Mornings on the Mall

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

5am – A/B/C  Equal Pay Debate:

• Obama: I Want People To Be “Astonished” That A Woman Has Never Been President. President Obama spoke at an event Tuesday dedicating the new Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument in Washington, D.C. Obama said he wants people to be “astonished” when they visit the memorial that there was “ever a time when a woman had never sat in the Oval Office.” “I want them to be astonished that there was ever a time women could not vote. I want them to be astonished that there was ever a time that women earned less than men for doing the same work. I want them to be astonished that there was ever a time when women were vastly outnumbered in the boardroom or in Congress. That there was ever a time when a woman had never sat in the Oval Office,” Obama said. “I don’t know how long it will take to get there, but I know we’re getting closer to that day,” Obama said about a woman in the White House.

5am – D/E     How much is a pet dog worth? A court will soon decide. Americans spent $60 billion on their companion animals last year. A majority of pet owners share their beds with furry friends. People take their dogs to work, create Instagram accounts for them and help them complete bucket lists. People, it’s clear, increasingly think of  pets as family — or fellow people. The law, however, sees pets very differently: They are property, like a car or a toaster. Now the Supreme Court of Georgia is mulling the disconnect between those two views. In a case that could be decided next month, judges are considering whether a rescue mutt whose death was allegedly caused by a kennel’s negligence had the value of a used toaster — zilch — or a value relative to how the dog’s owners felt about her and the $67,000 they spent to save her. In short: How much is a pet dog worth? The dog in question was an 8-year-old dachshund mix named Lola. She had been adopted from a shelter by Bob and Elizabeth Monyak of Atlanta, two attorneys with three children and a Labrador retriever named Callie. In 2012, the family took a vacation to France. Thirteen-year-old Callie and Lola, 8, were checked into The Inn, one of five Atlanta-area kennels run by Barking Hound Village that advertises its “private suites and secluded areas for rest and relaxation.” The Monyaks gave special instructions to caretakers: Callie, who had arthritis, needed to take Rimadyl, an anti-inflammatory. The Monyaks said in an interview that when they picked the dogs up, Lola had no appetite. The next day, she was trembling. A veterinarian diagnosed acute renal failure, almost certainly from an overdose of Rimadyl. Nine months later, after treatment from Atlanta veterinarians and multiple dialysis treatments in Florida, Lola died. The Monyaks sued the kennel, alleging — and saying in court filings that they have evidence — that Barking Hound Village’s employees incorrectly gave Callie’s medication to Lola. Barking Hound Village strongly denies that.

6am – A                     INTERVIEW — DR. SEBASTIAN GORKA — counter-terrorism and irregular warfare expert, Chair of Military Theory at the MARINE CORPS UNIVERSITY, author of NEW book DEFEATING JIHAD

• NEW BOOK: Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War  – (released April 11, 2016) –  Dr. Sebastian Gorka, counterinsurgency expert and Distinguished Chair of Military Theory at Marine Corps University, explains how America can win the war on terror quickly and decisively by delegitimizing the enemy in the eyes of its followers—a strategy that won the Cold War and would end the era of Jihad forever
• New poll finds young Arabs are less swayed by the Islamic State
• Belgium charges two, detains three over Brussels, Paris attacks

6am – B         Paul Ryan rules out 2016 presidential bid. US House Speaker Paul Ryan has officially ruled out making a late attempt to become the Republican presidential nominee. “I do not want, nor will I accept the Republican nomination,” he said. Mr Ryan’s name was floated as a late contender if there is a contested convention in July, as doubts persist over the strength of the candidates. If none of Donald Trump, John Kasich and Ted Cruz can win 1,237 delegates, the convention will be contested. The state-by-state primary contests, which come to New York next week, determine the number of delegates pledged to a particular candidate. Mr Trump is still well ahead in the number of delegates accumulated but may fall short of the magic number required.

6am – C         Union News:

• California Labor Union That Fought for $15 Minimum Wage Now Wants an Exemption. The labor union that led the charge for a $15 minimum wage hike in cities across California is now moving to secure an exemption for employers under union contracts. The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor buried the exemption on the eighth page of its 12-page proposal for the Santa Monica City Council to review Tuesday while deciding whether to follow Los Angeles and increase the minimum wage. The loophole would allow employers with collective bargaining agreements to sidestep the wage hike and pay their union members below the proposed $15-per-hour minimum wage.
• It’s official: Verizon’s workers are going on strike. It’s official: Tens of thousands of Verizon workers will walk off the job at 6 a.m. Wednesday in hopes of pressuring the telecom company to strike a better bargain with union leaders. The strike — which is said to be one of the largest in Verizon’s history — could interrupt service for countless customers ranging from Massachusetts to Virginia who subscribe to Verizon’s wired services, including telephone and FiOS Internet, although Verizon has said it has trained thousands of temporary replacements to weather the coming storm. “We are very prepared,” said Verizon chief administrative officer Marc Reed. “Out of the last four contract cycles, 50 percent of the time we’ve had a work stoppage. Some have been long, some have been short.” It is unclear how long this latest disruption will last. But workers’ contract negotiations with Verizon have been stalled for months over the outsourcing of customer service to foreign countries, resulting in the loss of jobs domestically, and the rising expectation that workers must temporarily relocate in order to service distant parts of Verizon’s network.

