The White House website just dropped President Obama’s Summer Spotify playlist for the second year in a row. Noticeably, Wale’s “LoveHate Thing” was the first track. Maybe this isn’t such a big deal; Wale already opened the State of the Union Address, and worked with the First Lady, but it’s still cool to see him get some more shine, alongside the likes of Nina Simone, Charles Mingus, Jay-Z and more. You can check out the playlist on Spotify.
“It’ll be harder to convince the American people that Hilary was born in Kenya.” – Pres. Obama to FOX News
You can check out both President Barack Obama and comedian/actor Joel McHale’s complete comedy routine at the 2014 White House Correspondents’ Dinner (McHale’s is below). From CNN:
President Obama slipped into the role of comedian-in-chief Saturday night and took jabs at journalists, lawmakers, celebrities and — most pointedly — his own administration’s botched rollout of HealthCare.gov.
Remarks that would have otherwise put him in hot water drew applause at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner from an audience comprising some of the most famous faces in politics, entertainment and sports. The dinner is known in Washington circles as “nerd prom.”
Kudos to Samsung for what might be the strongest viral marketing move ever seen. From the New York Daily News:
The seemingly candid photograph Boston Red Sox slugger Ortiz took last Tuesday of himself with President Obama might have been the last ever presidential selfie, a top White House aide said Sunday.
Ortiz took the selfie with Obama Tuesday during the team’s visit to the White House. The pic appeared spontaneous, but then it was revealed Big Papi has a deal with the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 phone to perform public relations stunts like the Obama photo op.
“Maybe this will be the end of all selfies,” White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer said about the incident Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “(Obama) obviously didn’t know anything about Samsung’s connection to this.”
“Someone who uses the President’s likeness to promote a product… that’s a problem with the White House,” Pfeiffer added. “We’ve had conversations with Samsung about this and have expressed our concerns.”
After the stunt, Samsung revealed it had a marketing deal with Ortiz and admitted that company officials had “worked with David and the team on how to share images with fans.”
Ortiz snapped the seemingly unplanned shot while onstage with Obama, as the Red Sox celebrated their 2013 World Series title at the White House.
Ortiz tweeted the picture, prompting more than 38,000 retweets, including one by the official Samsung account — to the company’s more than 5.2 million Twitter followers.
The incident isn’t the first time Obama has found himself in selfie hot water — nor is it the first time Samsung has struck marketing gold with a secretive selfie promo.
Last month, Academy Awards host Ellen DeGeneres used her Samsung Galaxy Note 3, during the telecast, to take and tweet a selfie of a group of A-list actors that quickly became the most re-tweeted post of all time.
And in December, President Obama was roundly criticized for granting a selfie request to Denmark Prime Minister Helle Thorning, who took a pic with Obama, herself and British Prime Minister David Cameron at the memorial service of Nelson Mandela.
From Al Jazeera:
A Belgian newspaper apologised Monday following outcry over an image showing US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama with their faces photoshopped to look like apes. The image was printed alongside another that implies President Obama sells marijuana.
The images appeared in Flemish newspaper De Morgen‘s Saturday edition, in a satire section called “The Obama Herald”. The paper joked that Russian President Vladimir Putin sent in the photos. The controversy comes ahead of an official visit by President Obama to Belgium. He is scheduled to arrive in Brussels Tuesday.
The apology from De Morgen’s editors came in an article entitled, “Is De Morgen Racist?”. They called the image a “tasteless joke”, explaining, “We wrongly assumed that racism is no longer accepted, and that in this way it could be the subject of a joke”.
From MTV:
The Fox News pundit has spent the first two nights of the week working himself into a lather — as he is wont to do — over a pair of perceived evils that threaten not only the future of our Republic, but our children (think of the children!): Beyoncé’s “Partition” video and President Barack Obama’s appearance on “Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis”
On Monday’s “O’Reilly Factor,” Bill spoke to Russell Simmons about “harmful entertainment marketed to largely unsupervised children” (and also Simmons’ new book, “Success Through Stillness”) when he abruptly banked right and brought up Bey’s sultry “Partition” vid, which, in his opinion “Glorifies having sex in the back of a limousine.”
