Obama admitted that he never wrote to Twitter

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President Barack Obama owns one of the most popular account of "Twitter". As of today he has two and a half million followers - http://twitter.com/BarackObama Many people rightly believe that Obama owes his victory professional advertising campaign on the Internet, a substantial part of which was precisely Twitter. Therefore, his confession was made during a meeting with young people in Shanghai, surprised many. It turned out that none of the 418 Tweety, published in mikroblog, was not written by Obama.

On the other hand, it would be a bit naive to believe that Obama himself wrote in Twitter. It would be very difficult, given the busy schedule during the presidential race, but also not too effective, because the disposal of Obama was a tremendous team of professionals in public relations.

Recognition of Obama's difficult to interpret unambiguously. Many Americans actually believe that he himself leads his Twitter. But the president is not afraid to honestly admit that his blog was conducted by others on his behalf.

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Carrots and Sticks: Obama's split media strategy

WASHINGTON – The same president who aggressively harnesses the power of the press to promote his agenda has taken to lacing his comments with criticisms of the media, with no bigger target than the gabby culture of cable television.

President Barack Obama's critique is biting: The media prefer conflict over cooperation, encourage bad behavior and weaken the ability of leaders to help the nation.

The White House's attempt to discredit Fox News as an arm of the Republican Party may have been getting the headlines, but it is only one recent window into Obama's already complex and crafty relationship with those who cover him.

All of Obama's frustration comes as he not only welcomes the ratings-mad media's constant demand for his presence, but also aggressively seeks maximum exposure to serve his own agenda.

He went on Letterman and Leno. He's held as many nightly news conferences in his first six months as George W. Bush and Bill Clinton did in eight years, and conducted far more interviews than either had at this point in their presidencies. He is the first Oval Office occupant to do five Sunday morning talk shows in a one day.

In essence, Obama's strategy is not to tame the media to his liking or blame it for his troubles. It is both.

Obama defends independent reporting as vital to society. He touts the value of providing more openness to the public and accountability by government — indeed, it was one of his more prominent campaign promises.

And then, he's the media's chief critic.

Lamenting the rise of instant commentary at a memorial for news anchor Walter Cronkite, Obama said that "What happened today?" is now replaced with "Who won today?"

"The public debate cheapens," he said. "The public trust falters. We fail to understand our world or one another as well as we should — and that has real consequences in our own lives in the life of our nation."

Sometimes the compliments and condemnation come in practically the same breath.

"The 24-hour news cycle and cable television and blogs and all this, they focus on the most extreme elements on both sides," Obama told CBS News, echoing those comments in the three more network interviews that made up his Sunday show blitz last month.

Blaming the media is almost tradition among politicians. It helps Obama by bonding him with his audience against a common target: the influential press, which many people consider to be biased or untrustworthy. But it does carry a risk of backfiring by elevating Obama's critics or making the White House look petty for pinning its problems on the press corps.

The president is sophisticated about what attracts coverage, what's in the media each day, and why. Unlike Bush, who publicly claimed little interest in news from papers or TV, Obama dives into it.

Aides say he reads four or five newspapers each morning. He catches bits of TV coverage on the sets around the Oval Office. Obama also goes online, has articles flagged for him by staff, reads news magazines on Air Force One and likes to hear which stories have aides buzzing.

So though he often does not differentiate in his criticism among the "media," he's well aware it is actually a diverse mix of print, TV, radio, and Web that is hardly homogenous in its choices about what story to cover or how.

But with more than 70 percent of Americans saying television is their main source of national and international news, according to a Pew Research survey, it's clear that Obama and his advisers are most riled by what's on nonstop cable.

With its hours and hours of TV time to fill, cable news and punditry can whip up public debate and then cause spillover coverage in other forms of media.

Senior White House leaders still mock the front-page coverage given to whether Obama's back-to-school speech to the nation's students was an attempt to indoctrinate them. Obama was openly incredulous over the media's minute-by-minute anticipation of Obama's so-called "beer summit" with a policeman and a professor at the center of a racial controversy.

And when the president gave a major speech to Congress on health care policy, the coverage for days centered on Joe Wilson, the South Carolina Republican lawmaker who had heckled Obama by shouting "You lie!"

"You've got to be careful about them cable networks," Obama cautioned a man at a Montana town hall who had just told him that cable was his main source of news. Earlier at that same event, Obama had pointed out that only the town halls where tempers were flaring were getting covered. "TV loves a ruckus," he told the crowd.

