Back in February, President Obama surprised Steve Jobs with a question of what it would take to make the iPhones in the United States, rather than China.

Jobs replied that the iPhone could never be made in the United States ... and no, it's not because American labor costs (in fact, labor cost is a tiny fraction of the cost of making an iPhone). It's because America simply doesn't have the manufacturing might anymore:

“Apple’s an example of why it’s so hard to create middle-class jobs in the U.S. now,” said Jared Bernstein, who until last year was an economic adviser to the White House.

“If it’s the pinnacle of capitalism, we should be worried.”

Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”

Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher wrote this intriguing article over at The New York Times about the death of manufacturing and the disappearing American middle class - if you read only one thing today, make it this one: Link | TLDR? Here it is in video summary

Actress Betty White is 90 years old today. NBC aired a birthday tribute last night, and President Obama took part by sending a video greeting. Link -via Buzzfeed

Obama wasn’t the only one making the otherworldly voyage. As “Barry Soetero,” the 19-year-old Obama was one of 10 youths selected to secretly teleport to and from Mars, forming a band of interplanetary Teen Titans. Regina Dugan, the director of Darpa, was another member.

Between 1981 and 1983, Obama is supposed to have visited Mars twice, by way of a teleportation chamber called a “jump room.” Basiago, a fellow chrononaut, told the website Exopolitics that he saw Obama “walk back to the jump room from across the Martian terrain.” To acknowledge his comrade, Obama is said to have told Basiago, “We’re here” — apparently, “with some sense of fatalism.”

It is not known what exactly Obama did on Mars. (Socializing Martian health care, perhaps? Building a birth-certificate printing press?) His mission was a perilous one, according to Basiago and Stillings. The CIA wished to “establish a defense regime protecting the Earth from threats from space” as well as a legal claim to “territorial sovereignty,” making Obama something of a Martian conquistador. Presumably, Obama’s CIA handlers needed him to “acclimate Martian humanoids and animals to their presence” in order to secure the U.S.-Martian alliance. (We’ll bet you weren’t even aware of Martian animals.)

“Simply put, your task is to be seen and not eaten,” an elder chrononaut, retired Army Maj. Ed Dames, is alleged to have told a young Obama.

A spokesman for the National Security Council says that Obama has never been to Mars. Link -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Arikia Millikan)

Now, i s that any way to treat the leader of the people that descended from the greatest invader that ever walked the Earth?

President Obama did a big diplomatic "oops" earlier this week when he waved during a United Nations photo op, and accidentally blocked the face of Mongolian President Tsakhia Elbegdorj.

Link (Photo: Allan Tannenbaum-Pool/Getty Images)

To promote German political magazine Cicero, artist Ragna Reusch Klinkenberg carved miniature busts of U.S. President Barack Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel into the graphite tips of pencils. The pencils were then sent to each of the world leaders with the message “Politics directly from the source.” The magazine claims the PR stunt increased their interview request approval rate from 35% to 65%.

Link

The White House prepared a movie trailer for president Barack Obama’s routine last night at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner. It’s a sequel to The King’s Speech.

Possibly you’ve seen this strange picture of President Obama and his wife Michelle holding hands -with an extra hand. Many people assumed the picture was the victim of Photoshop, but Chicago Tribune photojournalist Alex Garcia has posted an explanation and the rest of the photo sequence. Link -via The Daily What

(Image credit: Alex Garcia)

The topic of this post is this: even after the release of the very document they demanded, the most hardcore Birthers are still unconvinced. In fact, proving them wrong only served to strengthen their initial belief (what social psychologists call "cognitive dissonance.")

So, can you make a skeptic believe? Yes, according to Dan Kahan of Yale Cognition Project: all you need is a little justification to save the skeptic’s ego.

Gregory Ferenstein of Fast Company explains:

The techniques boil down to allowing partisans to maintain their political philosophy in the midst of accepting new facts. For instance, for "small government" conservatives, or what the YCC calls "individualists," it’s strategically important to highlight the power of competition and the ineptitude of government. Namely, "Obama’s rightful fear of losing in the 2012 election forced him to come clean with his birth certificate, though this is just another illustration that government can’t do things in the timely manner."

