Shaquille O’Neal officially announced his retirement on Friday in the gym of his house.

While talking about what he is going to miss most about the game, he jokingly said he was going to miss the free throws. Then he went on to retire his nicknames.

“In light of today, I am retiring all my nicknames. The Big Aristotle, Shaq-Fu, The Big Shamrock, The Big Cactus, The Diesel, and finally, the one and only, original, never to be duplicated or replicated … Superman.” he said. “From now on, you can call me The Big AARP. Association for the Advancements of Retired Persons.”

WATCH VIDEO OF THE PRESS CONFERENCE BELOW

Shaq first announced his retirement on Twitter earlier this week.

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Shaq Retires, Announces News On Twitter.

Congratulations to my man Nico Pitney for getting to ask Obama a question on Iran. It must feel good to know that the President of the United States is following your journalism.

During his press conference last night, Barack Obama took a question from Andre Showell of BET.

Showell asked about African American Unemployment:

As the entire nation tries to climb out of this deep recession, in communities of color, the circumstances are far worse, the black unemployment rate, as you know, is in the double digits. And in New York City, for example, the black unemployment rate for men is near 50 percent. My question to you tonight is: given this unique and desperate circumstance, what specific policies can you point to that will target these communities and what’s the timetable for us to see tangible results?

Obama responded by saying that a number of his measures were targeted to help all Americans and that minorities would also benefit from these measures.

When we put in place additional dollars for community health centers to ensure that people are still getting the help that they need, or we expand health insurance to millions more children through the Children’s Health Insurance Program, again, those probably disproportionately impact African-American and Latino families simply because they’re the ones who are most vulnerable. They have got higher rates of uninsured in their communities.

So my general approach is that if the economy is strong, that will lift all boats as long as it is also supported by, for example, strategies around college affordability and job training, tax cuts for working families as opposed to the wealthiest that level the playing field and ensure bottom-up economic growth.

And I’m confident that that will help the African-American community live out the American dream at the same time that it’s helping communities all across the country.”

Top 5 Fox News Uncle Toms

Fox became the first broadcast network to turn down a request by President Barack Obama for time, opting to show its drama “Lie to Me” on Wednesday instead of the president’s prime-time news conference.

Fox will direct viewers interested in the news conference to Fox News Channel and the Fox Business Network, which will both carry it. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC and CNBC are all carrying the 8 p.m. EDT event, on Obama’s 100th day in office.

This will be Obama’s third prime-time news conference as president, a schedule that has caused some private grumbling among network executives. Carrying a news conference costs the four broadcast networks an estimated $10 million-plus in lost advertising revenue.

Fox Attacks “Black President” While Defending “Magical Negro”

Yet with an economy in distress, two wars and now a swine flu outbreak, the pressure on networks to agree to Obama’s request as a public service is enormous.

Executives at Fox, owned by News Corp., would not comment on the decision Monday. It’s not without precedent for the network; Fox didn’t carry a prime-time speech by President George W. Bush in November 2001 despite a request from the White House.

“I can’t imagine it was politically motivated,” said Shelly Palmer, industry analyst and host of “MediaBytes,” a daily show about technology and the media. “I’m assuming it was financially motivated.”

The news conference comes at the start of a ratings “sweeps” months, where viewership is watched closely to set local advertising rates. Not only will Fox keep its advertising for the hour, it will offer the only broadcast entertainment program, potentially giving a boost to the new series “Lie to Me,” about a crime-fighting expert who can spot liars. “American Idol” follows “Lie to Me” on the schedule.

The Fox broadcast network was the most likely to have made this decision. Unlike ABC, CBS and NBC, Fox does not have its own news division to analyze the event. Even though the broadcast network is in more homes, cable’s Fox News Channel traditionally gets more viewers for its coverage of these events than the Fox network.

An executive at one of the three other broadcasters, who asked for anonymity because the conversations were private, said that network’s executives had expressed concern to the White House about the frequency of prime-time news conferences and the financial sacrifice they were making in carrying the event. The executive said it was hoped the administration would show more flexibility in working with networks to find the best times to schedule the events.

UConn Women’s Basketball coach, Geno Auriemma, held a press conference recently and defended the mostly white Stanford team. He said that at “white kids are always looked upon as being soft.” He also said that the media underestimates the mostly white Stanford team because the don’t look like UConn players Tina Charles and Maya Moore who are African American.

Watch Auriemma’s Statement

I definitely didn’t need any more reasons to love President Obama, but I am definitely a little tickled after watching the following video. Of all the reporters he could have chosen, he chose an Indian reporter from the Times of India and teased her, causing the entire room to erupt in laughter.

Gotta love him!

WATCH the funny:

Last night on the Jimmy Fallon show, The Roots remixed all the times Obama said “look” in Obama’s press conference.

