is normally like. Most folks in the Midwest and Northeast have to brave sub-freezing weather and snow just to get out of the house, much less go to an automobile dealer. On top of that who really wants to treat a new car with a strong dose of rock salt on its undercarriage? But with mild weather, it is far easier to think about buying a new car in February rather than wait until April. Thus I suspect the automobile sales data represent a shift in demand rather than new demand for motor vehicles.

Similarly the warmer weather made it easier for people to get out of their house to go shopping and to eat out at restaurants. It is no surprise that most retailers reported stellar sales in February. Some observers thought that retail sales would have been crimped by soaring gasoline prices. To be sure high gasoline prices have been a negative, but this factor has been offset by plummeting natural gas prices and reduced volumes of both natural gas and home heating oil. For many consumers in the Northeast, natural gas heating bills are down 20-40 percent this year, and that goes a long way to pay for higher gasoline prices at the pump.

As a result I suspect we will get a somewhat more sober picture of the economy with the March and April data. My guess is that we will get some “payback” in the form of a slower growing labor market and somewhat weaker consumption. The consumer side of the economy will still be growing, but it won’t look as strong as it does now. Indeed, by May, with home heating costs no longer offsetting higher gasoline prices, we might once again hear talk of another slowdown.

Source

By MICHAEL FELBERBAUM
AP Business Writer

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says marijuana should be legalized and treated like alcohol because the government’s war on drugs has failed.

The outspoken evangelical Christian and host of “The 700 Club” on the Virginia Beach-based Christian Broadcasting Network he founded said the war on drugs is costing taxpayers billions of dollars. He said people should not be sent to prison for marijuana possession.

The 81-year-old first became a self-proclaimed “hero of the hippie culture” in 2010 when he called for ending mandatory prison sentences for marijuana possession convictions.

“I just think it’s shocking how many of these young people wind up in prison and they get turned into hardcore criminals because they had a possession of a very small amount of a controlled substance,” Robertson said on his show March 1. “The whole thing is crazy. We’ve said, `Well, we’re conservatives, we’re tough on crime.’ That’s baloney.”

Robertson’s support for legalizing pot appeared in a New York Times (http://trade.cc/auwm ) story published Thursday. His spokesman confirmed to The Associated Press that Robertson supports legalization with regulation. Robertson was not made available for an interview.

“I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol,” Robertson was quoted by the newspaper as saying. “If people can go into a liquor store and buy a bottle of alcohol and drink it at home legally, then why do we say that the use of this other substance is somehow criminal?”

Read the rest here.

(Reuters) – Six suspected leaders of the international hacking organization known as Anonymous were charged by U.S. authorities of computer crimes, dealing a major blow to the loose-knit group that has wreaked havoc on the websites of government agencies and major corporations.

Among those charged was Hector Xavier Monsegur, known as “Sabu,” who took responsibility for attacks on the websites of eBay’s PayPal, MasterCard Inc and Visa Inc between December 2010 and June 2011, according to federal prosecutors and the FBI. The attacks were in retaliation for the refusal of those companies to process donations to Wikileaks, the group that leaked confidential diplomatic cables in 2010.

The charges against Monsegur, in a case that was opened last summer, were filed in federal court in New York via a criminal information. Such a document typically means a suspect has been cooperating with the government.

“Sabu was seen as a leader … Now that Anonymous realises he was a snitch and was working on his own for the Fed, they must be thinking: ‘If we can’t trust Sabu, who can we trust?'” said Mikko Hyponnen, chief research officer at Finnish computer security company F-Secure.

“It’s probably not going to be the end of Anonymous, but it’s going to take a while for them to recover, especially from the paranoia,” Hyponnen said.

Monsegur pleaded guilty last August to 12 charges, including computer hacking and conspiracy, according to documents unsealed in New York federal court on Tuesday. He is free on a $50,000 (31,807 pound) bond. The charges carry a possible maximum prison term of 10 years.

Monsegur has also identified himself as a member of hacking groups called “Internet Feds” and “LulzSec,” the office of the Manhattan U.S. Attorney and the FBI said in a statement.

U.S. authorities also said they had arrested Jeremy Hammond in Chicago on Monday, on charges of hacking in to Strategic Forecasting Inc, or “Stratfor,” a global intelligence and research firm, in December 2011. Hammond, who was also known as “Anarchaos” and other names, identified himself as a member of “AntiSec” hacking group, authorities said.

“In publicizing the Stratfor hack, members of AntiSec reaffirmed their connection to Anonymous and other related groups, including LulzSec,” the statement said. It said members published a document with links to Stratfor data entitled: “Anonymous Lulzxmas rooting you proud” on a file-sharing website.

About 860,000 clients and subscribers of “Stratfor” had confidential information stolen, officials said.

A lawyer for Monsegur, Peggy Cross, did not immediately return a call seeking comment on the charges. Hammond’s lawyer could not immediately be identified.

