user: News: A vlogger is playing defense after a petition claimed her “serious underweight condition” could influence young girls — and called for a YouTube ban until she seeks help.

Eugenia Cooney insisted she had “never encouraged ... or told people to look like me or anyone” after a Change.org petition called “Temporarily Ban Eugenia Cooney off of YouTube” garnered more than 18,000 signatures.

“I’m really sorry to the people who want me banned off of YouTube, I’m really not trying to do anything wrong :(,” she tweeted Thursday. “I just don’t really think it’s right to try to get people banned off of YouTube unless they've done something really bad :/.”

The petition, addressed earlier this month to YouTube and its parent company, Google, seemed to have been taken down by late Friday afternoon.

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Though the petitioner claimed the intention wasn't to “dismay her, insult her, (or) belittle her,” she argued that Cooney’s thin appearance, which she often showcases in skimpy outfits, set an unhealthy example.

“She may not be intentionally influencing her viewers, but showing more than 50% of her body in her videos and pictures are not helping girls with Anorexia or any eating disorder,” wrote organizer Lynn Cloud.

The YouTube personality and reps from the streaming platform did not immediately return messages from the Daily News.

Cooney — whose fashion and makeup videos have accrued almost 900,000 subscribers on the platform — had already become the subject of critical videos titled “Eugenia Cooney The YouTuber Slowly Killing Herself,” “Eugenia Cooney is Anorexic” and “EUGENIA COONEY DIED.”

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The YouTuber does not appear to have publicly declared she’s underweight or suffers from an eating disorder. But many who signed the petition had already drawn their own conclusions.

“My little cousin lost 17lbs because she wanted to look like Eugenia. She is now receiving care,” wrote one commenter on the petition. “She’s only 12 years old.”

“It is horrifying watching her kill herself slowly and inspire girls to starve themselves as well,” added another.

Cooney, for her part, assured fans she was "fine" and addressed negative commenters in an emotional video uploaded two weeks ago.

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“I know a lot of you guys seem to think I’m a really bad person, but I would seriously never try to upset or hurt anyone,” she said. “I have never told anyone to try to lose weight or to try to change the way they look or to look like me.”

Title: Petition asks YouTube to ban ‘underweight’ vlogger Eugenia Cooney


News: The Post reports in a front-page story today that “President Obama faces a growing rebellion on the left” thanks to his budget deal with House Republicans and new focus on deficits, with “key liberal groups . . . raising concerns that he has given up political ground to Republicans, allowing the message of reducing government to trump that of creating jobs and lowering the unemployment rate”and threatening “to sit out the 2012 presidential campaign.”

Meanwhile, Speaker John Boehner is facing a rebellion of his own, as the details of the budget deal he negotiated with Obama emerge. The more conservatives learn about the deal, the less they like it. Over at National Review, my colleagues Shannen Coffin, Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru are all pointing to this Associated Press story that shows that many of the so-called spending “cuts” in the deal are in fact illusory:

It turns out the actual cuts to discretionary spending may only amount to $14.7 billion.

Bottom line: Conservatives feel swindled, and some House Republicans are even saying they will not support the deal when it comes to a vote tomorrow.

Their anger is understandable. But rather than tank this deal, they should pocket the smaller-than-expected savings and move on to the next fight — the battle over raising the debt limit — where the grounds for victory are more hospitable. They should do so chastened by this experience, and determined to exact even larger concessions.

As I pointed out my column Monday, unlike the fight over the government shutdown, the GOP holds all the cards in the debt limit fight. Obama’s weapon in last week’s standoff was his veto — his willingness to kill the temporary spending bill House Republicans passed and allow the government to close. In the debt-limit fight, this weapon is not available to him. Using the veto would cause the government to default, something the president cannot — and will not — allow. All House Republicans have to do, if negotiations bog down, is start passing a series of small debt-limit increases to keep the government solvent — and attach large spending cuts to each one. Obama will have no choice but to sign them. Republicans can keep doing this over and over again until Obama capitulates.

This means the GOP leadership has no excuse to cut a bad deal with Obama, as it appears they did last week. Conservatives should take the growing anger on the right over the now-exposed gimmickry in the current budget deal, and use it to hold the GOP leadership’s feet to the fire next time around. They should insist that that the GOP make big demands in exchange for raising the debt limit — and stick to them. They should demand enactment of all the reforms and spending cuts proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan, as well as passage of a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution.

In the fight over a government shutdown, Speaker Boehner may or may not have cut the best deal with the president — both sides had leverage. But in the debt-limit fight, all the leverage is on the GOP side. There is no excuse for capitulation, no excuse for budget gimmicks — and no excuse for failure.

Title: Harnessing conservative anger over the budget deal


News: Some of the thousands of workers at an Anglo American platinum mine in South Africa. Photograph: Denis Farrell/AP

Mark Cutifani, chief executive of Anglo American, created a buzz of takeover excitement in the mining world yesterday by telling the Wall Street Journal that "at the end of day, if somebody sees value, then there's a conversation to be had." The share price added 2.5%, a decent move for a £20bn company.

Investors should contain their excitement, however. Cutifani's remark was little more than a re-working of chief executives' usual bland formulation that all public companies are up for sale every day. It signifies nothing.

In any case, who are the bidders supposed to be? True, then-independent Xstrata made a cheeky merger proposal to Anglo in 2009. But those were different days. All the big miners, including Glencore, Xstrata's new owner, preach a gospel of capital discipline these days. That, surely, rules out offering a premium price for Anglo.

Title:

assistant: Anglo American's Cutifani digs up takeover excitement for mining firm