"If you replaced just a portion of the back and forth on something like Joe Wilson with coverage of the issue and some real discussion about what was at stake..." White House press secretary Robert Gibbs wished aloud.

The irritation has reached another level recently over Fox News, which Obama and his aides have brazenly tried to marginalize by calling it a Republican outlet that shouldn't be treated like a real news network. Yet publicly singling out one news organization is but the most highly publicized push-back from an Obama White House that began back during last year's campaign building a reputation for aggressively confronting reporters over stories it doesn't like and using hardball tactics to try to get its way.

Not to be lost in Obama's pique, however, is that he has a point, said Jill Geisler, a former broadcaster who teaches leadership at the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit school for journalists. Noise makes news. Nuance often does not.

"I think each of us in journalism must ask: Are we contributing to a deeper understanding of complex issues?" she said.

Predictably, Obama's media coverage has turned more negative since the start of his term.

That reflects the partisan tensions in Washington, setbacks on many of his top agenda items, and the traditional adversarial, watchdog role of the White House press corps.

But even presidents who start with glowing press coverage always end up complaining about how they get beat up, said Martha Joynt Kumar, a political science professor at Towson University who studies White House communications.

"The press is there as a surrogate for the public, to ask the questions the public wants answers for," Kumar said. "Their job is not to stand there and provide him an opportunity to talk on any subject he wants."

/By BEN FELLER, Associated Press Write/

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14 Americans killed in 2 Afghan helicopter crashes

A US Army Chinook helicopter seen in operation in southern Afghanistan. Four US soldiers have been killed in what NATO said was believed to be a mid-air collision between two helicopters in the region.

KABUL – Helicopter crashes killed 14 Americans on Monday — 11 troops and three drug agents — in the deadliest day for the U.S. mission in Afghanistan in more than four years. The deaths came as President Barack Obama prepared to meet his national security team for a sixth full-scale conference on the future of the troubled war.

In the deadliest crash, a helicopter went down in the west of the country after leaving the scene of a firefight, killing 10 Americans — seven troops and three Drug Enforcement Administration agents. Eleven American troops, one U.S. civilian and 14 Afghans were also injured.

In a separate incident, two U.S. Marine helicopters — one UH-1 and an AH-1 Cobra — collided in flight before sunrise over the southern province of Helmand, killing four American troops and wounding two more, Marine spokesman Maj. Bill Pelletier said.

It was the heaviest single-day loss of life since June 28, 2005, when 16 U.S. troops on a special forces helicopter died when their MH-47 Chinook helicopter was shot down by insurgents. The casualties also mark the first DEA deaths in Afghanistan since it began operations there in 2005.

U.S. authorities have ruled out hostile fire in the collision but have not given a cause for the other fatal crash in the west. Taliban spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmedi claimed Taliban fighters shot down a helicopter in northwest Badghis province's Darabam district. It was impossible to verify the claim and unclear if he was referring to the same incident.

Military spokeswoman Elizabeth Mathias said hostile fire was unlikely because the troops were not receiving fire when the helicopter took off.

NATO said the helicopter was returning from a joint operation that targeted insurgents involved in "narcotics trafficking in western Afghanistan."

"During the operation, insurgent forces engaged the joint force and more than a dozen enemy fighters were killed in the ensuing firefight," a NATO statement said.

Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium — the raw ingredient in heroin — and the illicit drug trade is a major source of funding for insurgent groups.

U.S. forces also reported the death of two other American service members a day earlier: one in a bomb attack in the east, and another who died of wounds sustained in an insurgent attack in the same region. The deaths bring to at least 46 the number of U.S. service members who have been killed in October.

This has been the deadliest year for international and U.S. forces since the 2001 invasion to oust the Taliban. Fighting spiked around the presidential vote in August, and 51 U.S. soldiers died that month — the deadliest for American forces in the eight-year war.

The Obama administration is debating whether to send tens of thousands more troops to the country, while the Afghan government is rushing to hold a Nov. 7 runoff election between President Hamid Karzai and challenger Abdullah Abdullah after it was determined that the August election depended on fraudulent votes.

The Obama administration is hoping the runoff will produce a legitimate government. In Washington, Obama was to meet with his national security team Monday in what was to be the sixth full-scale Afghanistan conference in the White House Situation Room.

Abdullah on Monday called for election commission chairman Azizullah Lodin to be replaced within five days, saying he has "no credibility."

Lodin has denied accusations he is biased in favor of Karzai, and the election commission's spokesman has already said Lodin cannot be replaced by either side.

