Jane Fonda, future Nancy Reagan on film. (Getty Images)

Lee Daniels, director of Precious, is currently in Cannes promoting the thriller The Paperboy, but he's already planning his next film, an adaptation of a Washington Post article on a long-serving black White House butler who lived to see the election of Barack Obama. Early reports indicate that the butler, Eugene Allen, is to be played by Forest Whitaker and his wife by Oprah Winfrey, who likely needs a distraction from her OWN cable network. Matthew McConaughey, in Mr. Daniels's Paperboy, is to play John F. Kennedy, somehow (but his accent is pure LBJ!); John Cusack is to become the latest actor to assay the part of Richard Nixon; Alan Rickman and Jane Fonda are playing the Reagans; Nicole Kidman is playing an unnamed role that we'd wager a President's salary will be Jackie Kennedy.

It's all very strange (a Brit playing the iconic Reagan? Jane Fonda playing a demure conservative?) but Lee Daniels has a knack for making peculiar casting work--his directing won Mo'Nique an Oscar and Mariah Carey newfound respect, and John Cusack as Nixon has a peculiar sweaty genius to it. He'll be the one who wins an Oscar for this, right?

Ricketts. (image via Getty)

Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of New York media darling DNAinfo, commissioned plans for a $10 M. media campaign against President Obama’s re-election, according to a report in The New York Times.

In the proposed plan (one of several Mr. Ricketts’ Super PAC is considering), top G.O.P. strategists promised to “do exactly what John McCain would not let us do.”

That is, show American voters controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright’s purported influence on the president in a “big, attention-arresting way," including a full-page ad in the Times. 

As for how the strategists plan to get around the problem Mr. McCain’s campaign faced—it’s an unpopular, race-baiting position—the proposal suggests hiring an  “extremely literate conservative African-American” as spokesperson.

Mr. Ricketts hasn’t addressed the proposal, but it seems written to reflect his beliefs. He is quoted in the report, called “The Ricketts Plan," saying that if voters had seen a scrapped McCain ad linking President Obama to Rev. Dr. Wright, “they’d never have elected Barack Obama.”

Mr. Ricketts, who made his fortune founding TD Ameritrade, has diverse business interests. In addition to saving local journalism, he co-owns the Chicago Cubs, owns a film production company and ranches bison. Below we've embedded a video of Mr. Ricketts talking about his bison company, High Plains Bison.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsfDFmkJAAQ

We were always told James Buchanan held that title but, inside, Andrew Sullivan argues that the President 'gets' gay people because, as a biracial American, "Barack Obama had to come out of a different closet."

Look at us, talking about magazines! Like it's 1995 again.

According to The Post, “When Tina saw the Time cover, she laughed and said, ‘Let the games begin.’

Your move, Bloomberg Businessweek.

Bristol Palin (Getty Images)

Bristol Palin, daughter of former prominent American Sarah Palin, put her name to a blog post today wherein she criticizes Barack Obama for allowing the experiences of his children to inform his politics. "So let me get this straight," writes Ms. Palin, "it’s a problem if my mom listened too much to my dad, but it’s a heroic act if the President made a massive change in a policy position that could affect the entire nation after consulting with his teenage daughters?"

Ms. Palin continues: " In this case, it would’ve been helpful for him to explain to Malia and Sasha that while her friends parents are no doubt lovely people, that’s not a reason to change thousands of years of thinking about marriage." She concludes that Malia and Sasha Obama are teenagers who have watched "one too many episodes of Glee." If only they'd been watching Dancing With the Stars, none of this would have happened! We'll look forward to the Obama Administration's response.

"What they were really saying was “people were choosing Carte Bleu Visa today and throw the future down the drain."

“Maybe it should be, ‘Long live nightmares.'"

"It’s almost like, the present takes Visa, and it’s going to take you into a lousy future."

Also to come in for it? Mitt Romney (support for low taxes), Barack Obama (low participation is compressing the unemployment rate), Europeans who dare dream of an alternative to austerity ("there are no more resources to magically stimulate job growth, there’s just more debt"), the Fed (“a place of confusion these days”)...and you get the point. If this sounds like your cup of tea, you might want to pencil July 10 into your calendar, as Gundlach will be discussing his multi-asset growth fund.

Jimmy Falllon bows his head in deference to the President (NBC)

Last night, "the POTUS with most-us" joined professional laugh track Jimmy Fallon on Late Night, slow jamming the news and talking about student loans. Fun!

Now we're just full of questions: is this Mr. Fallon's version of David Letterman's Top 10 lists? Will Justin Timberlake or Brian Williams ever return to do follow-ups of their slow jam in the face of what might be the ultimate slow jam?

Also, student loans, President Obama? Well, we guess you know who actually watches Fallon's show.