Teenage girls look up to Beyoncé … why on earth would this woman do that? When she knows [about] the devastation [of] unwanted pregnancies and fractured families,” O’Reilly said. “I believe an entertainer like Beyoncé [has] an obligation to protect children, not put out exploitive garbage … what she’s done here is inexplicable.”
To his credit, Simmons attempted to explain the inexplicable, pointing out that, in essence, Beyoncé was flipping decades-old gender stereotypes with the video — “There’s research that says that a man thinks about sex every 12 seconds, so when an artist expresses something that’s sexual in music, it’s a reflection of our reality,” he said. “If we want that reality changed, then we have to do things that affect the core.” — but Bill was having none of it, incredulously calling into question Bey’s art, and closing out the segment by joking to Simmons “When you see Beyoncé, tell her ‘Knock it off,’ from me.”
Of course, on Tuesday’s “Factor,” O’Reilly wasn’t in the mood to joke … not after Barack Obama had the audacity to appear on “Between Two Ferns” at a time when the United States is being “tested” by enemies like Russian president Vladimir Putin.
“For a president under intense scrutiny to do a comedy show raises some questions. I don’t have a problem with it in general … [but it’s] a little bit desperate, don’t you think?” he asked rhetorically. “There comes a point when serious times call for serious action.”
Indeed. O’Reilly then backed up that point with the salient (and technically factual) assertion that Abraham Lincoln never would have appeared on “Between Two Ferns,” and said that he would have had no problem with White House press secretary Jay Carney doing the show … but the president? Forget it, especially since the video will only serve to reinforce Putin’s opinion that Obama is a “lightweight.”
“How does it feel having a 3-inch vertical?”
This show must be more popular than I thought, but Zach Galifianakis’ latest guest on his troll-worthy talk show is none other than the 44th President of the United States. Go figure.
By the way, he made sure to push his Affordable Care Act (the website is now working fine).
In you missed the concert that when down for the First Lady (and the President) at the White House – which featured the likes of Jill Scott, Melissa Etheridge, Patti LaBelle and Janelle Monáe — the show should be re-aired on PBS. Above is Ariana Grande’s performance of Whitney Houston’s ‘I Have Nothing’.
From one “District” to the other. Spotted on TMZ:
President Barack Obama may THINK he’s good enough to teach “The Dougie” to party goers at Michelle’s 50th b-day bash … but the rappers who invented it say it’s the Prez who needs a lesson … from them.
Rappers Cali Swag District were stoked that their moves made it to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, telling us, “it just took us to a new level … political, upper class level.”
But the guys say it’s impossible for B.O. to get his Dougie certification without a lesson from the masters … so they’re sending an invite for the Prez to attend one of their BBQs.
As for why they chose a barbecue … Yung from C.S.D. says it’s simple … “Black people love BBQ!”
His words.
Huffington Post reports:
Marijuana, which has just been made legal for sale and purchase in the state of Colorado, is no more dangerous than alcohol, President Barack Obama said in an interview published Sunday. Speaking to the New Yorker, Obama said he still viewed pot smoking negatively but that on the whole, the drug wasn’t the social ill that it’s been viewed as in the past.
“As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol,” Obama told the weekly magazine.
Obama said pot was actually less dangerous than alcohol “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer.” “It’s not something I encourage, and I’ve told my daughters I think it’s a bad idea, a waste of time, not very healthy,” he said.
Instead, Obama said in the New Yorker interview that he’s focused on making laws that treat users fairly. “We should not be locking up kids or individual users for long stretches of jail time when some of the folks who are writing those laws have probably done the same thing,” he said.
“If marijuana is fully legalized and at some point folks say, Well, we can come up with a negotiated dose of cocaine that we can show is not any more harmful than vodka, are we open to that?” Obama wondered. “If somebody says, We’ve got a finely calibrated dose of meth, it isn’t going to kill you or rot your teeth, are we O.K. with that?”
It’s almost like he’s throwing the olive branch to Kanye after these back and forth comments we’ve all been hearing (such as the above video for example). From The Guardian:
Following a turbulent few years between the rapper and president, Barack Obama has diplomatically praised Kanye West’s talents, describing his music as “outstanding”.
In a forthcoming interview with People magazine, the president was asked to chose between socialising with the Yeezus rapper and his wife Kim Kardashian or the cast of US TV show Duck Dynasty. Despite choosing neither the duck hunting Robertson family nor the famous couple, Obama was able to allude to the musical merits of the Yeezus rapper.
