Obama Wising Up, Home Foreclosures, Flight 3407's Last Moments, UFO's (Um, What?), And Sexting (Yeah, You Read That Right)
Hi everyone. Happy New Week! It seems Anderson Cooper has skedaddled off somewhere and left us to sort through this economic mess without his silver-topped guidance. It's all good though. John King is here to hold down the fort, and after anchoring his own brand-spanking new show that airs for four--yes four--hours straight, this should be a cinch. So, let's do this thang. The BREAKING NEWS tonight is that General Motors will be receiving $4 billion more in loans to prevent it from going under.
We go live to Ed Henry for more, and in a subsequent piece we learn that Obama is on the road again, going places that he's never been, seeing things that he might never see again, and he can't wait to get on the road again. Or...it's possible I'm confusing him with Willie Nelson. They do look similar. Anyhoo, Obama is undertaking these road trips because the stimulus fight has taught him he needs to get out of Washington and talk to the people directly.
Another lesson learned is our prez will no longer be putting such a focus on bipartisanship--at least in terms of success and failure. Yay! Finally. The other side doesn't want to play. He just has to accept that. Obama also notes that maybe he shouldn't have given the Republicans all those tax cuts right off the bat. Hm, you think? Obama just wants to get things done; the Republicans want to play politics. Sometimes I think this guy really is everything he campaigned as being. Wouldn't that be something?
Next up, we have Tom Foreman making use of that nifty wall technology again, by analyzing something not so nifty: home foreclosures. The numbers are bad (a million homes foreclosed in the past year and a half) and only set to get worse. To combat the problem, the administration is using $50 billion of the bailout money to attempt to stabilize prices. There are no hard details from Treasury Secretary Geithner as of yet, but Tom takes us through what is likely to go down. This was a good explainer.
I hope you're in the mood for pontification because it's about that time. David Gergen resumes his usual place on the panel and he's joined by Gloria Borger and Joe Johns. Of interest to me here was the discussion about Afghanistan. I appreciate the Gerg's point about there needing to be a plan and I hope the media will hold Obama's feet to the fire about that before he commits any additional troops. I agree with Joe that some liberal Democrats might not be on-board regarding this issue, but I think if there is an actual goal and a plan for achieving that goal, the reaction might be pretty supportive.
On now to a Gary Tuchman piece that brings us more wackiness regarding Roland Burris. You thought we were done with this guy and the whole Blagojevich thing, didn't you? Okay, long story short: Burris is asked under oath if he talked to Blago's brother, answers that he talked to "friends" about his desire to be appointed, files affidavit to clarify that he did talk to brother, but is safely in senate seat before affidavit is made public. The big question is, did Burris commit perjury, and if he did, could he be charged?
Gary thinks no because the statement was so vague, "And vagueness is often your friend, often a defense attorney's friend, when facing the possibility of perjury charges," he tells us. I had to chuckle over, "vagueness is your friend," and I guess I'm not the only one who found the phrase amusing. "Gary Tuchman creating a new bumper sticker for the politicians tonight: 'Vagueness is your friend,'" says John. I knew Google was my friend, but I had no idea about "vagueness."
Transitioning now to Randi Kaye at the big wall to explain Flight 3407's final 26 seconds. According to information obtained from the flight data recorder, the plane rolled violently and dropped 800 feet in a mere five seconds. It had been flying on autopilot, which was not recommended in those icy conditions. It's also noted that the plane crashed facing away from the airport, though it's not known why. This was all pretty terrifying and one has to wonder if it was necessary. Did we really need to know all that? I hope there wasn't anyone watching who knew someone in the crash.
Moving on now to a Chris Lawrence piece on a conundrum our prez has involving his personal safety versus paying a boatload of money. See, Obama's helicopter, Marine One, could really use a makeover. We need Ty Pennington up in this joint. Well, if Ty Pennington knew how to make a helicopter really safe and James Bond-y, anyway. Unfortunately, souping up this ride costs a pretty penny--$400 million. In this economy, it has critics raising their eyebrows.