Watch the Video

Obama Appears On “Tonight Show” With Jay Leno | CLICK HERE

With Congress pushing back against his proposals for energy, taxes and other matters, President Barack Obama is taking a bend-but-don’t-break posture.

He will compromise on certain details if he must, he signaled at his news conference Tuesday evening, but not on the heart of his key initiatives.

His strategic retreats are a nod to political reality. He is angling to avoid confrontations he probably can’t win, but to sacrifice no more than is absolutely necessary.

On energy, for instance, influential Democratic lawmakers have joined Republicans in opposing Obama’s bid to reduce greenhouse gases through a program that would let companies buy and sell a limited number of permits to pollute.

“When it comes to cap and trade,” the president said, using the proposal’s nickname, “the broader principle is that we’ve got to move to a new energy era. And that means moving away from polluting energy sources towards cleaner energy sources.”

“I think cap and trade is the best way,” Obama said, but he stopped well short of insisting on it.

He did not retreat on contentious issues on which he holds the upper hand. Lifting a federal ban on embryonic stem cell research, he said, was the “right thing to do” despite criticisms from various quarters. Asked why he hasn’t asked Americans to do more to weather the economic crisis, he said, “I think folks are sacrificing left and right.”

Obama Appears On “Tonight Show” With Jay Leno | CLICK HERE

Obama was less certain and dismissive on topics in which he faces potentially bruising battles with Congress. For example, he minimized a Senate leader’s proposal to end Obama’s signature tax cut for most working families after 2010.

“When it comes to the middle-class tax cut,” the president said, “we know that that’s going to be in place for at least the next two years.”

“If Congress has better ideas in terms of how to pay for it, then we’re happy to listen,” he said.

Obama said the main thrust of his massive budget proposal is moving the nation in the right direction to turn around the ailing economy. “This budget is inseparable from this recovery,” he said, “because it is what lays the foundation for a secure and lasting prosperity.”

He said he expects “serious efforts at health care reform,” but not lawmakers’ approval of every proposal in his $3.6 trillion budget. “We never expected, when we printed out our budget, that they would simply Xerox it and vote on it,” he said.

Obama used the 55-minute news conference’s last question, on Middle East peace efforts, to summarize his strategy of pressing his main goals while letting critics nibble at the margins if they must.

“When it comes to domestic affairs,” he said, “if we keep on working at it, if we acknowledge that we make mistakes sometimes, and that we don’t always have the right answer, and we’re inheriting very knotty problems, that we can pass health care, we can find better solutions to our energy challenges, we can teach our children more effectively, we can deal with a very real budget crisis that is not fully dealt with in my — in my budget at this point, but makes progress.”

The closest he came to smugness was in noting that once-fierce criticism of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has abated this week.

“It was just a few days ago or weeks ago where people were certain that Secretary Geithner couldn’t deliver a plan,” Obama said of proposals to bail out the financial sector. “Today, the headlines all look like, ‘Well, all right, there’s a plan.’ And I’m sure there will be more criticism, and we’ll have to make more adjustments, but we’re moving in the right direction.”

Obama’s bend-not-break strategy will get a test Wednesday, when he travels to the Capitol to meet privately with Senate Democrats. Some of them are his most troubling critics on energy, health care, taxes and spending.

Watch Obama Take On Ed Henry

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Obama Appears On “Tonight Show” With Jay Leno | CLICK HERE

Alex Rodriguez just finished his press conference.

The New York Yankees star third baseman said using the banned drug that he said he obtained from the Dominican Republic was a “stupid mistake.”

“I knew we weren’t taking Tic Tacs,” Rodriguez said.

The third baseman said a cousin of his injected him with a banned substance in 2001, 2002 and 2003. He said his decision to use what he called an “energy boosting” drug was purely ignorant..

“We consulted no one. It was pretty evident that we didn’t know what we were doing,” Rodriguez said.

Watch the Press Conference

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Many black members of the press are complaining that Obama did not address their concerns last night. In an article in the Wasington Post. ” Hazel Edney, a reporter with the National Newspaper Publishers Association said

“We were window dressing,also known as the Black Press of America. “We were nothing more than window dressing.”

“This was like Reagan, when he’d put all the blacks up front,” said another prominent but visibly peeved black-press reporter who asked to remain anonymous. “He oughta’ be ashamed.”

Read The Full Article

President Barack Obama decried as “inexcusable and irresponsible” the delay of his economic recovery legislation in Congress with an estimated 3.6 million Americans losing their jobs since the recession began.

Obama’s remarks were some of his most direct and pointed in support of the massive economic package that the Senate considered Friday and tried to pare down below its $900-billion-plus price tag. Obama acknowledged it was not perfect and pledged to work with lawmakers to refine the measure, which he called “absolutely necessary.”

