luni, 21 aprilie 2014

Watch Now: The White House Easter Egg Roll

 
 
 
 
 
 
  Featured

Watch Now: The White House Easter Egg Roll

Today, more than 30,000 guests will hop on down to the South Lawn of the White House for the 136th White House Easter Egg Roll.

Featuring appearances by Ariana Grande, Jim Carrey, Robert Griffin III, Debby Ryan from the Disney Channel’s JESSIE, and Cookie Monster, this year's Easter Egg Roll is streaming live all day long.

Tune in to WhiteHouse.gov/EasterEggRoll now to join in on the fun.

President Barack Obama, with Bo, one of the Obama family's dogs, reads to children on the South Lawn during the 2013 White House Easter Egg Roll, April 1, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)


 
 
  Top Stories

Weekly Address: President Obama Offers Easter and Passover Greetings

In this week's address, the President offers his warmest greetings as millions of Americans celebrate Easter Sunday and recounts the Passover Seder he hosted at the White House earlier this week, joining Jewish families around the world in their celebration.

READ MORE

West Wing Week: 4/18/14 or, "Pull Together, Fight Back, and Win"

Last week, President Obama nominated Sylvia Burwell as Secretary of Health and Human Services, hosted an Easter Prayer Breakfast and a Passover Seder, discussed immigration reform with faith leaders, and more.

READ MORE

Navy Midshipmen Receive the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy for the Ninth Time in 11 Seasons

The President welcomed the U.S. Naval Academy’s football team to the White House on Friday to receive the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy once again.

READ MORE


 
 
  Today's Schedule

All times are Eastern Time (ET)

10:40 AM: The President and First Lady attend the 2014 White House Easter Egg Roll and deliver remarks

12:00 PM: The President receives the Presidential Daily Briefing

1:00 PM: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney


 

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Building a Brand Online: The Golden Age of Digital

Building a Brand Online: The Golden Age of Digital


Building a Brand Online: The Golden Age of Digital

Posted: 20 Apr 2014 05:16 PM PDT

Posted by willcritchlow

This post is based on a talk I gave at our SearchLove conference in Boston last week. It ties quite closely with the post my colleague Ron Garrett wrote last week: Search Marketers Need to Evolve. You can probably tell we've been doing a lot of thinking about this.

When I gave this talk at SearchLove, I hoped that it would put in context why we bring such a range of speakers and topics together at our conferences and to inspire the attendees to go back to their companies and make real changes. I hope this post will do the same for you.

As digital marketers, our focus on analytics has served us well in driving direct, measurable sales. The dominant form of brand marketing, however, has remained offline with TV taking the lion's share of the budget and attention. We believe that as TV faces disruptive technology and business models, digital marketers have an opportunity to grow their influence and impact. In total, this is an opportunity worth tens of billions of dollars a year.

I'd very much like for us—our industry—you and me—to be the ones who benefit.

Despite all the growth we have seen in digital marketing spend, I think that we are only just entering what I'm calling the golden age of digital.

Building brands online first

We're entering the age when the biggest brands in the world will be built online first. I hope to convince you of two things: first, that this change is happening right now. And second, that we are the people to win in this world.

Starting at the beginning

There are some confident statements above, but the last few years have had their share of introspection and crises of confidence. We've put a lot of time and energy over the years into understanding the direction marketing is moving and capitalising on the shifts. Duncan and I originally started by thinking that networked computing was going to be a big deal and then started our company initially on the back of a simple CMS that we built to help small business owners take advantage of the self-publishing revolution.

As we shifted gears to focus more on the dominance of the search channel, we started trying to understand where Google in particular might be taking things.

We've written plenty about that over the years, but we were talking about effects similar to Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird years before they actually came to pass. Panda and Penguin started making our vision come true. We were more effective search marketers than we'd ever been because we'd largely bypassed building the infrastructure for search as it was and tried to build it for how search would be.

And yet something was wrong.

Powerful content was becoming ever more effective. And yet the greatest examples of content that we were seeing at search conferences weren't built by SEO agencies.

Brands were getting a bigger and bigger advantage in search. And yet the best brand builders weren't SEO agencies.