But apparently the back story is that the previous commander in chief gave the overhauling to contractor Lockheed Martin and they jacked up the price, so this is not all on Obama. Of course, he did say this during the campaign: "We should be spending a lot more money trying to figure out how to get our energy policy right than we should on helicopters for the president." Ruh-roh. I guess we'll see how this plays out, but I'm thinking non issue.
Next up, we have a David Mattingly piece on a fireball and sonic boom witnessed in Texas. At first, experts attributed the weirdness to space debris, but then changed their tune and said it was a natural phenomenon. Not everyone believes that, of course. In fact, UFO sightings are way up in Texas. I think the "in Texas" is the relevant part of that sentence. I mean, hello! It's a big state with a lot of crazy. Speaking of crazy, one "UFO researcher" thinks there have been battles in space. Space battles! Good lord. Was there no other news today?
Finally tonight, we have an Erica Hill piece on the phenomenon of "sexting," which is when teenagers text each other nude or otherwise scandalous pictures of themselves. Wow. When I was that age, just the thought of doing something like that probably would have made me spontaneously combust from embarrassment. But not these kids, I guess.
And the thing is, the act goes far beyond embarrassment--in some cases teens are being charged with child pornography. I think that goes a little far. All I know is that I don't think my future children will be having cell phones. Or computers. Or cameras. Basically, we're going to be Amish is what I'm saying.
The "shot" tonight is Erica again. Did you know she is a newly-ordained minister? A woman of many talents, that Erica Hill. She tried out her skills on Valentine's Day, marrying a couple on CBS's The Early Show. Very nice.
Not anything wildly exciting on the webcast, but we did learn that Erica got a new microphone. This lead her to ask, if we can get one new mic, why not two? She says she's going to talk to Anderson about that, but I think I already know the answer to this question. Hint: Anderson has not exactly shown enthusiasm during talks of a second mic acquisition.
In other random news, David Gregory and David Shuster have both recently joined Twitter and are very enthusiastic about it. We're talking Rick Sanchez levels of tweeting here, people. Gregory has even been posting pictures from the Meet the Press green room. Anyway, I just found their new-technology excitement to be adorable, so I thought I'd share. Oh, also, semi-new to the Twitter-verse is CNN's own funnyman, Jack Gray. Now we can read his comic-stylings in 140 characters or less. That's all for now.
We go live to Ed Henry for more, and in a subsequent piece we learn that Obama is on the road again, going places that he's never been, seeing things that he might never see again, and he can't wait to get on the road again. Or...it's possible I'm confusing him with Willie Nelson. They do look similar. Anyhoo, Obama is undertaking these road trips because the stimulus fight has taught him he needs to get out of Washington and talk to the people directly.
Another lesson learned is our prez will no longer be putting such a focus on bipartisanship--at least in terms of success and failure. Yay! Finally. The other side doesn't want to play. He just has to accept that. Obama also notes that maybe he shouldn't have given the Republicans all those tax cuts right off the bat. Hm, you think? Obama just wants to get things done; the Republicans want to play politics. Sometimes I think this guy really is everything he campaigned as being. Wouldn't that be something?
Next up, we have Tom Foreman making use of that nifty wall technology again, by analyzing something not so nifty: home foreclosures. The numbers are bad (a million homes foreclosed in the past year and a half) and only set to get worse. To combat the problem, the administration is using $50 billion of the bailout money to attempt to stabilize prices. There are no hard details from Treasury Secretary Geithner as of yet, but Tom takes us through what is likely to go down. This was a good explainer.
I hope you're in the mood for pontification because it's about that time. David Gergen resumes his usual place on the panel and he's joined by Gloria Borger and Joe Johns. Of interest to me here was the discussion about Afghanistan. I appreciate the Gerg's point about there needing to be a plan and I hope the media will hold Obama's feet to the fire about that before he commits any additional troops. I agree with Joe that some liberal Democrats might not be on-board regarding this issue, but I think if there is an actual goal and a plan for achieving that goal, the reaction might be pretty supportive.