U.S. authorities said the cyber attacks had affected more than 1 million people and the computer systems of foreign governments, such as Algeria, Yemen and Zimbabwe. Authorities said Monsegur and three of the charged men raided personal information about 70,000 potential contestants on Fox Television show “X-Factor.”

Anonops, which sends online messages on behalf of “Anonymous,” sent a message on Twitter following the arrests. “#Anonymous Is an idea, not a group. There is no leader, there is no head. It will survive, before, during, and after this time,” Anonops tweeted just after noon on Tuesday.

LulzSec, an underground group also known as Lulz Security, along with parent group Anonymous have taken credit for carrying out a number of hacking actions against companies and institutions including the CIA, Britain’s Serious Organized Crime Agency, Japan’s Sony Corp, Mexican government websites and the national police in Ireland.

A spokesman for Irish police said one of the suspects had been arrested and was being held in Terenure, a middle-class suburb of Dublin.

Last summer, as part of a coordinated law enforcement raid on the group, British police arrested Jake Davis, another suspected member of LulzSec who went by the nickname “Topiary.”

One of the charges announced on Tuesday was against Davis, a teenager accused of computer attacks on Sony, UK crime and health authorities, and Rupert Murdoch’s UK newspaper arm News International.

Davis is believed to have controlled the main Twitter account of Lulz Security, which the group used to publish data obtained by hacking into corporate and government networks.

LulzSec and Anonymous, loose online collectives of activists, have attracted widespread global media coverage for their stunts. LulzSec has more than 350,000 followers on Twitter.

Last month, Anonymous published a recording of a confidential call on January 17 between FBI agents and London detectives in which the law-enforcement agents discuss action they are taking against hacking. Authorities said they had arrested and charged Donncha O’Cearrbhail, 19, of Birr, Ireland of computer hacking conspiracy.

(Reporting By Basil Katz, Grant McCool; Additional Reporting by Diane Bartz, Lorraine Turner, Georgina Prodhan; editing by Mark Porter, Derek Caney and Matthew Lewis)

Source

By Jeff Poor

On Saturday, Carbonite CEO David Friend released a statement on his company’s website declaring that Carbonite had decided to “withdraw” advertising from Rush Limbaugh’s radio show in the wake of his controversial remarks involving Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke because it will “ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse”:

Even though Mr. Limbaugh has now issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising from his show. We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse.

However, it hasn’t done much to contribute to his company’s stock price. Since the market opened on Monday through its close today, Carbonite stock (NASDAQ:CARB) has plummeted nearly 12 percent, outpacing the drop of the NASDAQ index in that same time period by nine-and-a-half points. It was also one of the biggest decliners on the NASDAQ on Tuesday.

(Reuters) – Gold fell 2 percent in heavy volume on Tuesday, breaching technical support as investors worried more about a possible Greek default, but some analysts said the metal looked oversold and was poised for a rebound.

Silver fell 3.5 percent, and platinum and palladium posted their largest daily declines this year, as investors grew more cautious about the global economic outlook a day after China cut its growth forecast and data showed the European Union was not likely to avoid a recession.

Bullion broke below its 200-day moving average for the first time since mid-January, tracking U.S. equities’ slide on worries Greece could miss a deadline to complete a bond swap that is part of a bailout and restructuring deal to avert a default.

Gold investors were already cautious after the precious metal tumbled 5 percent last Wednesday on dimmer near-term prospects for another round of quantitative easing from the U.S. Federal Reserve. Gold rebounded to near $1,660 an ounce but investors remained uneasy.

“People who are long gold are getting out. They don’t like what’s going on with Greece and the stock market is decisively lower. It’s a matter of raising money,” said Jonathan Jossen, COMEX gold options floor trader.

“But the bullish option flow usually tells me we could be near a bottom,” Jossen said.

Spot gold was down 2.1 percent at $1,670.41 an ounce by 2:52 PM EST (1952 GMT) , having hit a six-week low of $1,663.95.

U.S. gold futures for April delivery settled down $31.80 at $1,672.10.

Read the rest here.

(Reuters) – Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings has quietly met with some of the largest U.S. cable companies in recent weeks to discuss adding the online movie streaming service to their cable offerings, according to sources familiar with matter.

In what would ratchet up its competition with HBO, the talks could lead to Netflix becoming available as another on-demand option for cable subscribers through their set-top boxes, according to three people familiar with the talks. If a partnership came to fruition, a cable operator might offer Netflix as an additional option added onto a subscriber’s cable bill, according to a fourth person.

Any partnership would be a major about-face for many in the traditional cable industry who had initially seen Netflix as a threat to their $100 billion-a-year business.

Hastings has strongly hinted at investor conferences in recent weeks about the possibility of Netflix one day being a cable channel rival to premium networks like Time Warner Inc’s HBO.

“It’s not in the short term, but it’s in the natural direction for us in the long term,” said Hastings, speaking at an investor conference last week. “Many (cable service providers) would like to have a competitor to HBO, and they would bid us off of HBO.”

Read the rest here.