“The Duck Dynasty family seems like a pretty fun bunch, so I can see how that would be pretty fun,” he said during the interview according to Time, before adding: “Kanye’s music is outstanding, though. I’ve got a lot of his stuff on my iPad. If it was a concert, then I might not mind listening to him.”
This is both hilarious and said at the same time….spotted on Black Media Scoop:
Reverend James David Manning of the Atlah World Missionary Church claims that Miriam Carey, who was shot and killed by authorities after crashing her car into the U.S. Capitol building last month, had been assassinated by President Barack Obama because she’d given birth to his illegitimate daughter.
On his radio show The Manning Report, Manning called for a paternity test of Carey’s fifteen-month-old daughter, who was in the car with Carey when she led police on a chase that ended in gunfire on the Capitol steps.
You can read more from the source, but apparently, the President has history with the slain woman after visiting the dentist’s office where she worked to fix a tooth, or something.
Shyne reportedly (I say reportedly even with the above image because I don’t think the Tweets are there anymore) decided to blast Kanye West in the wake of his various rants and ‘stream-of-consciousness’ interviews. Obama seems to have gotten some shade as well.
The Democratic controlled Senate voted to involve the so-called nuclear option out of frustration over Republicans who have been blocking President Barack Obama’s nominees.
CNN Reports:
The Democratic-controlled Senate on Thursday voted to invoke the so-called nuclear option out of frustration over Republicans who have been blocking President Barack Obama’s nominees.
The controversial move is a rules change that could make a partisan environment even more divisive because it takes away a sacrosanct right for any party in the Senate minority–the right to filibuster.
Explainer: What’s the nuclear option?
Under the old rules it took 60 votes to break a filibuster. The change now allows most filibusters of Obama nominees to be stopped with 51 votes–a simple Senate majority.
The rules change only applies to executive and judicial nominees, not Supreme Court nominees.
Typically 67 votes are required to change Senate rules, but under the nuclear option, Democrats – who control the chamber with a 55-45 majority – changed those rules with a simple majority vote.
“It’s time to get the Senate working again,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on the Senate floor. “Not for the good of the current Democratic majority or some future Republican majority, but for the good of the United States of America. It’s time to change. It’s time to change the Senate before this institution becomes obsolete.
The move came about after Republicans blocked three judicial nominees to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, known as the highest court in the land after the Supreme Court.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Reid “promised over and over again that he wouldn’t break the rules of the Senate to change the Senate.”
“When Democrats were in the minority they argued strenuously for the very thing they now say we will have to do without, namely the right to extend a debate on lifetime appointments. In other words they believe that one set of rules should apply to them and another set to everybody else,” he added.
Until now, Reid hadn’t necessarily had support from enough of his own Democratic caucus to pass a rules change. Some Democratic senators were reluctant to change the rules–because of reverence for the institution and, more importantly, because they know Democrats will not always be in the majority.
The beauty of the way the Senate works, as opposed to the House, is that the minority has more power. The filibuster, a 60 vote hurdle, was one of the biggest weapons in the minority’s arsenal.
But Senate veterans like Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California who had been opposed to the nuclear option – changing Senate rules – recently changed their minds. Feinstein and others, like fellow Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, said things are so broken in Washington that the nuclear option was the only way to fix it.
Many Republicans argued Democrats were just trying to manufacture a crisis in order to create a distraction from the Obamacare rollout debacle.
“Sounds to me like Harry Reid is trying to change the subject and if I were taking all the incoming fire that he is taking over Obamacare I’d try to change the subject too,” House Speaker John Boehner said in his weekly press conference.
“This changes everything, this changes everything,” Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, told reporters on Capitol Hill.
Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, told reporters the nuclear option “puts on a chill on the entire United States Senate.”
“I have reached to them. I spent an hour in Harry Reid’s office. Come on. I reached out until my arms ache,” McCain added. “They are governed by these hard over, newer members of Democratic senators who have never been a minority, who are primarily driving this issue and they succeeded and they will pay a very, very heavy price for it.”
In 2005, the then majority Republicans threatened the nuclear option to prevent Democratic filibusters of President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees. The confrontation was averted thanks to an agreement by a bipartisan group of 14 senators.
