Commentary Transcriptions
Commentary transcriptions are generally posted the day after air date.
Thursday, August 26, 2010 Morning
There were primary elections in five states Tuesday. To see what they can tell us about November, let’s look at the tealeaves, if you’ll pardon the expression. The biggest story isn’t any one race, but turnout. Once again, from Alaska to Vermont, Republicans voted in record numbers, Independents voted in Republican primaries, and Democrats stayed home to watch Keith Olbermann and cry over the good ol’ days.
Thursday, August 26, 2010 Midday
Recovery Summer just keeps rollin’ along. Yesterday, the Labor Department announced that unemployment claims rose by 12,000 last week, up to a total of half a million…as always, “unexpectedly.” The Commerce Department reported that U.S. durable goods orders rose 0.3 percent in July. That was one-tenth what economists predicted. And new home sales in July dropped 12.4 percent to their lowest annual rate since records started being kept in 1963. Economists had predicted that new home sales would be unchanged.
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Thursday, August 26, 2010 Afternoon
Last week, someone firebombed a campaign office of St. Louis Democratic Rep. Russ Carnahan. Nobody was hurt. Some in the media tried to pin it on those crazy, violent Tea Party members. Well, sorry to blow up your narrative, but it turns out the suspect police are questioning is actually a former paid canvasser for Carnahan’s own campaign. So as Emily Litella used to say…”Never mind.”
Wednesday, August 25, 2010 Morning
Yesterday, the National Association of Realtors brought us our regular daily dose of unexpected bad economic news. They report that sales of previously owned houses in the U.S. dropped a record 27.2 percent from June to July of “Recovery Summer.” It’s the lowest rate of home sales in 15 years. So what’s stopping people from buying? The experts say there are three major problems.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010 Midday
The late comic George Carlin liked to point that when people don’t like what the government has to say, the government just makes up new words to blur the meaning. It’s how “shell shock” morphed into “post-traumatic stress disorder.” Well, we have a beautiful new example of that. The GAO reported that the “Stimulus Bill” mostly created more government jobs, and at an average cost of over $194,000 a job. Polls show most Americans think it either didn’t help the economy or made things worse. So if Washington can’t change the numbers, it’s changing the language.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010 Afternoon
I don’t often get the chance to say something good about arthritis. So thank you to scientists at the University of South Florida. They discovered that a protein the body produces to help fight arthritis might reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s disease. The protein is commonly known as leukine. It stimulates scavenger cells in the body that remove deposits that cause the inflammation and swelling from arthritis. They gave leukine to mice that were suffering from dementia. After 20 days, all the mice’s memories had improved, and some were testing as well as mice that didn’t have dementia at all. Doctors believe Alzheimer’s may be caused by plaques that build up in the brain. Leukine could be just the thing to scrub it away.
Monday, August 23, 2010 Morning
It is a different world today than the one we shared just last week. For decades, Western leaders have fought, threatened and negotiated to keep Middle Eastern nations that threaten their neighbors from obtaining nuclear power that they could weaponize for themselves, or pass along to terrorists. Israel even incurred the wrath of the world when they bombed a nuclear facility that was being built in Baghdad in 1981…something we were all belatedly grateful for when the Iraq War came around.
Monday, August 23, 2010 Midday
If you’re carrying credit card debt, life just got slightly easier. New federal rules took effect yesterday that limit late fees to just $25 if you’re not late more than once in six months. Credit card companies also can no longer charge multiple fees for one mistake, charge you for not using your card often enough, charge huge fees for going over your limit, or hike your interest rate without an explanation. And gift cards will now be good for five years.
Monday, August 23, 2010 Afternoon
Well, if the idea of building a mosque near Ground Zero was to bring people together, it might be time for a re-think. Over the weekend, hundreds of people turned out at the site to protest it, while a smaller counter-protest took place nearby. To show how much peace and brotherhood this project has fostered so far, police stood between the two groups to prevent violence. And if this doesn’t settle the issue, nothing will: even the first Muslim Miss USA, Rima Fakih, says she agrees that they have the right to build it there, but this is not a good idea.
Friday, August 20, 2010 Morning
The White House is scrambling to counter two new polls showing that as many as 24 percent of Americans think President Obama is a Muslim. In fact, he says he is a Christian. They may be going a little overboard by actually putting out press releases to inform us that he prays to the Christian God every day. I can only imagine what the same liberal media outlets who are playing up this story would say about me if I put out a press release like that.
