Ugh. It looks like we're going to have to press the famously press-able reset button all over again in our diplomatic relationship with Russia. But this time it has nothing to do with Putin pulling his sneaky Putin tricks or anything. It's because this news anchor appears to have to flipped off President Obama during a broadcast. What's the deal, mean old cyborg-Tilda Swinton lady?
It is America's finest annual tradition: The President of the United States, making small talk with wild animals instead of simply slaughtering them.
Who is to blame for the failure of our glorious experiment in government engineering, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction a.k.a. the supercommittee, to meet the public's desire for trillions of dollars in spending cuts and tax hikes that the public doesn't want? Our best guess is that it's the supercommittee that is to blame for the failure of the supercommittee. Others would disagree!
In 1991, when he was commander-in-chief of the Harvard Law Review, then-twentysomething President Barack Obama made this ad about 20th century lawyer Charles Hamilton Houston for TBS's "Black History Minute." The video shows a less-polished, deeper-voiced Obama, before he acquired years of public-speaking experience and quit the smokey treats.
President Obama and fellow Pacific leaders didn't don any "silly shirts" — a.k.a. "festive local garb" — at last week's APEC conference in Hawaii, breaking from the conference's proud tradition of dressing powerful global leaders in clown costumes. "I got rid of the Hawaiian shirts because I looked at pictures of some of the previous APEC meetings," he explained, "and... I thought this may be a tradition that we might want to break." The War on Fun never ends with this guy. Fortunately, his hosts at his latest stop in Bali have forced him to wear a silly shirt anyway.
Idaho State University student Ramon Bailey says he made this 20-minute video of accused White House shooter and would-be Obama assassin Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez after "randomly" meeting him at his gym in September. Among other things, it reveals Ortega-Hernandez to be the anti-beer pong, pro-marijuana Second Coming of Christ. Jesus likes to party organically.
President Obama, who has supposedly quit smoking himself, took to the YouTube this week to congratulate Americans who are participating in something claustrophobically called the "Great American Smokeout." The annual challenge, which is today, encourages "smokers to use the date to make a plan to quit, or to plan in advance and quit smoking that day." Participants will be rewarded with hallucinations, angst, a quick temper, and a desire to eat or chew anything that's in front of them! Also, less cancer later on.
Was Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, the 21-year-old Idaho man accused of shooting at the White House, motivated by 11/11/11 Fever, or the belief that he was on a mission from God? Investigators tell the Associated Press that both factors, actually, may have led him to leave two bullets in President Barack Obama's window on Friday.
Lauren E. Pierce, president of the University of Texas Austin College Republicans, has an important message for her fellow conservatives: don't shoot President Obama! Okay? Even though it's "tempting," as she puts it.
Here's the latest brilliant ad from Rick Perry, in which he takes President Obama to the woodshed for saying at a conference this weekend, "We've been a little bit lazy I think over the last couple of decades." An outraged Perry responds, "Can you believe that? That's what our president thinks wrong with America?" Well, dude, you were just too lazy to include the word "is" in your slickly produced new ad, so maybe the president has a point. Get it together, man! It's November, for Christ's sake.
Huge support and turnout from Latino voters will be a key part of President Obama's reelection campaign. What must he do to ingratiate himself, again? Nothing, really. In his mind, he can just show some clips of Republicans talking about immigration and pretty much seal things up.
President Obama continued his series of small tweaks to the broken system via executive order this week by asking agencies "to cut about $4 billion per year from the federal government's budget for travel, cellphones, conferences and 'swag' like agency-branded mugs and clothing." This sounds painfully modest. But, like everything else, not modest enough to keep major trade groups from raising hell in its wake.
What do presidents do when no one else can hear them? The same thing the rest of us do: complain about other people! Like on Monday, when President Obama and his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy were caught on microphone bitching about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Hey, everyone, President Barack Obama has officially not been secretly meeting with aliens. Thank God for the internet, which forced Obama to address this crucial issue.