Abdullah made the demand in a news conference during which he spelled out what he said were "minimum conditions" for holding a fair second round of voting, including the firing of any workers implicated in fraud and the suspension of several ministers he said had campaigned for Karzai in the first round before the official campaigning period began.

Abdullah did not say what would happen if his demands were not met. "I reserve my reaction if we are faced with that unfortunate situation," he said.

Abdullah said he was willing to meet with Karzai to discuss the conditions, but repeated that he would not discuss a coalition government as some have suggested, nor compromise on his recommendations out of concerns that they are difficult to implement.

"These are not impossible things," Abdullah said, stressing that his team had pared them down to what they considered essential to a fair vote and possible to put in place before the runoff.

Another flawed election would cast doubt on the wisdom of sending in more U.S. troops.

With less than two weeks to go until the vote, disagreements have emerged between the U.N. and the Afghans on how to conduct the balloting.

Lodin said the commission hopes to open all 23,960 polling stations from the first round. The U.N. wants to open only 16,000 stations to cut down on the number of "ghost polling stations" that never opened but were used to stuff ballot boxes.

Elsewhere Monday, Nangarhar province Gov. Gul Agha Sherzai survived an assassination attempt after a gunman fired automatic weapons at his convoy in Jalalabad, according to his spokesman Ahmad Zia Abdulzai. Sherzai's bodyguards killed the gunman, as well as another attacker wearing a suicide vest and carrying grenades.

Meanwhile, security forces in Kabul fired automatic rifles into the air for a second day Monday to contain hundreds of stone-throwing university students angered over the alleged desecration of Islam's holy book, the Quran, by U.S. troops during an operation two weeks ago in Wardak province. Fire trucks were also brought in to push back protesters with water cannons. Police said several officers were injured in the mayhem.

U.S. and Afghan authorities have denied any such desecration and insist that the Taliban are spreading the rumor to stir up public anger. The rumor has sparked similar protests in Wardak and Khost provinces.

___

Associated Press Writers Rahim Faiez, Todd Pitman and Robert H. Reid contributed to this report from Kabul; Noor Khan reported from Kandahar and Devlin Barrett from Washington.


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лего Сити 7896 и лего Сити 7896 прямые и закругленные рельсы

Michelle Obama May Be the Coolest First Lady Ever Holly Bailey

Forget President Obama’s basketball skills. Check out this photo of Michelle Obama playing double Dutch at the White House yesterday. And that’s not all she did. The first lady also Hula-Hooped—142 swirls, according to AP— and apparently tried to walk on a tightrope. She even ran an obstacle course—all in front of cameras.(Here's the video.) Even your Gaggler wouldn’t do that—though, we must say the Hula-Hoop has always been one of our faves, too. Bigger picture: can you imagine any other first lady doing something like this? Laura Bush? Jackie O? All of this makes us wonder: could Michelle beat Barack at basketball? Bet she could. More photos after the jump.

/newsweek.com/


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Obama Crushes Pesky Fly On CNBC (VIDEO)

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Прощание с королем Майклом Джексоном популярней инаугурации Барака Обамы

По официальным данным представителей сайта MSN, прямую трансляцию траурной церемонии прощания с королем поп-музыки Майклом Джексоном (Michael Jackson), которая прошла 7 июля в Лос-Анджелесе, посмотрели больше пользователей, чем инаугурацию нового президента США Барака Обамы (Barack Obama).

Любопытно, но эти данные предоставил только вышеупомянутый канал. Например, по данным не менее популярного канала CNN прощание с певцом посмотрело в три раза меньше человек, чем инаугурацию.

Руководство социальной сети Facebook сообщает, что количество обновлений страниц сайта в минуту иногда превышало 6 тысяч.

Лос-Анжелес потратил 1,4 миллиона долларов на обеспечение безопасности, управление потоком транспорта и другие службы и услуги на церемонии прощания с Майклом Джексоном (Michael Jackson), сообщают местные власти, ищущие способы оплатить счета.

На обеспечение безопасности ушло 1,1 миллиона – внеурочно работали 4,173 офицера полиции.

Власти города сообщают, что остаток суммы ушел на управление поток транспорта, уборку территории и другие расходы, связанные с церемонией прощания с королем поп-музыки, которую посетили более 17 тысяч фанов и посмотрели миллионы зрителей по всему миру.

Тысячи фанов Майкла Джексона, присутствовавших на церемонии прощания со своим кумиром, в один голос заявили о том, что ничего подобного не видели в жизни, да, и вряд ли увидят.

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