You can check out the full interview clips on Philadelphia radio station Hot 107.9 by clicking here.
Kanye West is slapping a ban on President Obama … or at least all conversations about him as retaliation for the Prez calling Yeezy a “jackass.”
Kanye’s latest rant aired this morning on 107.9 FM in Philly. The hosts asked him about Obama’s infamous comment … and Kanye angrily responded, “I don’t care if your’re the president. I bring joy to people.”
Kanye goes on to explain why he won’t be talking about that guy in the White House anymore. Watch the tirade .. It’s definitely arrogant, but also a little funny.
Kanye added that Obama better not talk about Kim Kardashian either, saying … he “shouldn’t mention my baby mama name, ’cause we both from Chicago.” (TMZ)
PREVIOUSLY: House Approves “Keep Your Health Plan” Legislation
(CNN) – The House approved Republican legislation on Friday giving health insurers the option of extending plans through 2014 that would otherwise be canceled for not complying with Affordable Care Act standards.
The bill, approved 261-157, would also allow new customers to enroll in those plans. Thirty-nine Democrats crossed party lines and joined a nearly unanimous GOP caucus in voting for the measure proposed by Rep. Fred Upton, R-Michigan.
It has little to no chance of clearing the Democratic-controlled Senate, however.
The White House has also indicated President Barack Obama would veto the measure if it reaches his desk, saying the Republican plan would undermine the integrity of the law aimed at providing health coverage to millions of Americans without it.
The Senate is taking a wait-and-see attitude about possible legislation over the politically charged insurance cancellations after Obama ordered administrative steps on Thursday to address the matter.
Obama’s signature domestic policy initiative has been marred by the disastrous launch of the HealthCare.gov website, which allows consumers to buy new health plans online, and by the policy cancellations.
Both problems have put congressional Democrats in a difficult political position since the Affordable Care Act was approved in 2010 with no Republican support and signed by Obama, a Democratic president.
Earlier, the House rejected a similar plan offered by Democrats, but it was more restrictive than the Republican measure and therefore not supported by the majority.
Separately, Obama sat down with insurance company executives on Friday at the White House.
Prior to the meeting, the President said that he and his administration would brainstorm with and solicit ideas from industry on how to smoothly carry out the changes he is making to the Affordable Care Act.
Obama said there would be a “collaborative process” around his proposal to reverse insurance plan cancellations due to broader coverage requirements under the sweeping law.
“We want to make sure that we get this done,” Obama said.
CNN reports:
President Barack Obama has already apologized to Americans who lost their health plans under the Affordable Care Act. Now Bill Clinton is calling on his fellow Democrat to find a way to uphold an earlier vow that those who like their insurance plans can keep them.
“I personally believe, even if it takes a change in the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they’ve got,” Clinton said during an interview with the website OZY.com.
Clinton did, however, spend much of the interview defending the 2010 health care overhaul.
“The big lesson is that we’re better off with this law than without it,” he said.
“The enrollment period didn’t come off well because the national website wasn’t ready,” Clinton noted. “But this happened once before. It happened when President Bush put in the Medicare drug program for seniors, which was not as complicated, but had exactly the same problem with the roll out. It was a disaster. There were people that lost their prescriptions for their existing medicine. And they fixed it.”
Read the full interview here.
My personal views aside (cough cough what happened to transparency man?)-this is the kind of action that you cannot set up to raise support. Basically, President Obama caught a pregnant woman mid-faint, or something of that nature. Good catch. Via the Guardian.
From the Washington Times:
Dr. Ben Carson didn’t mince words: Obamacare is “the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery.”
Dr. Carson made the declaration about President Obama’s sweeping health care mandate Friday during a speech at the Values Voter Summit.
“It is slavery because it aims to make all of us subservient to the government,” he said. “It was never about health care. It was about control.”
Dr. Carson further compared the new health care reform to policies envisioned by Vladimir Lenin, one of the fathers of socialism and communism.
“Socialized medicine is the keystone in the establishment of a socialist state,” Dr. Carson told the audience of some 2,000 supporters of traditional values.
Such a comment may seem paranoid to some, he said, “but I would say if you know anything about history, how could you not bring it up?”