President Obama, working up an appetite.

The Dog Days have come early to this year's presidential race with the revelation by the Daily Caller that our  president was fed dog meat by his stepfather as a boy living in Indonesia. President Obama disclosed this information in his little-known TIME Magazine top 100 non-fiction bestseller, Dreams from My Father, a 1995 memoir of his well-traveled youth.

If the Obama White House feels moved to complain about the hay their opponents are making (the Twitter hash tag #ObamaDogRecipes trended across party lines Tuesday night) out of this unfortunate nugget from his book they may have only themselves to blame. As ABC newsman Jake Tapper pointed out, Democrats have been relentless in promoting the tale of Mitt Romney's unfortunate dog Seamus, who reportedly rode on the roof of the Romney family vehicle from Boston to Canada in 1983:

Democrats have signaled they have every intention of making sure the American people — especially dog-lovers — know the tale. In January, senior Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod tweeted a photo of the president and Bo in a car, with the snide observation: "@davidaxelrod: How loving owners transport their dogs."

The real topper on the whole shaggy tale at this point would be if Mr. Romney chose to add former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as his running mate. While Mr. Huckabee's record towards furry friends appears to be on the up-and-up, one of his son's alleged acts against a stray dog was passing fodder for political opponents during Mr. Huckabee's 2007-2008 run for the Republican presidential nod.

If dogs really step up and form a lobby, perhaps even their own political action committee, everyone may be in trouble.

President Barack Obama is set to roll out his backing of The Buffett Rule, which will be at the center of his campaign, reports the Financial Times. The Buffett Rule is being pitched as a "simple principle" of American tax codes inspired by Warren Buffet's now-famous claim that his secretary pays a higher tax rate than himself because of the voodoo implicit in capital gains tax rates and the like that benefit the country's top earners. It is brilliant, if only for already being one of the most well-branded pieces of politics in the history of legislation. Think about this less as a political play, or a piece of propaganda, and more one of brilliant advertising work.

Consider:

1. The Buffett Rule could do for tax increases what Air Jordans did for kicks.

It has a celebrity endorsement in Warren Buffett, a billionaire who less resembles the flesh-hungry Shylock-esque Sith of New York City/Gomorrah, and more a steak-and-corn eating grandpa who thinks giving young people candy is the most amusing and rewarding thing in the world. Who also, as it happens, is a billionaire.

As legendary ad man and famed Esquire art director George Lois once explained:

"Enlisting a celebrity to sell cat food, an airline, off-track betting, an analgesic, or a lube job would seem to be a delusional strategy fraught with irrationality. But let’s face it, it’s a star-struck world.”

True story. And simply by existing, famous people sell simple ideas. Justin Bieber inherently sells acne soap. Jordan inherently sells basketball shoes. And Warren Buffett inherently sells the appeal of more money.

This is despite the fact that most Americans probably can't tell you how Warren Buffett made his fortune, or even the name of the company he owns, but they can tell you in a side-by-side comparison that he resembles Santa Claus more than the other billionaires (who are either marginally human computer geeks, Bond villains, or ominous rich guys who live elsewhere other than Omaha, which most Americans probably envision as Pleasantville).

Take note: Many have asked why they didn't just call it The Romney Rule, after Obama's most capable tax-skirting opponent. Besides the fact that branding this The Romney Rule would be a canny neg on his opponents campaign, it demonstrates a keen awareness of one of Romney's greatest weaknesses: He's got the charisma of gracious Jeopardy loser. Also, he's not the richest guy in America. He's just friends with the others.

2. The Buffett Rule is, right now, whatever it wants to be.

The Buffett Rule is being pitched as a cure-all for all of America's financial woes. Among the claims proponents are rolling out, via the FT, it would:

"...Prevent distortions in the US economy, help tackle rising income inequality, and shrink US budget deficits by $47bn over ten years."

Fantastic! Even though there's no specific legislation being pitched as part of The Buffett Rule, it sure as hell sounds nice. For the supposed Harvard-educated elitists of the Obama Administration to come up with something even more simple to explain than George W. Bush's namesake doctrine—more taxes for rich people, less taxes for not-rich people—is a stunning advertising coup.

3. The Buffett Rule's opponents are as creative as paste-eating children.

As you could imagine, some people aren't too happy about Obama's economic pop song. For one thing, they just don't want to pay higher taxes. For another, as John Gapper explained, most millionaires already pay a higher tax rate than Buffett's secretary. But in their displeasure, they demonstrate the most powerful aspect of The Buffett Rule: It's branding. To fight it off through press lines, opponents have taken to renaming The Buffett Rule.

And when the "left-brain" of shining economic debate kicks in, get out of its way:

• "The Stupid Rule" - Kevin Hassett, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
• "The Irrelevant Buffett Rule" - Barry Diller.