Regardless of your political beliefs, it’s a fascinating read. And please mention bananas in the comment: Link

State and US Senator, President of the United States, Nobel laureate … What’s next for Barack Obama? How about … a night club owner?

Naw, that’s just some people in Shanghai jumping on the Obamawagon. According to Abby Lavin of CNN GO’s Shanghai:

Our friends over at SmartShanghai tipped us off to the April 26 soft-opening of Obama Entertainment Club, a new nightlife venture that is self-professedly “probably…the biggest club in the city…”

Them’s fightin’ words, and it’s clear from Club Obama’s inspired logo that it will be a force to be reckoned with on the city’s debauched party scene.

June 6, 2009
“After his speech in Normandy, a crush of people tried to get close to the President to shake his hand. I noticed this guy waiting patiently and then literally being pushed back into the crowd. I felt bad for him, and mentioned the incident to the President’s trip director, Marvin Nicholson. Marvin pulled the guy out of the crowd, found him a wheel chair, and brought him over to meet the President. He was a French veteran. The man’s face shows his emotion.”

Official White House photo by Pete Souza, via Reddit.

1. George Washington indulged in luxuries such as leopard-skin blankets for all of his horses.
2. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day – July 4, 1826, which just so happened to be the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
3. Thomas Jefferson attributed his long life (he lived to the age of 83, which was pretty long in the tooth for the early 1800s) to his daily habit of cold foot baths.
4. James Madison is the shortest president to date, standing just 5’4”. His stature didn’t go unnoticed – John Quincy Adams’ wife once described him as “a very small man in his person with a very large head.”
5. James Monroe once chased William H. Crawford, his secretary of the treasury, out of the White House with a pair of red hot tongs from the fireplace. Crawford gave Monroe a list of people he wanted considered for “political patronage,” and when Monroe informed Crawford that his list was not needed or wanted, Crawford called the President “a damned infernal scoundrel.” When he brandished his cane at Monroe, Monroe went for the tongs.
6. John Quincy Adams didn’t have such a great relationship with his three sons. When one of them failed to make the top 10 in his class at Harvard, JQA wrote to him and said that he felt “Nothing but shame and sorrow in your presence.” That was his namesake, John, who later became an alcoholic, as did brother George. George later committed suicide.
7. Andrew Jackson was nearly assassinated. A man named Richard Lawrence decided that Jackson was the only thing keeping him from inheriting the British throne and tried to shoot him as Jackson was leaving the Capitol. The gun misfired. Lawrence came prepared with a backup gun, drew it, and fired again. It also misfired. Legend has it that about this time, Jackson started beating his would-be killer with his cane. Davy Crockett was one of the men who helped disarm Lawrence.
8. Martin Van Buren didn’t relish his days in the White House, to be sure. He once said, “As for the presidency, the two happiest days of my life were those of my entrance upon the office and my surrender of it.” It didn’t stop him for running for a second term (he didn’t achieve it).
9. William Henry Harrison. His death is the reason we have firm plans in place for the presidential succession. Harrison served just 31 days, 12 hours and 30 minutes of his presidency; he died of pneumonia and septicemia and was the first American President to die in office. At the time, no one was sure if the Vice President should become President or would merely be Acting President. It was decided that since Harrison’s VP John Tyler took the Oath of Office, he would retain the title for the duration of Harrison’s original term.
10. John Tyler married a girl 30 years his junior (Julia, pictured) and began courting her just three months after his wife’s death. His youngest daughter – the fifteenth Tyler child – was born when Tyler was 70.
11. James K. Polk never vacationed, kept long hours and was always all business. He accomplished much during his presidency, including a victory in the Mexican-American War, founding an independent treasury, opened the Naval Academy, issued the first postage stamps, opened the Smithsonian Museum and oversaw the groundbreaking for the Washington Monument, and expanded the United States further west. He also died just three months after leaving office – most historians agree that he basically worked himself to death.
12. Zachary Taylor was a big fan of chewing tobacco and had no problems with spitting his chaw juice out on the White House carpet if a suitable urn wasn’t available.
13. Millard Fillmore met Queen Victoria in 1855. She promptly declared that Fillmore was the handsomest man she had ever laid eyes upon. He was also the last member of the Whig Party to be President.
14. Franklin Pierce was a rather tragic figure. His first two sons died in childhood – one at birth and one at the age of four. Young deaths were not uncommon at the time, but it caused his wife to become a bit overprotective of their third and last son, Bennie. Two months before Pierce took office, he and his family were traveling in a train that derailed and then slid down an embankment. The only fatality? Eleven-year-old Bennie.
15. James Buchanan is the only president who never married. He was engaged once, but it ended pretty badly – her parents convinced her that Buchanan wasn’t good enough for her, so she broke it off. She then took ill and died soon after. Buchanan wrote a letter to her father and asked to be allowed to follow after her coffin at the funeral; her father had it returned to sender.