When people in the executive and legislative branch don’t have to participate, but everybody else has to, “that’s not America, that’s Russia,” he added.
Yea….instead of actually running the process to actually end the government shutdown that’s currently in effect, the Democrats and Republicans, headed by their current leaders, should “keep talking”. From CNN, where you can read a lot more of nothing:
President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner agreed in a phone call Friday that talks should continue on ending the partial government shutdown and avoiding a possible default, spokesmen for the two leaders said.
However, Obama “has some concerns” with the latest House GOP proposal considered an opening gambit in the budget brinksmanship, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.
A day of talks at the White House and in Congress produced various ideas for elements of an agreement, including changes to Obama’s signature health care reforms and a way to raise revenue to prevent forced cuts in government spending.
But there was little tangible progress toward an immediate breakthrough acceptable to the President, the GOP-led House and the Democratic-led Senate.
Carney and Boehner spokesman Michael Steel issued identical statements that the two leaders spoke by phone and called for talks to continue among all parties.
President Obama (who recently celebrated his birthday) makes his return to The Tonight Show, and while there, he speaks on the current topics that everyone probably wanted to ask him about (additional clips below):
President Obama joined Jay Leno on Tuesday night for a wide-ranging interview that touched on everything from his recent lunch with Hillary Clinton to reassurances that the NSA surveillance programs are not as overblown as they’ve been made out to be. He also opened up about the international terror alert the government issued over the weekend.
Obama admitted he was disappointed that Russia offered asylum to Edward Snowden, but said he still intends to attend the G20 summit in Russia when that comes up. He declined to opine much on Snowden, but insisted that the NSA programs are not that threatening and domestic communications are not being collected en masse.
Obama also reflected on his remarks about Trayvon Martin and the racial dialogue he thinks the country needs to have.
UPDATE: Video of the speech added above.
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From NBC News:
President Barack Obama made a surprise appearance at the White House Friday to discuss African Americans’ reaction to last weekend’s verdict in the George Zimmerman case, saying that “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”
He also suggested that the outcome of the case could have been different if Martin were white.
“If a white male teen would have been involved in this scenario,” he said, “both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different.”
The nation’s first black president, Obama said that it is impossible for the African-American community to not view the Martin case without filtering it through a long history of racial discrimination.
“The African-American community is looking at this through a set of experiences and history that doesn’t go away,” he said.
Obama said that, before he was elected to the Senate, he was also profiled in department stores and viewed suspiciously on the street.
The president also nodded to the Justice Department investigation to see whether it makes sense to bring federal civil rights charges against Zimmerman. But he also urged state and local officials to review their own procedures to see how to improve their law enforcement practices.
He also called for a review of so-called “Stand Your Ground” laws, a central issue in the confrontation between Zimmerman and Martin.
“If Trayvon Martin was of age and was armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk?” Obama asked. “If the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, then it seems to me that we should examine those laws.”
And though Obama sidestepped the idea of demanding a new, national conversation on race — and while he said that racism was far from eliminated — the president ended on an upbeat moment, expressing his view that race relations are “getting better.”
“We’re becoming a more perfect union,” he said. “Not a perfect union, but a more perfect union.”
President Obama has issued a statement about the George Zimmerman case and he also honors Trayvon Martin below.
“The death of Trayvon Martin was a tragedy. Not just for his family, or for any one community, but for America. I know this case has elicited strong passions. And in the wake of the verdict, I know those passions may be running even higher. But we are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken. I now ask every American to respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son. And as we do, we should ask ourselves if we’re doing all we can to widen the circle of compassion and understanding in our own communities. We should ask ourselves if we’re doing all we can to stem the tide of gun violence that claims too many lives across this country on a daily basis. We should ask ourselves, as individuals and as a society, how we can prevent future tragedies like this. As citizens, that’s a job for all of us. That’s the way to honor Trayvon Martin.”
In what is probably the smartest move of his presidential career, President Obama stepped to the podium at a recent event and immediately addressed some lipstick on his collar before it became an elephant in the room. I’m sure his more personal speech to his wife away from the microphone was just as humorous.
CNN were the ones that posed the question:
Ari Fleischer and L.Z. Granderson discusses Jay-Z’s new song “Open Letter,” slamming critics of his trip to Cuba.