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Many funny celebrity basketball stories involve odd face-offs. Prince versus Eddie Murphy, Justin Bieber and Scottie Pippen in an All Star game, and apparently, Magic Johnson and former president Barack Obama are all legit examples. With the latter team-up, Obama couldnt resist gloating a bit on the court as some ballers are prone to do.

During his tenure as president, Barack Obama regularly held basketball events at the White House. Magic Johnson, LeBron James, and Carmelo Anthony were among the former and current NBA players invited to shoot hoops to entertain troops and various childrens groups.

According to ESPN, Johnson came out of retirement for one game in 2010 for a group of wounded warriors and some kids who were part of the White Houses mentoring program. Obama also played ball with his guests who included not only a roundup of NBA pros, but some of his friends as well.

The event was closed off to the public and press and it was played at a gym close to the White House. Afterward, they held a barbecue to celebrate the presidents birthday.

It was at one of these games that Johnson witnessed Obama reveling in his own bucket-sinking glory.

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Johnson recently appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to talk March Madness, family, and playing with Obama. He spoke on how many people hes played against including in his own family and Colbert asked if he ever faced off against Obama.

I didnt play against him. I played with him, and we actually won the game, said Johnson. It was 1-1 tied; they beat us one time and we beat them one time, so we played in a championship game. And it came down to the last second and he hit the game winning shot.

Thats not all. Not only did Obama score the winning shot, but according to Johnson, he kind of basked in it. And he left his hand up. You know how you swish it and leave your hand up? Johnson gestured.

Back in July 2020, Johnson shared the same story but gave a little more detail about the former presidents basketball skills. Lowe welcomed Johnson to his podcast, Literally! With Rob Lowe, and specifically asked if Obama has game.

Johnson didnt hesitate when replying yes, and he added Obama has a nice jump shot and has instincts for the game. He recalled being shocked at that pickup game and said Obama did a pump fake before taking his shot. There was one other thing Johnson remembered from that event.

And he loves to talk trash too! He was out there talking trash too, Rob. Talking big time trash at the same time, Johnson laughed. He admitted that it wouldnt have been a good idea to respond given the secret service was standing right there.

Though there arent any equally entertaining tales about Prince playing basketball with Obama, he reportedly performed for him at a private White House gathering.

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Magic Johnson Recalls Pickup Game With Barack Obama: 'He Hit the Winning Shot' - Showbiz Cheat Sheet

It feels like not long ago that Jenna Bush Hager and her twin sister Barbara gave the Obama sisters a grand tour of their new home, the White House. In reality, its been 12 years since George W. Bush transferred the presidency to Barack Obama, and according to Michelle Obama, that warm introduction to first daughtership remains meant a lot to Sasha and Malia Obama.

In November, Jenna shared some snapshots from that day to Instagramthe girls visibly joyful while learning how to slide down the mansions best banister. [They] remember that time more than a lot of things that I wouldve thought of because they saw those pictures too, and we sat and had an entire dinner about those first days and how they just cherished these two young, beautiful women who had done what they were doing, who were taking time out of their lives, because it was very clear you guys were excited to do it, Michelle recently told Jenna on Today.

At the time, Jenna was recently married and teaching in Baltimore. She drove to the White House straight from work to show Malia, 10 and Sasha, 7 the places most kid-friendly facetsprime hiding spots, the movie theatre, floral shop, and bowling alley. You came in from wherever you were especially to meet with them and they knew that, and it made a difference in their entire experience, Michelle added.

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Although it was a kind gesture on Jenna and Barbaras part, they enjoyed the visit just as much as the young sisters did. It was just a really beautiful day because Barbara and I saw ourselves in those little girls, Jenna said in a previous episode of Today. They were around Malia and Sashas age when their grandpa, George H.W. Bush took office. So to see their wonder at this historic house and also their nervousness, you just related with them so much, she explained.

Still, Jenna was shocked by how much of an impact she and Barbara made. I couldnt believe [Michelle] said that, Jenna later reflected on Today. What I think it shows is that none of us ever know the power that we have. This happened to be in the White House, but in any house, the kindness that you show somebody.

She then admitted that the tour was actually Laura Bushs idea. My mom looked at Mrs. Obama and thought, put politics aside, shes a mother thats nervous about her two little girls moving from Chicago to Washington, Jenna said.