16. Abraham Lincoln was notoriously messy. Legend has it that his office was a terrible mess and that he kept an envelope in his desk that said, “When you can’t find it anywhere else, look into this.”
17. Andrew Johnson was a tailor and absolutely loved his job. In fact, when he was governor of Tennessee, he took time out of his busy schedule to custom make a suit for a local blacksmith.
18. Ulysses S. Grant’s grandson, Ulysses S. Grant III, graduated sixth in his class at West Point Academy in 1903. The best student that year? Douglas MacArthur.
19. Rutherford B. Hayes didn’t actually win the presidential election – he lost to Samuel Tilden by about 250,000 votes. But the vote tallying was a mess and a bunch of the electoral votes were in dispute, so the Electoral Commission was quickly formed to determine the outcome. They obviously found in favor of Hayes, leaving Tilden supporters to dub Rutherford “Rutherfraud,” “His Fraudulency” and “His Accidency.”
20. James A. Garfield was shot on July 2, 1881, but he didn’t die until September 19. Most historians agree that the doctors who poked and prodded and used rather strange and unsanitary measures to try to “save” him are probably the ones that actually killed him.
21. Chester A. Arthur was a clotheshorse and was the first president to hire someone to attend to his wardrobe. He reportedly had more than 80 pairs of pants.
22. Grover Cleveland had a secret operation to remove a tumor in his mouth while he was president. He boarded a yacht headed upstate as if it were a fun diversion, but while he was tucked away from the public eye, doctors removed the tumor from his upper palette. No one knew about the incident until 24 years later, when one of the doctors who performed the surgery finally spilled the beans. You can now visit the tumor at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, which has an exhibit dedicated to the event.
23. Benjamin Harrison was the last president to wear a beard.
24. William McKinley’s wife had epileptic seizures on a fairly regular basis. He responded to them by arranging his handkerchief over her head – the darkness seemed to help – and carrying on as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening.
25. Theodore Roosevelt was a big fan of food. He drank about a gallon of coffee a day and would sometimes eat a dozen hard-boiled eggs for breakfast.
26. William Howard Taft is the only man, thus far, to have been the leader of both the Executive and Judicial branches of government. He became Chief Justice eight years after his term as President ended and considered this the highlight of his career – “I do not remember that I was ever President,” he once said.
27. Woodrow Wilson was one of the few Presidents to endure dating while acting as Commander in Chief. His first wife died of Bright’s Disease in 1914, and by 1915 he was dating his would-be second wife, Edith Boling Galt. As you might expect, the media followed them around mercilessly and reported on their dates. The Washington Post once typoed that President Wilson “spent most of his time entering Ms. Galt.” Whoops. Since they meant to write “entertaining,” that entire newspaper was recalled. Wilson also signed off some of his letters to Galt as “Tiger.”
28. Warren G. Harding loved gambling and once lost an entire box of White House china in a game.
29. Calvin Coolidge’s son is probably the only fatality to occur at the White House because of the White House. He was playing a game of tennis with his older brother and developed a blister on his big toe. The blister became infected and Cal Jr. died of blood poisoning within days.
30. Herbert Hoover wrote a book called Fishing For Fun – And To Wash Your Soul. An excerpt: “Association with the placid ripples of the waves and the quiet chortle of the streams is soothing to our ‘het-up’ anxieties.”
31. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was driven around in a hand-me-down Cadillac that previously belonged to Al Capone. After Pearl Harbor, the Secret Service decided that the limo FDR was tooling around in wasn’t safe enough. Capone’s car was outfitted with a ton of armor since he was so commonly targeted, so it was deemed safe enough for Roosevelt.
32. Harry S Truman. The “S” in Harry S Truman doesn’t stand for anything. His parents argued over whether it should stand for “Shippe” or “Solomon,” his paternal and maternal grandparents respectively, and so it was just left as “S.”
33. Dwight D. Eisenhower desperately wanted to play professional baseball. Later in life, he said that “”not making the baseball team at West Point was one of the greatest disappointments of my life, maybe my greatest.”
34. John F. Kennedy’s 1935 yearbook named him “Most likely to become President.”
35. Lyndon B. Johnson. For two hours and eight minutes after JFK’s assassination, we had no President. LBJ was sworn in on Air Force One in Dallas at Love Field Airport; he is the only President to be sworn in on Texas soil. He was also the first President to be sworn in by a woman.
36. Richard Nixon always wore a coat and tie – even when he was at home by himself, according to one biography.
37. Gerald Ford is the only President who also had a modeling career. He was in Look magazine in 1939 and was on the cover of Cosmopolitan in 1942. He’s also the only President to ever tackle a future Heisman winner – when he played football for the University of Michigan Wolverines, he tackled University of Chicago running back Jay Berwanger, who won the first-ever Heisman Trophy the following year.