For a long time, we've talked about how "SEO" isn't a verb. You don't "SEO a website." Ranking well is an outcome, not an activity. It's like fame. "Famous" isn't a verb. You don't "famous someone." You get famous for doing other things (playing sport, performing music, appearing on TV). SEO is the same.

But what if we weren't the right people to do those things for people? What if we weren't the world's best PR firm, branding agency, or creative producers?

Don't worry. I got over my insecurity. I believe the capabilities that we have been building are going to grow in power and influence. Here's how:

The Innovator's Dilemma

It was Mark Suster who kick-started my confidence with his talk in San Diego [use this link and sign up for an account to get access to the video for free]. He's an entrepreneur-turned-investor. He's smart and opinionated.

He talked about maker studios at our conference. You might have heard a few weeks ago that Maker Studios sold to Disney for half a billion dollars.

Maker is a producer and distributor of online video. The turning point for me was in realising that the forces they were betting on were also rampaging towards our quirky, exciting, geeky little corner of the marketing world.

There's a book called The Innovator's Dilemma by a Harvard Business School professor named Clayton Christensen. It's a little dry, but if you're interested in business theory and technology, it's an absolute no-brainer: You should read it.

It describes two kinds of innovations that hit established markets. So-called "sustaining innovations" make existing processes faster, cheaper, or better. They can be very dramatic, but Professor Christensen's research shows that they almost always end up benefiting the incumbent players in the market.

In contrast to "sustaining innovations" stand "disruptive innovations," which are those that attack problems an entirely different way. They typically don't work as well as the existing solutions, perhaps solving only part of the problem, but have a structurally different cost. So they're "cheaper but worse."

Cheaper but worse

Doesn't sound too compelling, does it?

That's what the incumbents think. They may spot a potential opportunity, and may even pay lip service to the idea that they should be pursuing it, but ultimately, their economic incentives are skewed towards maintenance of the status quo.

Therein lies the dilemma.

There's often a subset of the market, for whom the new service is "good enough." It may not be gold-plated, but it solves their immediate needs and they can afford it. As they invest, it gets better and better, capturing more and more of the market opportunity until it's meeting the core needs of even the top end of the market while still being structurally cheaper. Money cascades to the new entrant and leaves the incumbents high and dry.

Let's go back to the "cheaper but worse" innovation for a second. To me, that sounds an awful lot like the idea of building a brand online. Let's look at the details:

  • The established way of building a brand for a generation has been via mass market TV advertising and other classic above-the-line spend. Spends of $100m+ are not uncommon.
  • Building a brand online is cheaper, yes, but right now, not as effective.
  • The incumbent brand-builders pay lip service to digital, but when you look at their corporate structure, their fee structures, and their economic incentives, and you realise that they'd far rather see TV get bigger than have to do all this messy web marketing.

So I think there is a disruption coming to brand marketing, and I don't think it's going to benefit the big guys.

Online first

I'm calling this whole phenomenon "online first": the biggest brands of tomorrow will be built online. This will be partly because the tools we have available to build brands online are going to get better and better, and partly because money is going to flow to digital from TV. I recently wrote about this in more detail in our Future of TV report:

I am definitely not saying that TV itself is in trouble. We live in an amazing time for TV content. You just have to look at shows like Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, and True Detective to see that we have exceptional content and more ways of accessing that content than ever before—and that's before we even get to Netflix and House of Cards. In part as a result of this resurgence, the total time spent watching video has increased every year recently.

Our devices are also getting better and better. The cost of big screens is coming down; we now have full HD on our mobile devices.

But the way we get our content is changing. 80% of US households have some form of internet-connected device paired with their TV according to gigaom research. Whether it's an Apple TV, Roku, Xbox, Chromecast or something else, we can increasingly watch anything we like on the big screen. And conversely, we can watch more and more of our "classic TV" content on smartphones, tablets, laptops and any other screen we can lay our hands on.

This particular part of the trend has been analysed to death. I'm not interested in that for the purposes of this analysis. I'm interested in the fragmenting viewership: In general, we're no longer all watching the same thing at the same time. That has profound impacts on the way TV advertising is bought and sold.

The innovator's dilemma predicts that the cost per unit of the high end of the old market will continue to rise even as the bottom starts to fall away. It's becoming ever more valuable to reach consumers on those rare occasions when we do all sit down at the same time to watch the same content.