Now, both Obama sisters have moved on to even bigger adventures. Malia, now 22, is a senior at Harvard University, per Today, and Sasha, now 19, is a sophomore at the University of Michigan. Time flies when youre a living part of American history.

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Michelle Obama Shares What Jenna Bush Hagers White House Tour Meant to Sasha and Malia - Prevention.com

One of the major goals of the Trump presidency, if not the number one aim, was erasure of the legacy of President Barack Obama.

Whether the topic was the Paris Climate Accord, the Iran Nuclear Deal, the Affordable Care Act, civil rights for LGBTQ citizens, or immigration reform, the standing policy rule in the Trump White House was if Obama was for it, the president was against it.

Add to that Trumps Twitter obsession with his predecessor. Obama appeared in around 3,000 Trump tweets over the last ten years, many of which were devoted to how the 45th president outdid the 44th.

For example, Trump expressed amazement at how Obama left over 100 federal judge vacancies for him to fill, not mentioning that the U.S. Senate under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) blocked all judicial appointments in the two years before Trump took office.

Trump consistently took credit for Obama accomplishments, such as criminal justice reform and veterans health care choice. He succeeded in passing an enormous tax cut bill for corporations and the affluent, but failed in his very first legislative priority, repealing Obamacare.

Of course, Trump issued dozens of executive orders overturning Obama decisions, approving the Keystone XL pipeline Obama had rejected, and reversing his fuel-efficiency standards and power plant emissions limits.

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However, many of these directives are in the process of being repealed by actions of President Biden.In contrast to Trump, Biden has shunned press gatherings and public appearances in favor of a nose-to-the-grindstone approach. When he does speak publicly, Biden makes it a point not to mention the name of the former guy.

Bidens efforts to obliterate the Trump legacy should surprise no one. What might come as a shock is how Obamas vice-president is attempting to be not only the anti-Trump, but also the anti-Obama.

To be sure, Biden is stocking his administration with Obama alumni. During the 2020 Democratic primaries, he frequently mentioned his partnership with his former boss.

Upon taking office, though, members of the Biden team have discussed avoiding Obamas mistakes.What they mean is shown by how Biden and Congressional Democrats managed to enact the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill.

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Liberal critics argued Obamas response to the Great Recession was too timid and too modest.

The presidents stimulus package of 2009 was less than $800 billion after concessions to Congress. It contained tax cuts in the form of increased pay embedded in paychecks, not as checks mailed to citizens.

The Obama recovery bill helped prevent another Great Depression, but all people heard was Republican criticism of how its contents went to the undeserving and how it would contribute to the national debt.

In facing the severe economic downturn produced by the COVID pandemic, Biden made sure to propose over $1 trillion more than did Obama in 2009.

And, very soon, checks will be coming directly to households, although not with Bidens signature as his predecessor insisted.

Furthermore, Biden did not waste time seeking Republican votes, as Obama did in passing the economic stimulus and Affordable Care Act. The Republican response then was delay-and-obstruct.

To Biden, Republicans are unreliable business partners, and he treated them as such. Not a single GOP member of Congress voted for the presidents proposal, though some have since claimed credit.

The bottom line is Biden got what he wanted.

Federal deficit-spending, a major concern of the Obama years, does not seem very important to Biden. He is preparing another trillion-dollar-plus initiative to repair the nations infrastructure and promote a carbon-neutral economy.

Lest it appear that Biden and his aides are backstabbers, their criticisms of the Obama presidency reflected 44s own assessments in his autobiography, A Promised Land, released after the election.

The former president admits he didnt do enough to promote his early achievements, and he allowed Tea Partiers to set the narrative.

Moreover, Obama confessed he was startled at the lengths Republicans would go to ruin his presidency, including shutting down the government, bringing the U.S. to the brink of financial default, and telling an untold number of untruths.

Nobody is startled now.

One wonders, however, when the new administration will encounter the roadblocks which faced Obama.Handing out checks is easy. Reforming immigration, reducing gun violence, weaning Americans off fossil fuels all problems that plagued Obama are hard.

It is easy to dismiss a political party that cares more about cancellation of Pepe Le Pew than prevention of the spread of coronavirus, but electoral history tells us the Republicans are likely to win the 2022 midterm elections.

Before that happens, Biden may take Obamas advice, based on painful experience, and move to abolish the filibuster.

Like all presidents, Biden wants to make history. Time will tell whether, in remembering the past, he will avoid repeating it.