38. Jimmy Carter is the only President to file an official report to detail a UFO sighting. He claimed he and several members of his Lion’s Club saw a UFO hovering about 900 yards away from them in Georgia in 1969.
39. Ronald Reagan was a notorious doodler and wasn’t immune to entertaining himself during “boring” meetings by doing such. Those are his scribbles to the left.
40. George H.W. Bush was awarded an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II in 1993. He’s just the third President to receive the honor – the other two were Eisenhower and Reagan.
41. Bill Clinton. There’s a statue of Clinton playing golf in Ballybunion, Ireland.
42. George W. Bush is the only U.S. President to have an MBA.
43. Barack Obama’s brother-in-law is the head men’s basketball coach at Oregon State University.

So. Unless you’ve been living in a cave, I’m sure you’ve heard that President Barack Obama has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize (surprise!)

The blogosphere was immediately abuzz with … confusion. What has Obama done to deserve to win? Isn’t it a bit premature? Are Norwegians just Obamafans? And does this mean that the Olympics is ditching Rio to come to Chicago? You’d expect this kind of reaction from his political opponents, but it seems that *everyone* was scratching their heads.

I know, I know – no politics on Neatorama. But I’m genuinely puzzled. What do you guys think is going on?

[poll=13]

And yes, I made that Super Obamario Bros. photoshop

Barack Obama’s amazingly consistent smile from Eric Spiegelman on Vimeo.

First, it was Paris Hilton and now, Barack Obama. Eric Spiegelman noticed that when President Obama hosted a reception at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he held the exact same smile in every photograph:

Ladies and gentlemen, your President is a robot. Or a wax sculpture. Maybe a cardboard cutout. All I know is no human being has a photo smile this amazingly consistent.

On Wednesday, the Obamas hosted a reception at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, during which they stood for 130 photographs with visiting foreign dignitaries in town for the UN meeting. The President has exactly the same smile in every single shot. See for yourself — the pictures are up on the State Department’s flickr (link below). And, of course, compressed into 20 seconds for your viewing pleasure.

There can only be on explanation: it was the Obamabot stand-in. The real President Obama was probably too busy dealing with the Russian Dead Hand in an underground bunker to be bothered by this museum stuff!