The complexity of time-shifted internet-delivered content rapidly surpasses human optimisation ability. The upfront media market in which Oprah stands on stage and extols her show and the network and seeks tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of spend is a process which can't survive the move to digital-scale complexity (if you're interested in this, I wrote an introduction to TV advertising a few weeks ago).

Advertising against TV-like content will have to be bought more like AdWords. It has to become real-time (depending on who's actually watching at a given moment), it'll have to be market-priced in one form or another (because you can't negotiate all these things individually on the fly).

I'm in danger of getting dragged into deep economic arguments, but the effect of all this disruption is going to be a whole load of unbundling and a reallocation of budgets.

Of course, in part, this will open up opportunities in video marketing—both in brand-funded TV-like content and in video advertising against internet-delivered video (check out the talk by  Chris from Wistia's [PDF]). I don't think it's a given that the incumbent TV advertisers will dominate that space. It's structurally pretty different. We are certainly betting in this area—between  Phil and Margarita, we're already doing video strategy and execution for ourselves and our clients.

It's not all about video, though.

How our industry competes

There are three broad areas that we all need to get great at to take advantage of this opportunity. Video fits into the first of these, which is technical creativity—that place where technology and storytelling meet:

1. Technical creativity

I've been endlessly frustrated over the years by the creative storytellers who misunderstand (or don't even care about) technology. The stupid apps that no one uses. The branded social networks that nobody joins. The above-the-line campaigns telling you to search for phrases they don't rank for.

Old-school SEOs can spot crawl issues or indexing problems in their sleep. We've had to get good at things like analytics, UX, and conversion. Indeed, one of the most popular talks last week (and Slideshare of the day) was from  Aaron Weyenberg at TED, and was all about UX. The things that stood out to me the most were all about the different ways they listened to their audience and gathered feedback at different stages of the process. This incorporated everything from the standard hall-way tests through qualitative and quantitative surveying to a really nicely-executed beta. You can see the full deck here:

And we mustn't lose sight of the value of that technical knowledge. Screw up a migration and you're just as hosed as you've ever been.

For me personally, the creative is the more challenging part—but luckily it's not all about me. We've been  investing in creative for a while, and I loved the presentation our head of creative, Mark Johnstone gave last week entitled how to produce better content ideas. It really clarified my thinking in a few areas—particularly about the effort and research that should go in early in the process in order to give the "lightbulb moment" a chance. By coupling that with examples of deconstructing other people's creative (and showing us / giving us further reading on how to practice ourselves) he made a compelling argument that we can all do this so much better—and that not only designers can be "creative." I'm also looking forward to trying out the immersion techniques he talks about for getting from unstructured to structured. You can check out the full deck here:

[If you'd like to see more of the decks from Boston, you can currently get them here and in the next few weeks the videos will be available within DistilledU]

2. Broad promotional ability

The second capability we need after technical creativity is a broad promotional ability. This is your classic owned, earned and paid media.

As search marketers, we've typically focused primarily on the earned side of this—via outreach and digital PR—and my colleague Rob Toledo gave a great presentation about some of the cleverer forms of earned media in his presentation The Hunter/Gatherer. He talked in detail about ways of reaching that tricky kind of influencer—the one who wants to discover their own interesting share-worthy material. It was a funny presentation that contained some exceptional tactics. You can see the full deck here:

I think paid media is going to have an ever-increasing part to play in online brand building though. Pay Per Click is typically measured on direct response metrics—sending traffic to landing pages and converting them—but social and video advertising is on the rise. We increasingly spend money on promoting content instead of promoting landing pages. I expect that trend to continue.

The eagle-eyed among you might have noticed that this isn't inbound. I make no apology for that.

3. Influence and measurement throughout the Customer Lifecycle

Finally, alongside our technical creativity and promotional ability, we need to double down on our ability to influence and measure customer behaviour throughout the customer lifecycle.

We've all heard (or even been) the search experts who stand on stage and talk about the measurability of digital. Sometimes they go further and make off-hand comments about how you "can't measure TV."

Does anyone really believe that? Anyone think Proctor & Gamble or Unilever really waste half the money they spend?

