VIDEO: CNBC airs 'bullshit' comment during Obama town hall

By GottaLaff



Oopsie daisy there:

[Obama] says, "One last point I want to make and I know I'm not supposed to talk this long."

"Bullshit," a female voice interjects.

That CNBC. They're always full of surprises, aren't they?

Fundraising jump for marijuana group after Obama snub

By GottaLaff

Remember this clip from the president's online town hall meeting? An ironic twist, courtesy of the Department of Dazed and Confused:

Marijuana backers aren't laughing about President Obama's flippant dismissal of a pot-related question during Thursday's online town hall meeting — and the country's leading marijuana advocacy group, The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, has seen its donations quadruple over the last 24 hours.

What they don't tell you is that half of those donations were Twinkies and Cheetos.

Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of NORML, told CNN "our donation boxes started to flood" after Obama laughed off a Web question about whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy and job creation. St. Pierre said traffic to the group's Web site has "increased precipitously" since Thursday.

"About half of the donation comments have a reference to Mr. Obama's comments," St. Pierre said. "As far as I'm concerned, he could show up every single day and rag on marijuana."

Those would be the Twinkie/Cheeto crowd. I should know. I was really good friends with them in college.

But St. Pierre said the anger among marijuana legalization advocates is real.

Bill Maher could be heard grumbling, "Wtf? I thought Prez O was cool."

St. Pierre acknowledged that marijuana legalization is "by no means at the top of national concerns" like two wars and a troubled economy. However, he said the online question was a serious one, arguing that marijuana legalization would help law enforcement officials cut costs. He also said a legal marijuana industry, like tobacco and alcohol, would create billions in tax revenue for the government.

Agreed.

St. Pierre believes the president and his attorney general, Eric Holder, will be friendlier to marijuana advocates than the previous administration, but he said he knows the topic remains "political dynamite" for any elected official.

That's what I said in my post (see link above). He couldn't very well advocate for legalization in that format. It's too complicated to devote a mere minute or two in a new and novel arena.

He needs time for a more serious, substantial discussion, not just a sound bite op for the Rushpublics to jump on.

Spin and bear it

By GottaLaff

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Mladen Antonov / AFP/Getty Images

A computer screen in Paris shows President Obama’s virtual town hall meeting. The event drew more than 104,000 questions, and 3.6 million votes on which questions he should answer.

What ever happened to actual news reporting? Here are a some examples of the spin the L.A. Times put on just about every Obama story today. These were not found on the Op-Ed pages. These are front page and/or Section A reports that are supposed to represent real news, not editorializing:

On Thursday, the president took another step in embracing the power of technology -- hosting a virtual town hall that elicited more than 104,000 questions and drew 3.6 million votes to determine which the president would answer.

In the end, given that the questions were vetted by the White House, it felt about as spontaneous as an infomercial. [...]

What Obama had to say Thursday about the economy, education and healthcare was nothing new. [...]

Which may be why at 9 a.m. in the airy lobby of USC's Annenberg School for Communication, a dozen students who were sprawled on armchairs or sitting at tables barely seemed to take note. A wall was filled with TV screens, but only one was showing Obama holding forth.

"They'll probably be playing it on repeat at CNN," said Susy Garcia Salas, 26, a conference coordinator who recently graduated from the communications school. "I might go look for the highlights online." [...]

USC communications major Laurel West, 20, said: "I like that they're trying to get people more involved with the process.

"But I'm not sure about its effectiveness."

She said she didn't have time to watch. [...]

But was the event truly engaging the public, or only creating an illusion of doing so?

Can't get more objective than that, right? There were a few parts that weren't negative, but the overall tone was a big ho-hum review of the president's online town hall meeting. Key word: Review.

Then there was this piece about the White House Easter Egg Roll:

Maybe we should go back to standing in line.

The White House's Internet distribution of free tickets to its South Lawn Easter Egg Roll appears to have begun with a splat.

Yes, there were glitches:

Thursday's release of tickets in batches produced what some described as large gaps in availability, creating frustration and confusion.

In recent years, most people wanting tickets for the rite of spring -- a free event held the Monday after Easter -- would stand in line, often for hours, the Saturday before.

In the years before that, huge lines would form Easter Sunday and into the next morning.

The switch to online distribution was envisioned as a way to ease the process and make tickets available to people across the nation. By 6 p.m. Eastern time Thursday, the tickets had been snatched up by people in 41 states, a spokeswoman said.

Complaints began surfacing early Thursday, shortly after the tickets became available.

Again, the overall tone seemed unnecessarily critical. Come on, huge lines and endless hours of waiting wasn't a piece of cake, either.

It's fine to point out flaws or have opinions, but after reading these two "news" articles, I came away with a feeling that President Obama's attempts to bring us into the 21st century were being scoffed at instead of reported dispassionately.

Transition isn't easy, whether it's into a new world of technology or a new administration. But why the negative spin? Or am I just being overly sensitive?

"Liberal" MSNBC cuts away from Obama live event to air Republicans

By GottaLaff

CNN has stayed with President Obama's virtual town hall meeting, but MSNBC cut away to show the Rushpublicans holding a presser on their own budget proposals (at least I think that's what they were yapping about, I immediately switched to CNN).

That was a few minutes ago. I just checked in on MSNBC and they are now back to their regular newscast, no more Obama.

CNN is still tuned in to the town hall meeting.

Go figure.

UPDATE: Via Commenter/blogger Broadway Carl, we get a killer response from MSNBC's Contessa Brewer:

Brewer: "I am very frustrated because we've been waiting for this, we cut away from the President['s live Online Town Hall] to hear the big build up. republicans have a plan, they have ideas, they're not the Party of No, and all I heard in that news conference was what they don't like about the president's plan.

...We've heard all this before. You get us all hyped up. You have our undivided attention and what happens, but you get up and repeat the same criticism we've already heard. I didn't hear ideas. I heard the promise of ideas. 'And we're going to have more on X, Y and Z' but I didn't hear the ideas."

Mike Viqueira: "So you're saying it's old wine in new bottles, essentially."

Brewer: "Well, that was a much pithier way of saying it."

That's better. I wish I'd seen that live, but I was all over Prez O (no, not literally... get your minds outta the gutter).

OnlineTown Hall

Now going on here and here.