Enter PETA to the fray: the animal rights group decried Obama’s display of unchecked executive power and suggested that next time he used a humane fly catcher instead:

“We support compassion for the even the smallest animals," says Bruce Friedrich, VP for Policy at PETA. “We support giving insects the benefit of the doubt."

Friedrich says PETA supports "brushing flies away rather than killing them" and was disappointed that the President had gone ahead and squashed the pesky fly.

This afternoon PETA sent a Katcha Bug, a device which traps bugs and allows their safe release back into nature to the White House.

Good thing it didn’t happen to Cheney – he’d have used his shotgun fo’ sho’: Link

Our favorite Jell-O artist Liz Hickok wrote to us about her latest project – and yes, it does have a distinct political message:

The piece is called "The First 100 Days: The White House in Jell-O". The White House starts out as Obama inherited it on day one of his administration: a bit old and moldy. Set to the tune of “America the Beautiful,” the iconic structure slowly transforms into a fresh, glowing, and proud symbol of hope.

Whether you agree with Liz’s politics or not, it’s spiffy to see the White House sculpted out of Jell-O (and here I thought that jiggliness went out with Bill Clinton oh so many years ago!): Link [with embedded YouTube clip] – Thanks Liz!

By the way, if you’re in San Francisco this weekend (April 25 – 26), be sure to attend the Mission Open Studios (or the Mission Studio Stroll) – a neighborhood crawl to visit 8 artists’ groups including more than 100 working artists in the Mission District of San Francisco: 1890 Bryant St. at the corner of Mariposa (Liz is in Studio #211 – say hello to her
for me if you’re there). More info: 1890 Bryant | Mission Artists United

I love this list of 10 gifts for the Obama family’s new dog. This one is the best, every first dog needs some fine formal wear for those extravagant evenings with the leaders forgien countries. Some of the other toys and things are just neat.

Link

The identity of the first puppy — the one that the Washington press corps has been yelping about for months, the one President Obama has seemed to delight in dropping hints about — leaked out Saturday.

The little guy is a six-month-old Portuguese water dog given to the Obama girls as a gift by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Malia and Sasha named it Bo. [...]

A secret get-acquainted session with the family occurred at the White House a few weeks ago. The visit, known around the White House as "The Meeting," was a surprise for the girls. Bo charmed the first family, a source who was there said. He sat when the girls sat, stood when the girls stood. He made no toilet errors and did not gnaw on the furniture. Bo has, after all, been receiving lessons in good behavior from the Kennedys’ dog trainers. These lessons have been taking place at a secret, undisclosed location outside Washington.

Link (Photo: Pete Souza / White House)

Obamamania is a boon for businesses trying to cash in on the new President’s popularity – and while we opt to skip most of ‘em on Neatorama, I find this one fascinatingly irresistible to post: German frozen food company is marketing fried chicken tenders (with a tasty curry sauce) called "Obama Fingers."

Not wanting to miss the boat, a German food company has now gotten into the act. Sprehe, a company that has all manner of frozen delicacies on offer, has come up with a new product it calls "Obama Fingers." Far from being real digits, though, the "fingers" in question are "tender, juicy pieces of chicken breast, coated and fried," as the product packaging claims.

Fried chicken, in other words. With a curry dip.

"We noticed that American products and the American way of eating are trendy at the moment," Judith Witting, sales manager for Sprehe, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "Americans are more relaxed. Not like us stiff Germans, like (Chancellor Angela) Merkel."

Charles Hawley of Spiegel Online has the story: Link – via Miss Cellania

Ilham Anas of Indonesia has become famous for his resemblance to President Barrack Obama.  What first started out as a joke, when his friends posted pictures of him on the internet, has turned into his 15-minutes of fame:

“The pictures spread very quickly on the Internet. It was phenomenal. Then TV stations and an advertising agency got in touch with me.”

Ilham says he is often mistaken for Obama and people ask to take pictures with him.

“I never thought I would be a star in a commercial, then this happened. It’s very fortunate,” Ilham said.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.

