President Obama held a press conference at the White House today! The questions came fast and furious — actually rather slowly, since he talks for 10 minutes at a time — and now all Americans are 100% informed about every issue. Here's an executive summary.

Here's a trailer for Courageous, a new inspirational movie from the geniuses who brought you Fireproof, the Christian anti-divorce drama starring Kirk "Banana Hands" Cameron. That film was about a fireman making difficult decisions, this one is about policemen making difficult discussions.

How much do you have in your checking account? Probably enough to cover rent and the five vodka tonics it will take to make you forget that you just paid rent and are now officially tapped out. Right? Well, this one jackass keeps $100 million in his account.

Welcome back to Midweek Madness. Today: Photos of newborn babies from Kim Zolciak and Alicia Silverstone; Suri Cruise shops for a $6,000 leopard skirt; Jennifer Aniston and Lady Gaga might be pregnant; plus which celebrities have "outties." [Jezebel]

In your beautiful Wednesday media column: MSNBC's doing fine without Olbermann, network news is on the rise, a crazy NY Daily News rumor, the AP plays footsie with North Korea, David Cho to Grantland, and a Village Voice strike update.

Not happy with all the eardrum damage caused by her first aural abomination, Countess LuAnn de Lesseps is back with a new song and a new video, this time co-starring some other Real Housewives of New York. Know what? It's not completely horrible!

Rumors of MySpace selling for scrap were correct: The dying social network has been sold to the advertising network Specific Media for $35 million, according to All Things Digital. Remember, News Corp. paid $580 for the site in 2005.

Having successfully quelled the burning bushes of Texas by praying for rain, Preacher-in-Chief Rick Perry invites Christians to pray for solutions to all of America's problems in a new ad for modern day tent revival called The Response. Church and state: Awfully close together in Texas.

Bank of America feels just awful about it's role in packaging and selling a bunch of junk mortgages and inflating the economy with bad debt until the bottom fell out and more than 5 million people lost their jobs and more than 2.5 million went on food stamps, except for BofA's executives, who still got paid. So it's decided to pay $14 billion to BlackRock, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and a bunch of other extremely wealthy institutions to make up for it. Are we square?

NewsweekBeast editor Tina Brown was on Morning Joe this, uh, morning and was asked about the controversial new Newsweek issue that imagines Princess Diana at 50 if she were still alive, complete with a creepy Photoshop on the cover. Despite the criticism, Tina still likes it!

College students: will they ever be able to judge political bias with any accuracy? No, they haven't even decided whether Ayn Rand or Chinua Achebe is cooler yet! So it's no surprise they think every gay teacher is biased.

Today it was time for an annual ritual, the day when the diamondback terrapins that live near JFK airport force one of the runways to close while they crawl across it to go lay their eggs. Can't we find a permanent solution to this?

Never believe anything Rudy Giuliani tells you about marriage. "I do"? Bullshit. "To have and to hold"? Lie. "I promise to preside over the wedding of my two good gay friends as soon as marriage is legal in New York"? Take a guess.

Google just launched its new Facebook thing: Google Plus. And it's invite-only. But people aren't exactly killing each for Google Plus invites. Oh, how times have changed since the Gmail Invite Gold Rush.

When speed racer Alex Roy circled Manhattan in 2001, he reached speeds of 144mph and set the record for the fastest time at 27 minutes. He never released the tape, but now someone new has done it in 26:03. [Jalopnik]

NBC's singing competition show The Voice, a terrible blend of American Idol and In It To Win It, has somehow scoured the globe and found two gay singers, who are currently in the top four. So half the remaining singers are gay people. What the hell?

James Franco is like that pretentious guy in your freshman dorm that you talk to because he's hot, and he's always going on about acting and writing short stories and all his other artistic pursuits even though he's not particularly good at any of them. And of course he's in a band, too. Of course.

Courtney Love takes David LaChapelle's car and chauffeur for a midnight joyride. David Duchovny and Tea Leoni split up again. Kim Kardashian hands out wedding confidentiality agreements. And Emma Watson talks about her first crush. Wednesday gossip asks, where's my car?

In the wake of the recent high profile assaults of hotel maids, hotels are handing out panic buttons to their employees in an effort to keep them safe from maniac members of the public. Now, The Pierre is taking it one step further, by training its maids in self-defense. But are they being lulled into a false sense of security? Let's examine, via the NY Post report on the self-defense class:

This former TV star may be a has-been but he's still going strong in the sack. This actor has a mysterious scar. This actor signed everything away for a reality show. And this other actor is having trouble with the feuding mothers of his children. It's tough living in a man's world!