Friday, August 20, 2010 Midday
Democrats might want to rethink their election strategy of blaming all of America’s woes on George W. Bush again. And not just because voters are smart enough to realize that Democrats have run Congress for four years, and Bush has been retired for two. The National Journal saw an internal poll by one of the Democrats’ top consultants. It found that in so-called “frontline” Congressional districts, the ones now held by the most vulnerable Democrats, Bush’s popularity is 6 points higher than Obama’s.
Friday, August 20, 2010 Afternoon
Federal judges are having a busy August, remaking America. So far this month, they’ve legalized same-sex marriage in California over the will of the voters, and ruled that it’s legal to falsely claim to be a decorated war veteran. Now, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver has declared it unconstitutional to put a memorial cross along a public road. The case was brought by a group called American Atheists.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010 Morning
In the trial of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, the jury is in! But the jury is still out. Yesterday, the jury found Blago guilty on just one of the 24 counts: lying to the FBI. On the rest, they were hopelessly deadlocked, and the judge declared a mistrial. The one guilty count carries a term of up to five years in prison, but it’s doubtful he’d get anywhere near that, and it’s a sure bet he’ll appeal. Meanwhile, prepare for round two: prosecutors said they’re ready to retry Blago and his brother Robert again as soon as today. But the judge, in his wisdom, realized that everybody could use a little break from this. He gave the prosecutors until August 26 to think hard about whether they really want to go through all this again.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010 Midday
Are we seeing the first hint of those infamous “death panels?” An FDA advisory panel just voted 12-to-1 to drop the official endorsement of the drug Avastin for breast cancer patients. Some studies suggest it could extend a patients’ life by up to five months, but newer studies say it could be less than one month.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010 Morning
Supporters of the plan to build a mosque near Ground Zero may have the law on their side, but they’re definitely losing the P.R. battle. For proof, yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid became the biggest name Democrat so far to break with the President and say, build it somewhere else. Reid’s fighting a tight battle for reelection in Nevada, and polls show that ticking off just two percent of the voters could be enough to send him back to the desert, literally. Reid gave the usual nod to freedom of religion, but he says too many New Yorkers believe it’s not an appropriate location and their feelings should be respected.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010 Midday
It’s almost laughable to remember this now, but one of the big reasons why the Democrats took over Congress in 2006 was their hammering away on how much more ethical they’d be. One of their biggest weapons was the charges of improper lobbyist dealings against former GOP House majority leader, Tom “The Hammer” Delay. Delay got hammered, all right. He denied the charges and said they were partisan payback by an overzealous Democratic D.A. who had to shop around for a grand jury to back him. But the charges alone were toxic enough to cost him his leadership position, then his House seat, to cost Republicans control of Congress, and to demote Tom Delay from C-SPAN to “Dancing With The Stars.”
Tuesday, August 17, 2010 Afternoon
News shows these days tend to lead with flashy and frivolous stories and ignore the tragic ones, especially when they happen on the other side of the world. You might not have even heard about the devastating monsoon floods in Pakistan. The U.N. secretary-general calls it the worst natural disaster he’s ever seen, with far higher death tolls than the 2004 tsunami or the Haitian earthquake. As many as 1600 dead, up to 2 million homeless, and a threat of a massive cholera epidemic. Emergency workers say they need $460 million, and so far, only $93 million has been donated. If you can spare as little as 10 bucks, you could save some lives. Just go to RedCross.org. And please…pass that message along.
Monday, August 16, 2010 Morning
Happy Monday, America, although it’s not a happy anniversary for music fans. It was on this date that Elvis Presley passed away. And prepare to feel old: that was 33 years ago today. Elvis was such a monumental part of our musical history for over three decades, and has remained one for 33 years beyond his death, that it seems almost impossible to believe, but on the day that Elvis left the building for the very last time, he was just 42 years old.
Monday, August 16, 2010 Midday
Friday, at a White House Ramadan dinner, President Obama poured some kerosene on the still smoldering ashes of 9/11. He seemed to strongly endorse building a giant Islamic cultural center and mosque on the site of the 9/11 attacks. But as supporters of that controversial project started trumpeting Obama’s support, the White House rushed out a “clarification.” They say Obama was only supporting the First Amendment right to build any religious structure on private land anywhere, and it was not a comment either way on the wisdom of putting a mosque at Ground Zero.