One of the most mind-blowing talks I ever attended was at ad:tech a few years ago—it was a speaker from Ogilvy talking about the econometric models they use to measure their work for P&G. It was all about how they were tying together the influence of point-of-sale, coupon codes, TV, and other above-the-line advertising to understand what's making them the money. They are good at it but it's expensive. Our industry's stuff is cheap in comparison. It's not yet good enough but if we work hard and invest, it can be.

What I didn't say

Remember: I didn't say TV is dead. I didn't say search is dead. I said that our crazy blend of technical creativity, promotional chops and measurement skills is going to be the skillset that builds tomorrow's biggest brands. AND—crucially to the topic near and dear to much of the Moz audience's hearts, it's also going to be how you rank in Google.

Advertising is a half-trillion dollar a year industry struggling to understand its place in a digital world. I don't want the same old guys to win on our turf. The internet is our domain. Let's go get great at this.


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duminică, 20 aprilie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Japan Trade Deficit Largest in History; Imports Soar, Exports Barely Up In Spite of Collapsed Yen

Posted: 20 Apr 2014 10:37 PM PDT

Those who think a collapsing currency are a sure-fire way to increase exports need to rethink their beliefs.

Despite a falling Yen, Japan Posts Largest-Ever Trade Deficit.
The gap between the value of Japan's exports and that of its imports grew by more than two-thirds in the 12 months through March, to Y13.7tn ($134bn), according to government data released on Monday. It was the third consecutive fiscal year of deficits, the longest streak since comparable records began in the 1970s.

Toyota, Hitachi and other large Japanese companies have enjoyed soaring profits as a result of the weaker yen, which has fallen by a fifth against other major currencies since November 2012.

But the improvement has come less from increased exports than from flattered exchange rates on overseas sales. Japanese export volumes have barely risen and the yen value of goods shipped to foreign markets has increased much more slowly than the value of imports.

Exports actually declined slightly by volume in January-March compared with the previous quarter, by 0.2 per cent on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to calculations by Credit Suisse, even as imports grew by 4.5 per cent.

A steady outflow of Japanese manufacturing jobs to lower-cost countries and declining competitiveness in some sectors, such as consumer electronics, has limited the power of a cheap yen to lift exports.

Overall Japanese exports increased 0.6 per cent by volume last fiscal year, Monday's data showed, leading to a 10.8 per cent rise by value in light of the weaker yen. Imports rose 2.4 per cent by volume and 17.3 per cent by value.
Energy Imports

Japan has 50 nuclear reactors. Every one of them is offline. Abe wants to bring them back online, but the Financial Times reports "analysts think that at most 12-15 of the reactors will ultimately be restarted."

Abenomics

A falling Yen and rising energy imports, coupled with a slowdown in China and tax hikes in Japan suggest Abenomics is going to be a dismal failure unless the goal is to goose stock prices rather than goose the economy.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Glen Greenwald Wins Pulitzer Prize for Exposing NSA Spy Scandal; His Reaction on Video; My Reaction: Greenwald and Snowden are Heroes

Posted: 20 Apr 2014 08:28 PM PDT

A big round of well deserved applause for Glen Greenwald is in order for willing a Pulitzer Prize for public service. Greenwald says the announcement was "really gratifying."

Please consider Glenn Greenwald Reacts To Pulitzer Prize
Glenn Greenwald told CNN's Brian Stelter on Sunday that receiving the Pulitzer Prize for public service was "really gratifying."

On Monday, Greenwald and other journalists at The Guardian and The Washington Post were awarded the Pulitzer for their reporting on the National Security Agency. The big question as the awards approached was whether the Pulitzer Prize committee would recognize their work, and they did just that.

On Sunday's "Reliable Sources," Greenwald told Stelter that he was having lunch with his phone on the table when the announcement came, and described his reaction.

"I think there was an expectation that the committee had to recognize the reporting in one way or another, and the question was going to be how," said Greenwald. "To learn that it was the public service award and that it was given to The Guardian and to The Washington Post for the work that we had done was really gratifying, because I think that is the ideal that we always tried to fulfill, which is doing the reporting in public service."

