Obama turns comic for annual dinner

WASHINGTON - President Obama took aim at the emerging 2016 presidential field at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner  Saturday even as he joked about his own waning time in office.

The president often gets good laughs at the annual event that brings together politicians, journalists, and celebrities, and this year he sent some of the barbs toward Hillary Rodham Clinton, Vice President Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Ted Cruz, and others. He was joined by headline entertainer Cecily Strong, a cast member on NBC's Saturday Night Live.

The first joke took aim at his own vice president, who is known for public displays of affection toward women that sometimes raise eyebrows. "The fact is I feel more loose and relaxed than ever," Obama said. "Those Joe Biden shoulder massages, they're like magic."

Next up was his own rapid aging. "I look so old, John Boehner's already invited Netanyahu to speak at my funeral," Obama said, referring to the Republican House speaker's controversial invitation for the Israeli prime minister to address Congress.

But much of the fun came at the expense of the presidential hopefuls, declared and not.

Cruz, he said, had compared himself to Galileo soon after announcing he was seeking the Republican nomination. "That's not really an apt comparison," Obama said. "Galileo believed the Earth revolved around the sun. Ted Cruz believes the Earth revolves around Ted Cruz."

Obama didn't spare his own party. "This is still a time for deep uncertainty," he said at one point, setting up a reference to Clinton and her recent road trip to the Midwest. "I have one friend, just a few weeks ago, she was making millions of dollars a year, and she's now living out of a van in Iowa."

On Vermont independent Sanders, who is also considering a campaign: "Apparently some people want to see a pot-smoking socialist in the White House," the president said. "We could get a third Obama term after all!"

Later, he invited onto stage the comedian Keegan-Michael Key in his character Luther, Obama's "anger translator," who expresses harsh emotions that the president tends to avoid. Luther, screeching, criticized CNN's coverage of Ebola as Obama made more sober statements about the country, until Obama himself began a rant about climate-change deniers that ended with Key cutting him off.