Monday, August 16, 2010 Afternoon
How bad was the mortgage meltdown? Try this: Carl R. Greene’s condo has just been foreclosed on. And who is he? The executive director of the Philadelphia Housing Authority. A spokesman says Greene understands the public wants to know how the head of America’s fourth-largest public housing authority could face possible foreclosure on his home, “but he would prefer not to say more about it at this time." Not surprising.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010 Morning
My deepest condolences to the family of former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, and four other victims of a deadly plane crash in the mountains of Alaska. At first, it was reported that Stevens’ fishing buddy, former NASA head Sean O’Keefe and his son had died, too, but miraculously, they survived the crash. It was the final blow in a long string of bad luck for Ted Stevens. He had survived an earlier plane crash in 1978 that took the life of his first wife, Ann. And his 40-year Senate career ended in disgrace when he was found guilty on seven counts of failing to report gifts. Convictions that were later vacated when Attorney General Eric Holder found serious prosecutorial misconduct and dropped the charges. But the scandal cost him reelection by less than 2 percent of the vote.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010 Midday
Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul is learning how kind the media is to upstart Republicans. GQ magazine just ran an article, quoting a woman who claims that 27 years ago, when they were on the Baylor University swim team, Paul and a friend blindfolded her, drove her to their house and tried to force her to smoke pot. She also claims they said their god was named "Aqua Buddha", and she should bow down to him. And who is this alleged kidnap victim? Well, she wasn’t named. Any corroborating evidence? Well…no. Paul calls the anonymous accusation ridiculous and says he’s thinking of suing GQ. He added, “We used to have journalist ethics in our country.” I guess that must’ve been even longer than 27 years ago.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010 Afternoon
If you’ve been watching my new daytime TV show, you know that during our six-week run, I’ve committed to losing the weight I’ve put back on over the past year or so. Well, now, I’m more determined than ever. A new study from the American Cancer Society found that for people over 50, belly fat isn’t just unattractive, it can be deadly. The study found that older men and women who carry excess weight around the abdomen are at twice the risk of dying over the next decade as people with slender waists.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010 Morning
Well, we’ve learned that the Civil Rights division of the Obama Justice Department isn’t interested in protecting the voting rights of certain ethnic groups. But if they won’t protect our most basic civil right, what ARE they doing with their time? The Washington Examiner solved that mystery. South Carolina just got a letter from the DOJ’s Civil Rights lawyers, threatening to sue them for discrimination under the Americans With Disabilities Act. Why? Because they keep prison inmates with the HIV virus separate from uninfected inmates.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010 Midday
The Huffington Post reports that there were top level meetings of Democrats in Washington last Thursday to lay out their reelection strategy. The idea is reportedly to use both elected officials and groups like MoveOn.org and the government workers union SEIU in a coordinated media blitz, to tell voters that supporting Republicans would mean a return to the “failed policies of the past” that caused the economic collapse and job losses.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010 Afternoon
How big would your pension be if you were allowed to set it yourself? Bigger than it is now? What if you knew your employer was able to print money? Would you reward yourself even more? Well, that’s the situation we’re facing now with government workers’ union pensions. A lot of people in government who make budgets get reelected with the support of government workers, and their pay, benefits and security have been steadily growing while workers in the private sector are taking a beating.
Monday, August 9, 2010 Morning
It’s become kind of a joke that every time there’s bad economic news, the government calls it “unexpected.” Considering what Washington’s been doing to the economy for the past few years, that’s sort of like claiming you got an unexpected headache when you hit your skull with Nancy Pelosi’s giant gavel.
Monday, August 9, 2010 Midday
As predicted, the Senate confirmed Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. Ben Nelson was the only Democrat who voted no, and five Republicans voted yes. No, Scott Brown of Massachusetts wasn’t one of them. He decided at the last minute that he just couldn’t support Kagan, even though he’s spent much of his life around her old stomping ground, Harvard Law School. Or maybe that’s why he couldn’t support her: he knows Harvard law professors only too well.
Monday, August 9, 2010 Afternoon
Michelle Obama is taking flak from the media for going on a lavish vacation in Spain, along with 40 or so of her closest friends, and a big enough entourage to fill nearly 70 five-star hotel rooms. This is all while many Americans’ most exotic indulgence is eating Raman Noodles. The New York Daily News even blasted the First Lady as a “modern-day Marie Antoinette.”