 
And...that's about it. That's what the opposition is working with right now.

The Buffett Rule is the Kony 2012 of taxes, except instead of servicing the needs of America's White Savior Industrial-Complex, it appeals to a way more powerful part of the human psyche: That which thinks about having to give the government less money.

Another crucial difference: It's creator isn't going to end up pounding the pavement in a moment of frothing psychosis on TMZ, because he's the richest man in America. Just like he can pay to pay more taxes, he can pay for someone to do that. And watching anybody try to take that idea down—especially its creativity-starved opponents—will be a hell of a show. In the mean time, ad agencies around the world should take note. This is how you roll out a celebrity endorsement: By having them shill something everybody wants, regardless of whether or not they already have it.

[Image via Getty]

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

The spy who shagged us, pictured right (Photo via Patrick McMullen)

The real reason the F.B.I. snapped up spicy Russian ginger spy Anna Chapman in 2010 may have just been revealed--Ms. Chapman was alarmingly close to bedding a member of President Barack Obama's "inner circle." That's the report coming from the U.K.'s Independent by way of Wired Magazine's "Danger Room." Read what the British paper has to say about the high-level allure of Ms. Chapman's duplicitous sugar walls:

Top officials feared the glamorous Russian agent wanted to seduce one of US President Barack Obama's inner circle. Frank Figliuzzi, the FBI's head of counterintelligence, reveals how she got "closer and closer to higher and higher ranking leadership... she got close enough to disturb us".

The fear that Chapman would compromise a senior US official in a "honey trap" was a key reason for the arrest and deportation of the Russian spy ring of 10 people, of which she was a part, in 2010. "We were becoming very concerned," he says. "They were getting close enough to a sitting US cabinet member that we thought we could no longer allow this to continue."

Sadly for the U.S. press, perhaps, Mr. Figliuzzi would not name the targeted official. It's easy to guess who it wasn't--we can probably write off the Secretary of State or Homeland Security--but that still leaves plenty of interesting targets.

At the time of her arrest Ms. Chapman was viewed by American press as perhaps more of a titillating curiosity than a true threat to national security. Russians, as Wired points out, have turned Ms. Chapman into a national celebrity with a vibrant social media presence--kind of like a Julia Allison who has actually done something.

But not really.

That’s all good. But at this critical juncture in the U.S.-Israeli relationship, words are less important than actions. The president needs to show his support for Israel in tangible ways, both in public and behind the scenes. There can be no equivocation, no cool detachment, no mixed signals. Israel’s enemies and, indeed, the rest of the world need to understand that the United States and Israel stand together in the battle against global terrorism.

Nothing would please the world’s terrorists and terrorist sponsors more than the prospect of a bitter split between the U.S. and Israel. Since 2009, many have observed, the Obama White House has been tougher on Jerusalem than it has been on Teheran. That perception, whether justified or not, has to stop, now. Nobody should have any reason to doubt America’s support for Israel, and for the decisions that Israel will have to make about its own national security.

Washington must remind the world that Iran’s religious and secular leaders, including its grand ayatollah, have pledged themselves—in public—to Israel’s destruction. This sort of rhetoric would be condemned and sanctioned if it emanated from a European or Asian capital. But Iran’s leaders regularly and consistently make it clear that if they had the means, they would wipe Israel off the face of the earth.

Nobody can doubt that Iran’s leaders are intent on building a nuclear weapon, and if they succeed, who can doubt that the ayatollahs will use the weapon to target Israel? That’s why the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran is, as Mr. Obama stated, intolerable.

So the questions become: What to do, and when to do it?

Like any other nation, Israel will act as it sees fit to defend its national security and its civilian population. Mr. Obama, with some justification, told the AIPAC gathering that loose talk about an attack on Iran could be counterproductive. He might be right: Over the weekend, followers of Iran’s grand ayatollah—a man who makes the country’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, seem reasonable—scored a big victory in the nation’s parliamentary elections. Tensions with the Israel, the U.S. and the West certainly played into the ayatollah’s hands.

An Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities is not, in fact, inevitable, although Mr. Netanyahu rightly noted in his own speech to AIPAC that Israel will not stand idly by if Teheran persists in building a weapon of mass destruction. Israel remains skeptical about the power of diplomatic and economic sanctions, with good reasons—sanctions are a rational response to a crisis, but Iran’s leaders clearly are not rational. Nevertheless, time has not yet run out on diplomacy. But the diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran must be effective, indeed, it must be crushing, and it is up to the Obama White House to take the lead.

That course of action will require more than platitudes from Washington. It will require determination and passionate belief. It remains to be seen if Mr. Obama can summon those qualities on behalf of Israel—and, by extension, on behalf of American security as well.