Opinion contributor Fletcher McCllellan is a political science professor at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pa. His work appears biweekly on the Capital-Stars Commentary Page. Readers may email him at [emailprotected], and follow him on Twitter: @mcclelef.

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Biden as the Anti-Obama: I didn't see that one coming | Fletcher McClellan - Pennsylvania Capital-Star

Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- The name Cisneros is synonymous with business acumen and opulence in the minds of Venezuelans old enough to remember the pre-Hugo Chavez years.Over generations, the billionaire family brought the Studebaker, Pepsi-Cola and department stores to the oil-rich country. It launched DirecTV in Latin America, ran beauty pageants, produced soap operas and owned banks, TV stations, ice-cream makers and brewers.Now, decades after having moved most of the family and its assets to the U.S. as Chavez was ramping up his socialist revolution, a new generation of Cisneros is scouring the ravaged economy for assets to buy on the cheap.Eduardo Cisneros, the grandson of patriarch Diego Cisneros, co-founded a private-equity fund in Florida that has raised over $200 million from investors, according to a filing with the SEC. The fund, called 3B1 Guacamaya Fund LP, has already used about $60 million of that cash to snap up Venezuelan businesses, including a paint maker, over the past year, according to several people with knowledge of the deals who asked not to be named because they werent authorized to speak publicly about the matter.In making the plunge, Eduardo and his partner -- Rodrigo Bitar, the head of a boutique New York-based M&A shop -- are positioning themselves as early arrivals in what could prove to be a scramble to acquire choice assets in the once-wealthy nation at deeply discounted prices. After years of mismanagement that triggered a 70% decline in the size of the economy and drove millions of Venezuelans to flee, Chavezs hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, is slowly embracing free-market reforms to alleviate the crisis and consolidate his hold on power.Some local analysts are actually predicting the economy will grow in 2021 as Maduro loosens Covid restrictions. An expansion, no matter how tepid, would halt a string of seven straight years of economic contraction.The opportunities for profit are immensely high in the first phase of economic recovery, said Peter West, an economic adviser at Londons EM Funding. But you also have to be an investor with high appetite for risk, willing to dip your toes in the water.The 3B1 Guacamaya fund operates in the same Coral Gables, Florida, headquarters as Cisneros Corporation, a consulting service with young, modern and creative professional leadership founded by brothers Eduardo, Andres and Henrique, according to its website.The fund acquired a majority stake in publicly-listed paint maker Corimon CA. The company hasnt reported results since 2015. Back then, it had 1,300 employees working in 190 stores in Venezuela and several other countries in Latin America.Calls and messages seeking comment from Eduardo Cisneros, Cisneros Corp. General Counsel Mark Lopez and Bitar werent returned. Corimons chief executive officer Esteban Szekely also didnt respond to calls and messages seeking comment.As limited as the deals have been so far -- names of the other businesses acquired besides Corimon werent ascertainable -- Cisneros and Bitar have quickly become the talk of the small, tight-knit community of dealmakers and financiers in leafy eastern Caracas. Two-hundred million dollars may not go far in most financial capitals in the world, but in Venezuelas atrophied M&A market, it makes the duo an immediate force.And their arrival has some of the locals speculating that the proverbial bottom to the economy and market that theyve been waiting on for decades -- spanning all the way back to the collapse that followed the oil boom of the 1970s -- may finally be approaching.Hemmed in by U.S. sanctions, Maduro is overseeing a reform push that includes an ad-hoc dollarization of the economy following years of hyperinflation and stifling government controls. His regime has also begun to offload dozens of key state enterprises to private investors in exchange for a share of the revenue or products.While Chavez seized thousands of private companies, the Cisneros family managed to retain control of the businesses they kept in the country. Today, Venezuelans still drink the familys Regional beer, use phone and data plans from its wireless provider Digitel and watch its TV station Venevision.Diego Cisneros, a Cuban immigrant who settled in Venezuela, started the business empire in the 1930s.His sons Gustavo and Ricardo -- whos Eduardos father -- took control of the organization in 1970, and in the 1980s, the clan began an expansion outside of its home market, buying up U.S.-based sports equipment and baby product maker Spalding & Evenflo and a stake in the Spanish-language broadcaster Univision.In 2000, the family made Florida its base for the Cisneros Group and kept expanding across the Americas, first under the leadership of Gustavo and then his daughter Adriana Cisneros. There is no link between Cisneros Group and Cisneros Corp. or 3B1 Guacamaya, Miguel Dvorak, the COO of Cisneros Group, said in a statement.Back in Caracas, a newly-formed local association for private capital named Venecapital held an event earlier this month entitled: Venezuela, back on the radar of international investors.In it, speakers heralded Venezuela as the frontier market with the greatest potential, saying those who seize opportunities in the nation arent sitting around waiting for the regime change that never seems to come. They pointed to telecom, real estate and the gas and oil service sectors as attractive targets for foreign investors.Maduros government approved a so-called anti-blockade law in October, opening a path to increased foreign investment in the energy industry, which was nationalized in the 1970s.Last year, Scale Capital, a Chilean investment and management firm, reached a deal to acquire DirecTVs operations in Venezuela for an undisclosed amount.Last year an international fund called Phoenix Global Investment bought food-producer Cargills assets in Venezuela, where it had operated for 34 years. In August 2019, a Chilean investor group bought the local branch of U.S.-based insurer Liberty Mutual Holding Co.The main risk is to enter too early, before the right conditions are set, EM Fundings West said. Its not hard to imagine a scenario in which things get worse, at least in the short term.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.2021 Bloomberg L.P.