Congressman Peter King, like other critics of Greenwald, reacted to the news less kindly, calling the win a "disgrace." When asked about King's condemnation of the award, Greenwald said it was "an enormous badge of honor." He compared it to the reactions of those who called for prosecuting Daniel Ellsberg and The New York Times for releasing the Pentagon Papers.
Greenwald and Snowden are Heroes

Glen Greenwald and Edward Snowden are heroes. Those looking for cowardly disgrace can find in in the reactions of President Obama, Senator John McCain, Congressman Peter King, and numerous other legislators who have no idea what the constitution even says.



In the above video, Pulitzer Prize winner Glenn Greenwald joins Brian Stelter for an exclusive interview.

Congratulations to Greenwald, the Guardian, and the Washington Post.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

"Low Inflation has Positive Impact and Helps Spain's Competitiveness" Says Economy Minister

Posted: 20 Apr 2014 12:06 PM PDT

Luis de Guindos, Spain's Economy Minister, sings the praises of low inflation.

Via translation from El Economista, please consider Economy Minister Says Deflation Has "Positive Impact".
James Daniel, Spain's mission advisor to the IMF, said that inflation close to zero in the country increases the burden of debt and real interest rates and difficult to reduce unemployment.

Daniel's words contradict the perception Luis de Guindos, the Spanish Minister of Economy and Competitiveness, who also said today at a press conference that low inflation "is having a positive impact" and help the country's competitiveness.

Guindos noted noted that, far from being a threat, "the low level of inflation is allowing Spain win competitiveness."

However, he recognized that low inflation could become a "problem" if it lasts "long" and affects the process of deleveraging in the Spanish economy. The minister expects inflation to fluctuate in the coming months at around 0.5%.
Guindos had it correct until that last sentence. Low inflation, or deflation is never a problem. Rather the buildup of debt that cannot be serviced is the problem.

Since the buildup of debt is the problem, inflationary solutions that encourage people and businesses to expand debt cannot possibly be the solution.

Falling wages have had a positive effect on Spain's competitiveness, so much so that France is bitching about the invasion of Spanish builders undercutting French firms in price.

For discussion, please see Deflation Will Return: Europe First, Then US; Global Supply Arbitrage.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com 

Seth's Blog : "How do I get rid of the fear?"

 

"How do I get rid of the fear?"

Alas, this is the wrong question.

The only way to get rid of the fear is to stop doing things that might not work, to stop putting yourself out there, to stop doing work that matters.

No, the right question is, "How do I dance with the fear?"

Fear is not the enemy. Paralysis is the enemy.

       

 

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sâmbătă, 19 aprilie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Illinois Madness Never Stops; House Committee Wants Taxpayers to Spend $100 Million on Barack Obama Library

Posted: 19 Apr 2014 12:27 PM PDT

Illinois is broke. Its public pension plans are the most troubled in the nation.

Illinois passed massive "temporary" tax hikes to fix the pension problem, but that did not make a dent in  the problem.

Nonetheless, ideas to waste more taxpayer money are always on the table. Here's a recent example.

$100 Million for Barack Obama Library

Today, the Illinois Policy Institute reports by email ...
An Illinois House Committee wants taxpayers to pay $100 million for a Barack Obama library. Somehow, House Speaker Michael Madigan thinks this is an appropriate use of funds despite the state's more than $100 billion pension crisis and $6.6 billion in unpaid bills.

In accepting hefty taxpayer dollars for this venture, President Barack Obama is setting himself apart from his recent predecessors, former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Clinton's library, located in Little Rock, Ark., was funded solely through private donations, according to the Clinton Foundation. Clinton's "$165 million facility was built entirely through private funds. It's just a fact," said Jordan Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Clinton Foundation.

Likewise, Bush's library, located at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, was also funded through private donations.

The Barack Obama Foundation, tasked with planning the development of Obama's presidential library, has yet to determine the site of the future library. In fact, the foundation's board of directors is receiving proposals through June 16 and does not intend to announce its final decision until 2015. The Illinois House Committee's $100 million proposal will now go to the full House.

On its website, the Barack Obama Foundation defines its mission as developing a presidential library that "reflects President Obama's values and priorities throughout his career in public service." Interestingly enough, the first value listed is "expanding economic opportunity." But more than 600,000 Illinoisans woke up today and didn't have a job to go to, and thousands more face underemployment. To them and many others, it's clear the president has fallen short on accomplishing his goal of "expanding economic opportunity" to the Land of Lincoln, where he launched his political career as a state senator 18 years ago.

