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from Tales from the Trail:

First lady likes Obama’s voice; rates Romney singing ‘beautiful’

Michelle Obama might have been one of the few people in the United States who knew President Barack Obama could actually carry a tune before he surprised an Apollo Theater audience this month.

In her debut appearance on NBC “The Tonight Show” as first lady, Mrs. Obama told host Jay Leno that her husband sings to her all the time.  She said she even knew what song it would be when she heard about his singing a line from Al Green's "Let's Stay Together." Mrs. Obama gave a very tiny demonstration before conceding that the president was the better singer. Obama said her husband has a beautiful voice.

Asked about the performance turned in by Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney singing "America the Beautiful" on the campaign trail in Florida, Mrs. Obama said "its beautiful."

Here's a clip from NBC

(Video clip courtesy: NBC/ Photo credit: NBC “The Tonight Show”/Stacie McChesney)

from Tales from the Trail:

Lady Gaga, WikiLeaks and :’(

Washington has been buzzing for days about Bradley Manning, the 23-year-old U.S. Army intelligence analyst at the heart of the investigation into the leak of a quarter-million State Department diplomatic cables by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks.

And then there's the Lady Gaga connection.

Manning said he listened to the flamboyantly-dressed singer's "Telephone" as he pulled the documents off a military server in Baghdad, according to a transcript of online chats Manning had with a former hacker, Adrian Lamo. The chats, which occurred earlier this year, were posted by Wired.com on June 10. Lamo confirmed details of the chats to Reuters.

"i would come in with music on a CD-RW labeled with something like 'Lady Gaga' ... erase the music ... then write a compressed split file ... no-one suspected a thing. listened and lip-synched to Lady Gaga's Telephone while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in american history," Manning wrote in the uncapitalized, lightly punctuated style of a webchat.

"pretty simple, and unglamorous ... weak servers, weak logging, weak physical security, weak counter-intelligence, inattentive signal analysis ... a perfect storm"

"funny thing is ... we transferred so much data on unmarked CDs ... everyone did ... videos ... movies ... music ... all out in the open"

For those who ask, reasonably enough, how an Army private apparently got access to this kind of government data, this looks like one possible answer.

from Tales from the Trail:

Stewart, Colbert rally gets ‘puzzling’ endorsement

First came celebrity endorsements from Oprah and Arianna. Now Jon Stewart's Washington "Rally to Restore Sanity" has a more puzzling promoter.

Here's a clue: German summer pants for little William? (10 letters) 

Stumped? The answer is "Will Shortz". He's editor of the New York Times crossword puzzle, which today devotes no fewer than eight clues to the Daily Show host, his fellow satirist Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report and the joint rally they're planning for Saturday on the National Mall.

For anyone flummoxed by the clues to 54 and 65 Across, Colbert's version of the event is called the "March to Keep Fear Alive."

The Stewart-Colbert gathering is a reaction to Fox News commentator Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally, which was held at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on this year's anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.      Stewart is also a big fan of Shortz and appeared in the 2006 documentary Wordplay, which focused on the Times crossword puzzle editor and the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.       Do Stewart and Colbert need the fiery presence of thousands of crossword puzzle enthusiasts? Now that's a question. But the idea may be too inside the box for rally organizers.

"It's great. But how does this help? That's not something for us to answer because this is not something we solicited or planned on," said Steve Albani, spokesman for Comedy Central, the cable TV channel that airs Stewart and Colbert.       Folks at the Times were not immediately available for comment. (If they intend to respond via their puzzle, they may miss our deadline.)      Meanwhile, Stewart and Colbert are expected to draw about 150,000 people to the National Mall. That's a Wall Street Journal estimate based on the number of portable toilets ordered by Comedy Central.  No _____. (4 letters).

Click here for more political coverage from Reuters.

from Tales from the Trail:

Barack and Jon, together again, on The Daily Show next week

First he gave an unexpected endorsement to Jon Stewart's upcoming "Rally to Restore Sanity." Now President Barack Obama is giving the host of the satirical talk show the ultimate television "get" -- himself as a guest.

Obama will appear on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" on Wednesday, Oct. 27, in the middle of a week of special episodes taped in Washington ahead of the Nov. 2 midterm elections. It all culminates with a Saturday rally on the National Mall.

The Washington episodes - to air Oct. 25 - Oct. 28 - are called "When Grizzlies Attack: A 'Daily Show' Midterm Teapartyganza." That's a reference to the conservative Tea Party political movement and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin referring to conservative women politicians as "Mama Grizzlies."

The Daily Show, watched by about 1.8 million people every night, is particularly popular with viewers under age 35. The appearance gives the president a chance to appeal to young voters just days before the election in which Republicans are expected to gain seats in Congress and possibly take the majority in the House of Representatives away from Obama's Democrats. Earlier this month Obama appeared at a youth town hall that was shown live on MTV and two music television stations, CMT and BET.

"It's a great way to appeal to a younger voter audience, and that is a big part of the president's base," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.

It would be Obama's second appearance on The Daily Show, which has won consecutive Emmy awards as the best U.S. variety, music or comedy series, but his first as U.S. president.

Other political figures scheduled to appear on the show next week include Austan Goolsbee, chairman of Obama's Council of Economic Advisors and Delaware Senator Ted Kaufman.