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Hacker Of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Apple Twitter Accounts To Spend 3 Years In Prison - Yahoo Finance

Although the delicious treats may have tempted her willpower, President Obama never gave in to the pressure

This week, while promoting her new Netflix cooking show, former First Lady Michelle Obama revealed to PEOPLE that her daughters, Sasha and Malia, became addicted to making baked goods at night during the quarantine.

They were baking way too much at the beginning of quarantine, too many delicious pies. They were good at it! Good pie crust, good fillings, recalled the star of Waffles + Mochi, which premieres on Netflix on March 16.

According to Obama, having Sasha, 19, and Malia, 22, cooking late treats eventually became problematic for her and her husband, former President Barack Obama, who are both notoriously health-conscious.

Photo: Michelle Obama Instagram

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My kids were midnight bakers. So at 1 in the morning, youd smell cinnamon buns baking, she explained in this weeks PEOPLE cover story. I had to tell them to stop because we cant have all those sweets.

She did concede though that while her willpower may have been tempted, her husband never gave in to the pressure, noting, Hes just ridiculously disciplined. We hate him.

Despite her need to playfully throw her daughters out of the kitchen during the baking escapades, ultimately Obama says she has retired from cooking and is overjoyed to pass the torch to her children.

Read More: Lexi Underwood to play Malia Obama in Showtime series The First Lady

I have retired my cooking badge, I have relinquished that skill to people who are much better at it than I am. Now that [Malia and Sasha] are back, they are cooking more, she says, adding, My girls are very much into cooking, they love the freedom of being in the kitchen, they love creating, they love experimenting. So Ive passed on that right to the next generation.

Waffles + Mochi, the entire concept is fun. Its approachable, its an adventure, its exciting, its funny, she says. More importantly, its something that I would watch even if no kids were around.

Story continues

As we previously reported, last month Netflix announced six upcoming projects from Barack and Michelle Obamas production company, Higher Ground Productions, yet somehow managed to keep their latest offering, titled Waffles + Mochi, a secret until a week later when it was announced separately.

With the help of friendly new faces like the supermarket owner, Mrs. Obama, and a magical flying shopping cart as their guide, Waffles and Mochi blast off on global ingredient missions, traveling to kitchens, restaurants, farms, and homes all over the world, cooking up recipes with everyday ingredients alongside renowned chefs, home cooks, kids and celebrities, Netflix said in a statement.

ADAM ROSE/NETFLIX

Read More: Donald Glover signs Amazon deal, Malia Obama to be on writing staff

According to CNN, the kid-centric cooking show will feature two puppets named Waffles and Mochi on their journey to become chefs, with Obama co-starring as a supermarket owner.

The new announcement comes just days after the streaming service and Higher Ground Productions unveiled a slate of four new movies and two television series, all set to come out in the next few years, including a film about the first man to summit Mt. Everest and a young adult thriller about a Native American teen who goes undercover.

Waffles + Mochi will be available for streaming starting March 16. The healthy food themes of the show are perfectly aligned with Obamas previous initiatives such as her Lets Move! public health campaign, which was aimed at combatting childhood obesity.

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Michelle Obama shut down Sasha, Malia from late-night ...