Obama's staff expects the library to cost $500 million or more. And the costs won't stop there. The day-to-day operations and maintenance of the United States' 13 presidential libraries cost taxpayers $75 million in fiscal year 2013 alone.

This figure strikes an interesting contrast. Illinois politicians, who are demanding that we extend the 2011 tax hike so that "draconian" spending cuts in public and human services do not go into effect – are attempting to subsidize a monument in dedication to the legacy of the most prolific fundraiser in history – on the backs of poor and middle-class families in Illinois.

Jane McEnaney
Manager of Government Affairs
Illinois Madness Never Stops

In March, House Speaker Michael Madigan proposed 3% surcharge on income over $1 million

Also this year, progressives argued for a blank check proposal for more tax hikes. For details, please see Picking-Your-Pocket Numbers: How Much More Will You Pay?

Now the legislature wants to waste $100 million for a Barack Obama Library.

In Illinois, the madness never stops.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Seth's Blog : Saying 'thank you' in public, three times

 

Saying 'thank you' in public, three times

Earlier this year, I launched two ongoing classes on Skillshare:

One is on the thinking necessary to invent and launch a new business

and the other is for marketers of all kinds.

I'm grateful to everyone who has posted a kind review, launched a useful new project or shared the course so far...

But mostly, I want to thank the people at Skillshare: the software does exactly what they promised, and they're kind and a delight to work with.

Yesterday, Typepad was assaulted by a DDOS attack that brought the service to its knees. The team there really rose to the occasion, communicated clearly and honestly and got this blog up and running quickly. I've had this blog hosted by them for a decade or so, and despite the cool kids telling me I have to move it, I like the fact that the software does just what they say and that they're kind and a delight to work with.

And finally, did you know that you can subscribe to this blog, for free, by email and RSS? The email is handled daily and flawlessly by Feedblitz. It does what it's supposed to, and Phil is kind and a pleasure to work with.

Sometimes, the biggest, flashiest, most annoying services aren't the best way to build something that works. I'm grateful to these organizations and those like them that show up regularly and make things work. Thanks.

       

 

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Easter and Passover Greetings

 
Here's what's going on at the White House today.
 
 
 


  Featured

Weekly Address: President Obama Offers Easter and Passover Greetings

In this week's address, the President offers his warmest greetings as millions of Americans celebrate Easter this Sunday and recounts the Passover Seder he hosted at the White House earlier this week, joining Jewish families around the world in their celebration. The President looks forward to taking part with his family in the hope and joy of the Easter season and reminds all Americans, no matter their faith, of the common thread that binds us.

Click here to watch this week's Weekly Address.

Watch: President Obama delivers the Weekly Address

 
 

  Weekly Wrap Up

A Moment of Silence for Boston

On Tuesday, the President, along with some of his senior advisers, observed a moment of silence to mark the one-year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing.

READ MORE

Soldier Ride Through the White House

On Wednesday, the President, Vice President, and the Secretary of Veterans' Affairs greeted the servicemen and women participating in the Wounded Warrior Project's Soldier Ride.

Before cheering on the Warriors, who will travel 58 miles from Washington, DC to Friendship, MD over four days, the President told the group and the crowd filled with members of the military and their families, "you inspire me with your courage, your resolve, your resilience, your tenacity, your optimism. It makes me proud to be your Commander-in-Chief.”

READ MORE

8 Million Americans

President Obama dropped by the White House Briefing Room yesterday to make a big announcement about the Affordable Care Act.

8 million Americans have signed up for private health insurance through the Marketplace. Yup, 8,000,000. And the ACA has helped millions more get covered: 3 million young adults gained coverage by being able to stay on their parents' plans, 3 million more people enrolled in Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, and 5 million people enrolled in plans outside the Marketplace. All in all, that's more than 19 million people getting covered -- not too shabby.

READ MORE

The @VP, on Instagram

Instagram just got better: The Office of the Vice President just joined the social network.

READ MORE

As always, to see even more of this week's events, watch this week's episode of West Wing Week:

Video player: West Wing Week

WATCH NOW


 

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