Here’s why I believe that the current high price of oil is not enough to derail the U.S. economic recovery.

via Vix and More

Since the beginning of the current bull market – which bottomed at 666.79 exactly three years ago today – I have periodically been posting a table of the most significant pullbacks in the S&P 500 index since that March 2009 bottom. For the record, the current 2.6% decline over four days is barely enough to get it to qualify as one of those 16 pullbacks.

The data below incorporates intraday readings and use pullbacks from high water marks to the eventual trough as the basis for calculating the magnitude and duration of the pullbacks.

Read the rest here (and see the graph)

By BRETT ARENDS

Be honest. When you are standing at the gas pump, refilling your car and watching the numbers spin higher and higher, don’t you wish you had some stock in Exxon or BP?

Of course you do.

Is it a good idea?

Let’s do the math.

Fuel prices are rocketing — again. Gasoline is up to $3.64 a gallon nationwide. It’s doubled in ten years and trebled in twenty.

You can blame Iran. You can blame China. You can blame quantitative easing.

But whoever you blame, the problem’s the same. Your costs are rising, but your income probably isn’t. Fuel prices have outpaced incomes for generations. Today the average worker earns enough each week to buy just 200 gallons of gas. Back in the late 1970s the figure was 300 gallons.

In the parlance of finance, you have a liability without a corresponding financial asset. A bad move. When prices rise, you either have to cut back on what you spend on fuel, or cut back elsewhere.

According to Labor Department data, gasoline makes up about 5% of consumer spending. In 2010, the most recent year for which we have data, the bill came to about $2,100.

Since then it has risen about 30%. By some crude math, that’s costing a typical household another $600 or so.

Michael Willis, chief executive of niche fund company The Willis Group, is among those who has been arguing for some time that we ought to invest where we spend. He calls it “consumption-based asset allocation.” (His firm even runs two small mutual funds, the Giant 5 Total Investment System (FIVEX) and the Giant 5 Total Index System (INDEX), based around the idea.) “If you buy it,” he says, “we really think you ought to own it.”

When it comes to energy, you can take matters into your own hands pretty easily.

Integrated oil companies are probably the easiest way for ordinary investors to play the energy sector. They are less volatile than smaller energy companies, or the companies which provide services, or lease deep-sea rigs.

The iShares S&P Global Index fund (IXC) is an exchange-traded fund, which owns foreign oil giants like Total, BP and Shell as well as the likes of Exxon and Chevron.

Read the rest here.

via Marc to Market

The Tragedy that is Spain

The Greek PSI will be resolved one way or the other this week. Early reports suggest a weak start and the triggering of collective action clauses and credit default swaps remain a distinct possibility. Portugal is next and, although the credit dynamics and implementation of reforms are superior to Greece, the risk remains high that it will need a second aid package and/or debt restructuring, as it is unlikely to be able to return to the capital markets in H2 2013. With 2 LTROs and collateral liberalization, the 10-year benchmark in Portugal is yielding more than 13%, compared with a bit more than 12% at the end of last year.

However, the devolution in Spain is particularly troubling. The new fiscal compact had just been signed last week, which includes somewhat more rigorous fiscal rule and enforcement, when Spain’s PM Rajoy revealed that this year’s deficit would come in around 5.8% of GDP rather the 4.4% target. This of course follows last year’s 8.5% overshoot of the 6% target.

The problem for Spain is that the 4.4% target was based on forecasts for more than 2% growth this year. However, in late February, the EU cut its forecast to a 1% contraction. This still seems optimistic. The IMF forecasts a 1.7% contraction, which the Spanish government now accepts.

This will be the third year in 5 that the Spanish economy contracts.

Read the rest here.

blueguyzee | March 4, 2012 |

Like last week, the “dumb money” remains extremely bullish and the “smart money” is bearish. What is also certain is that the bulls remain in control, yet the best gains are clearly behind us. What is uncertain is what happens when the music stops – will you find a chair to sit in or will you need a parachute? The 2010 liquidity love fest ended in the May 5 flash crash, and the 2011 version saw the SP500 drop 18% in 3 weeks. I ask myself everyday: if I am buyer today will I be able to get out of this market safely and without a parachute? Without a pullback to buy in to, I have my doubts.

Read the rest here. Be sure to see the dumb and smart money indicators.

By Associated Press, Updated: Monday, March 5, 6:39 PM

WASHINGTON — The White House abruptly announced Monday that it had scuttled plans to hold the upcoming G-8 economic summit in Chicago, and would instead host world leaders at the presidential retreat at Camp David in Maryland.

It was an unusually late location change for a large and highly scripted international summit and came with little explanation from the White House. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel — the former White House chief of staff who personally lobbied President Barack Obama to hold the summit in Chicago — was informed only hours before the official announcement.

White House national security spokesman Tommy Vietor simply said that Camp David, the rustic retreat in the mountains of Maryland, was a setting that would allow for more intimate discussions among the G-8 leaders. He said security and the possibility of protests were not factors in the decision, noting that Obama would still host the NATO summit in his hometown of Chicago from May 20-21.