“But broadly speaking, the package is the right size, it is the right scope, and it has the right priorities to create 3 to 4 million jobs, and to do it in a way that lays the groundwork for long-term growth,” Obama said at a ceremony in the White House East Room.

The president named an outside economic team of advisers as the nation dealt with more bad news in the unemployment report for January. Employers slashed payrolls by 598,000, the most since the end of 1974, propelling the unemployment rate to 7.6 percent. The rate is the highest since September 1992.

“These numbers demand action. It is inexcusable and irresponsible for any of us to get bogged down in distraction, delay or politics as usual while millions of Americans are being put out of work,” Obama said bluntly. “Now is the time for Congress to act.”

Borrowing themes from an address the night before to fellow Democrats on retreat in Williamsburg, Va., Obama reminded lawmakers that voters gave them the White House and control of Congress.

“They did not choose more of the same in November,” Obama said Friday. “They did not send us to Washington to get stuck in partisan posturing, to try to score political points. They did not send us here to turn back to the same tried and failed approaches that were rejected because we saw the results. They sent us here to make change with the expectation that we would act.”

Obama’s feisty speeches, delivered back-to-back, were a reminder of the aggressive campaigner who helped his party boot Republicans from office. It also was a sign that the administration was increasingly worried about losing their first major legislative priority so soon after taking office.

He warned inaction would only deepen the problems.

“These Americans are counting on us, all of us in Washington. We have to remember that we’re here to work for them. If we drag our feet and fail to act, this crisis will turn into a catastrophe. We’ll continue to get devastating job reports like today’s month after month, year after year,” Obama said grimly.

He reminded his audience that some 3.6 million Americans had lost their jobs as the economy has gone into a free fall.

“That’s 3.6 million Americans who wake up every day wondering how they are going to pay their bills, stay in their homes and provide for their children. That’s 3.6 million Americans who need our help,” he said.

Obama had already tapped Paul Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman and a top Obama adviser, as the leader of the newly created Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

Volcker said he expects Congress to share the president’s “sense of urgency” that something must to be done to remedy a skidding economy.

Other members of Obama’s panel include former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman William Donaldson, TIAA-CREF President-CEO Roger Ferguson and Harvard University professor Martin Feldstein, who wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece last year titled “John McCain Has a Tax Plan To Create Jobs.”

Obama friend and campaign finance chairwoman Penny Pritzker also is on the board, as is Caterpillar Inc. Chairman-CEO Jim Owens and General Electric Co. CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt. Two labor officials — Anna Burger of Change to Win and Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO — also were named to the 15-member board designed to offer Obama advice as he seeks a way to rebuild the economy.

The new council is intended to be an economic sounding board for Obama — an outside-the-Beltway group that will report to the president directly. It will meet regularly with Obama, perhaps once a month. Its mission will include responding to requests from Obama — such as delving into a particular subject — without competing with the National Economic Council or day-to-day, decision-making at the White House.

Watch Obama’s Press Conference

From Jack Healy at The NYTimes.com:

President-elect Barack Obama said on Thursday that he never spoke to the governor of Illinois about Mr. Obama’s replacement in the United States Senate, and that no one on his staff had been involved in any deal-making regarding Mr. Obama’s successor.

“That would be a violation of everything that this campaign has been about,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference in Chicago which was called to announce an appointment to his Cabinet.

In his first extended comments on the unfolding political scandal, Mr. Obama said he was “appalled and disappointed” by the details of a complaint filed by federal prosecutors, who have accused the governor, Rod R. Blagojevich, of trying to profit from his power to choose Mr. Obama’s successor. Mr. Obama also restated his call for the governor to resign.

“I think the public trust has been violated,” Mr. Obama said. “I hope that the governor comes to the conclusion that he can no longer effectively serve and that he does resign.”

Click here for the full report.

Jesse Jackson Jr., currently implicated in the Blagojevich senate scandal, for trying to bribe the Illinoia Governor had a press conference.

Jesse Jackson, Jr. emphatically denied that he was a target in the  federal investigation of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, during a press conference Wednesday afternoon. “I reject and denounce pay to play  politics and have no involvement whatsoever in any wrong doing,”  Jackson said. “I did not initiate or authorize anyone,at anytime, to promise anything to governor Blagojevich on my behalf. I never sent a  message or an emissary to the governor to make an offer, or plea my case, or to propose a deal about a US Senate seat. Period.”

Watch The Video Here

In his press conference today, Barack Obama addressed an issue that has caused a lot of speculation. He spoke to reporters on what the Obama White House dog would be. He explained that his primary concern was that Malia was allergic and that they wanted a dog from a shelter, adding “But obviously, a lot of shelter dogs are mutts like me.”

Watch Obama Address The Family Dog Issue After The Jump