On now to a Gary Tuchman piece that brings us more wackiness regarding Roland Burris. You thought we were done with this guy and the whole Blagojevich thing, didn't you? Okay, long story short: Burris is asked under oath if he talked to Blago's brother, answers that he talked to "friends" about his desire to be appointed, files affidavit to clarify that he did talk to brother, but is safely in senate seat before affidavit is made public. The big question is, did Burris commit perjury, and if he did, could he be charged?
Gary thinks no because the statement was so vague, "And vagueness is often your friend, often a defense attorney's friend, when facing the possibility of perjury charges," he tells us. I had to chuckle over, "vagueness is your friend," and I guess I'm not the only one who found the phrase amusing. "Gary Tuchman creating a new bumper sticker for the politicians tonight: 'Vagueness is your friend,'" says John. I knew Google was my friend, but I had no idea about "vagueness."
Transitioning now to Randi Kaye at the big wall to explain Flight 3407's final 26 seconds. According to information obtained from the flight data recorder, the plane rolled violently and dropped 800 feet in a mere five seconds. It had been flying on autopilot, which was not recommended in those icy conditions. It's also noted that the plane crashed facing away from the airport, though it's not known why. This was all pretty terrifying and one has to wonder if it was necessary. Did we really need to know all that? I hope there wasn't anyone watching who knew someone in the crash.
Moving on now to a Chris Lawrence piece on a conundrum our prez has involving his personal safety versus paying a boatload of money. See, Obama's helicopter, Marine One, could really use a makeover. We need Ty Pennington up in this joint. Well, if Ty Pennington knew how to make a helicopter really safe and James Bond-y, anyway. Unfortunately, souping up this ride costs a pretty penny--$400 million. In this economy, it has critics raising their eyebrows.
But apparently the back story is that the previous commander in chief gave the overhauling to contractor Lockheed Martin and they jacked up the price, so this is not all on Obama. Of course, he did say this during the campaign: "We should be spending a lot more money trying to figure out how to get our energy policy right than we should on helicopters for the president." Ruh-roh. I guess we'll see how this plays out, but I'm thinking non issue.
Next up, we have a David Mattingly piece on a fireball and sonic boom witnessed in Texas. At first, experts attributed the weirdness to space debris, but then changed their tune and said it was a natural phenomenon. Not everyone believes that, of course. In fact, UFO sightings are way up in Texas. I think the "in Texas" is the relevant part of that sentence. I mean, hello! It's a big state with a lot of crazy. Speaking of crazy, one "UFO researcher" thinks there have been battles in space. Space battles! Good lord. Was there no other news today?
Finally tonight, we have an Erica Hill piece on the phenomenon of "sexting," which is when teenagers text each other nude or otherwise scandalous pictures of themselves. Wow. When I was that age, just the thought of doing something like that probably would have made me spontaneously combust from embarrassment. But not these kids, I guess.
And the thing is, the act goes far beyond embarrassment--in some cases teens are being charged with child pornography. I think that goes a little far. All I know is that I don't think my future children will be having cell phones. Or computers. Or cameras. Basically, we're going to be Amish is what I'm saying.
The "shot" tonight is Erica again. Did you know she is a newly-ordained minister? A woman of many talents, that Erica Hill. She tried out her skills on Valentine's Day, marrying a couple on CBS's The Early Show. Very nice.
Not anything wildly exciting on the webcast, but we did learn that Erica got a new microphone. This lead her to ask, if we can get one new mic, why not two? She says she's going to talk to Anderson about that, but I think I already know the answer to this question. Hint: Anderson has not exactly shown enthusiasm during talks of a second mic acquisition.
In other random news, David Gregory and David Shuster have both recently joined Twitter and are very enthusiastic about it. We're talking Rick Sanchez levels of tweeting here, people. Gregory has even been posting pictures from the Meet the Press green room. Anyway, I just found their new-technology excitement to be adorable, so I thought I'd share. Oh, also, semi-new to the Twitter-verse is CNN's own funnyman, Jack Gray. Now we can read his comic-stylings in 140 characters or less. That's all for now.
posted by eliza at 11:55 PM
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