More Obama Cabinet News, Bailout Talk, Farm Subsidies, MySpace Suicide Trial, Obamamania, And Inspiration From The Congo

Hi everybody. Soledad O'Brien continues to hold down the fort for a vacationing Anderson Cooper and after a day of quiet respite, the BREAKING NEWS is back! Did I call it or what? Not really a tough call. The subject of our annoying red banner tonight is that Robert Gates will most likely stay on as secretary of defense for the first year of the Obama administration and possibly beyond. That's cool, I suppose. I never had a big problem with Gates. Donald Rumsfeld, however, don't get me started.

Anyway, Ed Henry then joins us live for the lowdown and we learn that Obama was looking to promote continuity and include a Republican in his cabinet, so there ya go. A subsequent piece from Ed has a big focus on Obama's economic team and what the prez-elect has planned in regards to getting us out of this massive financial black hole. He's stepping up, but since it unfortunately is not yet January 20th, he being careful not to step on Bush's toes.

Speaking of that big black soul-crushing hole, Soledad breaks down all the billions of dollars that we're shelling out to try to stop the bleeding. Let's see, first there was the original $700 billion, which to me doesn't seem to have done anything. Then there's the proposed Obama stimulus of $500 to $600 billion. Oh, and did we mention we need $800 billion more to free up credit? You know, just a little chump change.

Ali Velshi then takes his position at the big wall to do a little splaining with graphic help. The feds seem to be changing their plans. Again. I'm not even recapping. It'll just be different tomorrow. Does anyone know what they're doing? But it's cool. We'll just keep throwing away our money. Because apparently we mere proles don't have a choice.

It's panel time! Because 360 without a panel would be chaos. Or, you know, better. Whatev. Our contestants tonight include David Gergen, Candy Crowley, and Ali. The only one mentioning anything of note is The Gerg, because he's awesome and all. According to him, Obama has put together one of the most impressive economic teams in a long time. So yay to that. Also? Our new banker will be China. I'm going to go with a 'boo' for that one.

Transitioning now to Tom Foreman doing some honesty-keeping regarding Obama's campaign promises. The big question is how Obama is going to pay for everything. The prez-elect says he'll do it by trimming waste, but he really doesn't give out specifics. It's pretty much conventional wisdom that he's going to increase the deficit. At this point it's inevitable. I'm not sure anyone was kept honest here. I mean, Obama hasn't even started yet. They've kinda lowered the bar for using that slogan.

On the other hand, Joe Johns next has a piece on farm subsidies that I think better falls in the category of honesty-keeping, or at least calling out. See, farmers aren't suppose to get subsides from the government if they make over $2.5 million, but some still are. This is something Obama wants to look into and was mentioned by him today. Why does it seem like we always have to wait for a politician or news-maker to mention something before the media does a story?

Moving on now to a Soledad piece on the case of the MySpace suicide. You all remember this, right? Lori Drew posed as a teenage boy named Josh on MySpace, so that she could find out what 13-year-old Megan Meier was saying about her daughter. Megan then fell for "Josh" and when he suddenly became hostile to her, she killed herself. Soledad tells us, "Drew is charged with one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress."

Now Drew could face 20 years in prison. I'm glad to see 360 following up on this. It's been in my local news (it happened here) and I wondered if they'd just let it slip by. The outcome of the trial could be important to us all regarding where our new online world leads us. The situation is much more important than your normal sensational crime story.

For the legal ramifications of all this, we're joined by none other than CNN's senior legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin. Jeffery thinks what Drew did was appalling, but he's not sure it was a crime. Apparently she's basically being charged with defrauding MySpace because she didn't abide by their agreement, though Jeffrey notes that no one reads those. Tis true. No one reads those. It's also noted that Megan was known to be depressed before this all happened and causation is very hard to prove. Lori Drew is a horrible person, but she shouldn't go to jail for this. It would set up a slippery-slope precedent. She should be fined, put on probation, and given community service. Just my two cents.

Next up, Obamamania!!! In an Erica Hill piece, we learn that tickets for the prez-elect's inauguration are in high demand. Unfortunately, there are only 240,000, which sounds like a lot, but totally isn't. Even though no tickets exist yet, people are already selling them on line--for a pretty penny. This angers some lawmakers. But that's not the only Obama-exploitation going on. People are selling anything they can to make a buck off his name and message. Even "hope-on-a-rope." Okay, that's funny.

Finally tonight, we're joined by Anderson Cooper in tape form, doing a little promotion for CNN Heroes by talking about one of his heroes. Her name is Angela and he met her two years ago when covering the horrible situation in the Congo. Angela had been gang raped and thrown out of her house by her husband due to fears of HIV, yet she still carried on, taking care of her children. Kinda makes you feel like a jerk for complaining about your own stupid little problems, huh? Maybe in the coming year Anderson will be able to follow up with Angela. Here's hoping.

The shot tonight is Roomba cat and then shrimp on a treadmill. Oh those crazy animals.

Randi Kaye manned the webcast tonight and she don't play around, people. She came prepared with turkey facts. Speaking of turkeys, we've got some gobbling going on from the crew, those nutty kids. So anyway, did you know that the best time to see a turkey is in light rain? And that if they look up they'll drown? Dude, turkeys are kinda stupid.

Tom Foreman then joins us and though he refuses to gobble, he does know his turkey facts, like how they sleep in trees. Later, Randi quizzes Soledad and crew in a speed round of turkey facts. In honor of one such fact, I leave you with a little video: