Sen. Tim Kaine, Trevor Matich and Bret Baier joined WMAL on Friday!

Mornings on the Mall

Friday, December 11, 2015

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

 

5am – A/B/C White House: No idea why Americans are buying so many guns. (Dave Boyer – The Washington Times) — President Obama’s spokesman said Thursday that the record number of Americans seeking to buy guns in recent weeks is “a tragedy” that the White House is at a loss to explain. “The more that we see this kind of violence on our streets, the more people go out and buy guns,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest. “That is both ironic and tragic.” The FBI conducted 185,345 firearms background checks on Black Friday, the most ever during a single day. The record number of gun sales came two weeks after the Islamic State’s terrorist attacks in Paris, but before the terrorist massacre in San Bernardino, California. Asked why he thinks so many Americans are buying guns, Mr. Earnest replied, “I don’t know, I really don’t.”

5am – D         Concussions Biggest Health Risk to Cheerleaders. Concussion tops the list of injuries sustained by high school cheerleaders as the once-tame sideline activity becomes more daring and competitive, a new U.S. study finds. But cheerleading still ranks near the bottom of high school sports in terms of overall injury rate, according to the research, published online Dec. 10 in the journal Pediatrics. “Anecdotally, it’s pretty clear to most people over the past few decades that cheerleading has shifted from a sideline activity to a competitive sport itself. This may have resulted in an increase in injury,” said study author Dustin Currie, a doctoral student in epidemiology at Colorado School of Public Health at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. “We only have five years of data … but I don’t know whether to say it’s better for cheerleading to not become a more competitive sport,” he added. “If it’s getting more children to participate in athletics, it’s probably a net positive.”

5am – E         Vets Warn Fleas Becoming Resistant To Chemical Treatments. SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — Experts say fleas may be mutating and becoming more resistant to topical anti-flea treatments peskier than ever for Bay Area pet owners trying to get rid of them. One vet KPIX spoke to said the smelly solutions designed to kill fleas that pet owners have been applying to their cats and dogs may not help thanks to survival of the fittest flea. Katherine Van Ekert with VetPronto is one of many Bay Area vets that are telling pet owners the anti-flea solution produced by companies like Frontline and Advantage that they are buying isn’t working.

6am – A/B/C Food expiration dates: How to tell if your food is safe to eat. (WASHINGTON) — There are multiple ways to determine if that carton of milk in your fridge should be thrown out (smell test, taste test or just checking the expiration date). But what’s the best way to figure out if your food should be tossed or saved? Expiration dates may seem like an easy way to tell when to throw out food, but for many couples or roommates, sharing a fridge and abiding by the “sell-by” date can lead to an argument.

It turns out that in most cases, an expiration date isn’t an automatic warning sign that the food is likely spoiled. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the “sell-by” date tells the store how long to display the product for sale. It doesn’t mean the product has gone bad once it reaches the expiration date. A “best if used by” date actually has nothing to do with spoilage. In this case, the date is recommended for flavor or quality standards. So a canned item like soup with a “best if used by” date might be safe to eat long after the date passes, but expect a little less flavor with each passing day. There are no federal requirements for putting expiration dates on food, except for infant formula. A “use by” date indicates the last date of the product’s peak quality. In the case of infant formula, using a product after the “use by” date can mean there are less nutrients and the quality may have degraded so that the formula separates or clogs.

6am – D         Ford to Invest $4.5 Billion in Electrified Vehicles by 2020. Ford Motor Co. said it’s investing $4.5 billion in electrified vehicles, responding to regulatory pressure with a bet on technologies that have struggled to attract buyers in the U.S. as fuel prices stay low. The automaker will add 13 electric cars and hybrids by 2020, rising to 40 percent of its lineup from 13 percent now, Chief Executive Officer Mark Fields said Thursday at a press conference in Dearborn, Michigan. The plans include a new Focus Electric car with fast-charge capability, Ford said.

6am – E         Whistleblower: DHS Pulled Plug on Surveillance That Could’ve ID’ed CA Terrorists. A former Homeland Security employee says he likely could have helped prevent the San Bernardino terror attack if the government had not pulled the plug on a surveillance program he was developing three years ago. Philip Haney told Megyn Kelly tonight that as part of his investigation, he was looking into a collection of global networks that were infiltrating radical Islamists into the U.S. But a year into the investigation, Haney said they got a visit from the State Department and the Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, who said that tracking these groups was problematic because they were Islamic. His investigation was shut down and 67 of his records were deleted, including one into an organization with ties to the mosque in Riverside, Calif., that San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook attended.

7am – A         INTERVIEW — SENATOR TIM KAINE – (D-VIRGINIA)

• Lawmakers introduce bicameral ISIS war authorization. Two House lawmakers on Thursday introduced a measure to authorize military force against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), making it the first bipartisan and bicameral measure to do so. Reps. Scott Rigell (R-Va.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) introduced the legislation, a companion bill to a measure in the Senate offered by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.).
• President Obama Signs Education Law, Leaving ‘No Child’ Behind. President Obama called it “a Christmas miracle. A bipartisan bill signing right here.” The “right here” was the South Court Auditorium, part of the White House complex. More importantly, the bipartisan bill being signed was the Every Student Succeeds Act — a long-overdue replacement of the unpopular federal education law known as No Child Left Behind. The new law changes much about the federal government’s role in education, largely by scaling back Washington’s influence. While ESSA keeps in place the basic testing requirements of No Child Left Behind, it strips away many of the high stakes that had been attached to student scores.

7am – B         Trump News:

• Trump: Death penalty for cop killers. Portsmouth, New Hampshire (CNN)Donald Trump announced Thursday that if elected president, he would sign an executive order to mandate the death penalty for convicted cop killers. Trump announced his latest legally questionable policy proposal after accepting the endorsement of the New England Police Benevolent Association, a police union representing more than 4,000 law enforcement officials — an endorsement Trump characterized as a “lifetime improvement award.”       “One of the first things I do, in terms of executive order if I win, will be to sign a strong, strong statement that will go out to the country — out to the world — that anybody killing a policeman, policewoman, a police officer — anybody killing a police officer, the death penalty. It’s going to happen, OK?” Trump said in brief remarks to the several hundred police union members gathered for the endorsement.
• Trump scraps planned trip to Israel, saying he’ll reschedule “after I become President” – WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Donald Trump has scrapped a planned trip to Israel, saying he will reschedule “at a later date after I become President of the U.S.” Trump tweeted Thursday that he is postponing the trip, which had become problematic for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Viewed as a Republican Party supporter, Netanyahu faced calls to cancel the visit, planned for Dec. 28, after Trump called for keeping Muslims from entering the U.S. and made controversial comments to a Jewish group.
• FriendsWhoLikeTrump.com Will Make You Want To Delete Your Facebook. The unfriend button has never been more important. (Huffington Post) — If you’re logged into your Facebook, take a deep breath and open a new tab before clicking this: friendswholiketrump.com. As if the Trump hysteria couldn’t get any worse, there’s now a way to zero in on all your friends (you know, the ones from high school that you only see when you’re in your hometown and get dragged against your will to the local bar?) who have “liked” Donald J. Trump on Facebook. When you go to friendswholiketrump.com, it redirects you to your own Facebook’s search page, where your search bar will look like this: friendswholikedonaldtrump.com Below the bar, you’ll be able to see which of your “friends” are all up in Trump’s Facebook grill.
• Colorado ACLU Board Member: Shoot Trump Voters ‘Before Election Day’ (Daily Caller/Derek Hunter) – Loring Wirbel, board member of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Colorado chapter and co-chair of the ACLU’s Colorado Springs chapter, called for supporters of GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump to be shot before they vote for the billionaire businessman. Comparing Trump to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, Wirbel wrote in his Facebook page: “The thing is, we have to really reach out to those who might consider voting for Trump and say, “This is Goebbels. This is the final solution. If you are voting for him I will have to shoot you before election day.” They’re not going to listen to reason, so when justice is gone, there’s always force, as Laurie would say.”

7am – C         Pilot: Laser Christmas lights pose dangers to us and may be illegal. (CNN) — DENVER — They’re supposed to make decorating for the holidays easier — no ladders, no nails and no hammers — but investigators with the FAA say some new laser Christmas light displays are proving dangerous to pilots. “It’s something that most people don’t think about when they’re putting up some kind of display or anything like that,” Danny Kelly, a retired pilot, said. “They don’t realize that they might be causing a problem.” Kelly said he wasn’t surprised to hear what happened to an American Airlines crew this week in Dallas.

7am – D/E     White House: No idea why Americans are buying so many guns. (Dave Boyer – The Washington Times) — President Obama’s spokesman said Thursday that the record number of Americans seeking to buy guns in recent weeks is “a tragedy” that the White House is at a loss to explain. “The more that we see this kind of violence on our streets, the more people go out and buy guns,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest. “That is both ironic and tragic.” The FBI conducted 185,345 firearms background checks on Black Friday, the most ever during a single day. The record number of gun sales came two weeks after the Islamic State’s terrorist attacks in Paris, but before the terrorist massacre in San Bernardino, California. Asked why he thinks so many Americans are buying guns, Mr. Earnest replied, “I don’t know, I really don’t.”

8am – A         INTERVIEW – TREVOR MATICH — Redskins elite long snapper and WMAL’s Redskins analyst

• PREVIEW: Sunday, December 13, 1:00 PM on FOX, Soldier Field, Chicago, Washington Redskins @ Chicago Bears

8am – B         Hillary: No, I Didn’t Blame the Video in My Meeting With Benghazi Families. (Townhall/Guy Benson) —Before we circle back to Hillary’s statement on ABC News’ This Week, let’s lay some groundwork first. During her sworn testimony before the Benghazi Select Committee in October, Hillary Clinton was confronted with evidence that she had a clear-eyed understanding of the nature of those attacks within hours of their occurrence. On the night of the attack, she sent an email to her daughter lamenting that several American “officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al Queda-like group.” The next morning, she sent the following assessment to a top Egyptian diplomat: “We know that the lack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack — not a protest.” That assessment was accurate. It reflected the terrible reality that US officials were able to ascertain “almost immediately,” according to the CIA director at the time.

8am – C         ‘Rent Is Too Damn High’ guy retires: Jimmy McMillan faults ‘brainwashed’ voters. Jimmy McMillan, the hirsute, eccentric New Yorker who came to national prominence as a long-shot candidate for governor in 2010 by declaring the “rent is too damn high,” announced this week that he is retiring from politics. The 69-year-old, who founded his own Rent Is Too Damn High party, announced in a press release Tuesday that his trademark was for sale and that the voters of New York City and state were “totally brainwashed” because they failed to seek “rent reduction for the people in the cities of Brooklyn, Bronx, Staten Island, Manhattan and Queens.” “I am walking away because I have know [sic] other choice the people have ignored my warning and my cry for help that the rent crisis was getting worse. The kind of help they cannot get from not one elected official, not the Governor neither the Mayor can give them,” the self-proclaimed “karate expert” wrote.

Manhattan Apartment Vacancies Rise to the Highest in Nine Years. Manhattan apartment vacancies reached their highest level in more than nine years, a sign that the post-recession run-up in rents may begin to cool. The vacancy rate in November was 2.87 percent, up from 2.31 percent a year earlier and the highest since August 2006, according to a report Thursday by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate. Landlords eager to fill empty units lured tenants with the most concessions since 2011. The rise in vacancies suggests tenants are reaching the upper limits of what they’re able to pay after more than four years of almost continuous rent growth, according to Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel. In November, the median monthly apartment rent climbed 3.9 percent from a year earlier to $3,361. Leasing costs have jumped more than 18 percent since the end of the recession in June 2009. “We’re reaching the point where things can’t go up as much,” Miller said in an interview. “The economics don’t make much sense anymore.”

8am – D         INTERVIEW — BRET BAIER – Anchor, Special Report, Fox News Channel, weekdays at 6 pm

• ON MEGYN KELLY LAST NIGHT: Whistleblower: DHS Pulled Plug on Surveillance That Could’ve ID’ed CA Terrorists. A former Homeland Security employee says he likely could have helped prevent the San Bernardino terror attack if the government had not pulled the plug on a surveillance program he was developing three years ago. Philip Haney told Megyn Kelly tonight that as part of his investigation, he was looking into a collection of global networks that were infiltrating radical Islamists into the U.S. But a year into the investigation, Haney said they got a visit from the State Department and the Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, who said that tracking these groups was problematic because they were Islamic. His investigation was shut down and 67 of his records were deleted, including one into an organization with ties to the mosque in Riverside, Calif., that San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook attended. Haney explained that if his work was allowed to continue, it could possibly have thwarted last week’s attack.
• TRUMP/2016 NEWS: GOP DEBATE NEXT WEEK
• Ted Cruz Secures Trifecta of Key Iowa Endorsements. Ted Cruz secured the support of prominent evangelical Bob Vander Plaats, head of the Family Leader, giving Cruz a trifecta of important endorsements in Iowa that show that social conservatives are coalescing around the presidential candidate.
• Congress in final-stage talks on massive budget, tax bills. WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawmakers and the White House are rushing to finalize a $1.1 trillion government-wide spending bill and a sprawling tax package touching all sectors of the economy, then head home for the holidays. Dozens of issues remain unresolved, mainly policy disputes over environmental and other issues that lawmakers of both parties are trying to attach to the must-pass spending legislation. Republicans are seeking to lift the oil export ban and roll back various Obama administration regulations; Democrats are maneuvering to protect President Barack Obama’s environmental rules and enact permanent tax credits for wind, solar and other renewable energy.

8am – E         Entertainment News:

• Patti LaBelle Sweet Potato Pies are back at Wal-Mart. Christmas came early this year for some. Wal-Mart CEO Doug McMillon said in an Instagram post on Tuesday the largest retailer in the U.S. began delivering new shipments of the Patti LaBelle Sweet Potato Pie. “It took about 2 million pounds of California-grown sweet potatoes to deliver this Christmas miracle,” John Forrest Ales, director of corporate communications at Wal-Mart, said in an email. Labelle’s pies became a hot commodity last month after YouTuber James Wright posted his enthusiastic review of the pies. In fact, Ales said Wal-Mart sold one pie per second for 72 hours straight after the video went viral.
• Harrison Ford Tells Donald Trump That Life Isn’t Like ‘Air Force One.’ “It’s a movie, Donald. It was a movie,” the actor said on an Australian morning show. Don’t call it a mutual-admiration society. After Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump expressed his love for Star Wars: The Force Awakens star Harrison Ford — and, in particular, Ford’s role as U.S. President James Marshall in the 1997 movie Air Force One — Ford shared a special message for Trump with Australian television morning show Studio 10. “It’s a movie, Donald. It was a movie,” he said. “It’s not like this in real life. But how would you know?” Earlier in the interview, Ford had pretended to misunderstand Trump’s current political ambitions. “President? Oh, I thought it was resident,” he joked. “So, he’s not only going to live there, he’s going to run the show? That’s … not so much, no. I don’t think so.”