Link

From the Upcoming Queue, submitted by interweber.

Vlosich said: 'I've been drawing since I was two years old, but the real magic on the Etch A Sketch started in 1989 on our family trip to Washington D.C.

'Before we left, we stopped over my grandparents' house to say goodbye. My mom pulled out her old 1960's Etch A Sketch so my brother and I would have something to play with in the car. I etched a picture of the U.S. Capitol. 'When I was finished, my mom and dad were amazed! My dad saw it and immediately stopped at a gas station to take a picture of my creation before I erased it.

Link

From the Upcoming Queue, submitted by nerdshark.

Whether you love Obama or hate him, you’ll be happy to know there is now a tool to track how he has lived up to his campaign promises.

The Obameter has a compiled list of about 500 promises he made during the election run and it records if he: kept the promise, compromised, broke the promise, stalled the promise, is in the works on the issue or has not taken action on the promise. So far he’s stalled one, compromised on one and kept five, but it will be nice to see how he does in the long run.

I wish we had these for every president. I’d love to know how Kennedy, Lincoln or Andrew Jackson did on their promises.

Link Via Good Magazine

Post a comment if you find anything neat/strange/unusual/cool tucked away in the crowd somewhere.

[Link]

Covered in soft, durable water resistant laminate with double straps and velcro closure, this eye-catching bag is perfect as a large purse, grocery bag or carry-on.

Link

McSweeney’s has a fantastic compilation of childrens’ letters to Obama. Some of them are so adorably fantastic. It seems to be kids between 5 and 12 mostly. Even if you don’t like Obama, you still can appreciate the innocence of their words.

Dear President Obama,

When you are president, don’t eat junk food. Junk food makes you fat. Your family shouldn’t eat junk food, either, because it is not healthy. Obama, you rock.

Amy Ramirez, age 8
San Francisco

Dear President Obama, Are you going to be pictured on our money? How do you get in the White House? Do you like Abraham Lincoln? Do you have a big backyard? Martin Luther King Jr. had big fans. How many fans do you have? You could help us by giving us food. I am Luis Ramirez. I go to school at Mayberry. I like to play video games.

Luis Ramirez, age 8
Los Angeles

Link

BellaSmiles, a member of the Etsy online marketplace, has come up with this creative piece of art which is described as “The coolest president meets the coolest wookie”.

Link – via The Official Star Wars Blog

Did you watch Obama’s inauguration? (I watched most of it, then had to leave for an appointment, which I just got back from) What’s up with Chief Justice Roberts fumbling of the oath. I <3 Aretha Franklin’s awesome hat!

ABC News has a pretty neat coverage: Link (Photo: Elise Amendola/AP)

[Cellular News story via MobileCrunch blog]

The company refuses to give precise details of how it will perform its primary purpose – protecting the president.

But bulletproof glass and armourplatingare standard throughout and the car is hermetically-sealed to withstand chemical weapons.

As with previous presidential limos it is packed with electronic communication systems to allow Mr Obama to keep in contact with the outside world.

Cadillac One will debut at the inaugural parade on Tuesday. Link -via the Presurfer

I love this group. The Isiserettes are a non-profit drill and drum corps from Des Moines headed to D.C. in January to perform at Barack Obama’s inauguration. The official group is made up of kids ages 7 to 18, but I’ve seen some pretty tiny kids grooving out there (which is adorable).

This video is cool, but I have to say it doesn’t do them justice: they’re super impressive when you see them live. Here’s a video of the drum line in action:

Video by Bill Grady, via MyFortDodge.

Turns out, it was the real Obama:

According to a statement released by her office, the Republican congresswoman cut off the caller, telling him she thought “this is a joke from one of the South Florida radio stations known for these pranks.” She then hung up.

Finally, an aide told Ros-Lehtinen she had an urgent call from Chairman Howard Berman, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Still suspicious, Ros-Lehtinen urged the California Democrat to recount a story only both of them would know.

Berman passed the test — and told her she had, in fact, hung up on President-elect Obama.

Oops! CNN’s Political Ticker has the story: Link