6am – D         Critter News:

• 300 dogs, mostly Pomeranians, seized from Md. home and barn. EDEN, Wicomico County Animal Control said in a news release Monday that authorities found 200 dogs inside a barn in Eden, while another 100 were found inside a house on the same property on April 6. Wicomico County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Tim Robinson says it took animal control and the sheriff’s office 14 hours to remove the dogs. Humane Society of Wicomico County Executive Director Aaron Balsamo tells WBOC-TV that most of the dogs removed from the property were Pomeranians, with the majority not being in good condition.
• Blue crab population increases 35 percent. The blue crab population in the Chesapeake Bay has clawed its way back from a 2014 lull. The bay-wide crab population is about 553 million, a 35-percent increase over last year’s total of 411 million, according to the Winter Dredge Survey released Tuesday by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. The gain is an over 50-percent boost from 2014, when crabs died off during an exceptionally cold and icy winter and totals were estimated to be 297 million.
• Larry Hogan backtracks on crab cake czar title.

6am – E         Brothers trick sister with zombie attack after wisdom teeth surgery. Just a day after National Sibling Day flooded your Facebook feed with happy family photos, three brothers decided to celebrate their sister in a different way. After their younger sister Millicent had her wisdom teeth removed, brothers Cabot, Hudson and Barrett Phillips convinced her that a zombie outbreak had hit their city. And, of course, they captured it all on video. “The typical wisdom teeth videos are funny but we wanted to do something a little different, and thought the zombie aspect might be a fun twist,” brother and instigator Cabot Phillips says. “We just didn’t anticipate how expressive she would be, and how many one-liners she’d produce — even when terrified and in a drug-induced state.

 

7am – A         INTERVIEW — TREY KOVACS – policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the economic impacts of labor policy.

• BIO: Trey Kovacs is a policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the economic impacts of labor policy. He has spent the last five years researching the adverse effects of public-sector unions on workplace choice and the economy, worker freedom, private-sector labor relations, and other labor policy reforms.
• Verizon Workers Go on Strike Amid Contract Dispute
• Bernie Sanders hitches his campaign to coming strike against Verizon.
• California Labor Union That Fought for $15 Minimum Wage Now Wants an Exemption

7am – B         2016 News:

• WH defends Clinton and de Blasio after ‘CP time’ joke flops. President Obama’s top spokesman on Tuesday defended the civil rights record of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who have come under fire for making a racially tinged joke at an event last week. “Mayor de Blasio and Secretary Clinton have, over the course of their careers, demonstrated a genuine commitment to the pursuit of equality and justice and civil rights,” press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters. Earnest said he had not heard the joke himself. “I can’t speak to any misguided attempts at humor,” he said. “I can only speak to their commitment they have shown over the course of their career to justice and civil rights.”
• Obama’s not meddling in Clinton email probe, White House insists. WASHINGTON — President Obama says he believes his former secretary of state did not intentionally endanger national security in her handling of classified information. But he also says he’s not trying to influence his administration’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server. The White House was under pressure Tuesday to reconcile those two statements, asserting Obama’s public defense of Clinton was not an attempt to meddle in an ongoing probe and that federal investigators will not be swayed by the boss’s views. The FBI is investigating Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state.“The president is committed to ensuring that individuals who are conducting criminal prosecutions do their work without influence from politicians or anybody that’s involved in politics,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.”

7am – C         Yuck! Gym Equipment Has More Bacteria Than Toilet Seats, Study Finds. BOSTON (CBS) — Finding the motivation to get to the gym is hard enough, and this new study certainly won’t help. Tests by Fitrated, a fitness equipment review site, revealed that the equipment at the gym can be a lot dirtier than other everyday items. Exercise bikes had an average of 39 times more bacteria than a cafeteria tray. Treadmills contained about 74 times more germs than a public bathroom sink. And this finding will have you running for the hand sanitizer: Free weights were found to have 362 times more bacteria than a toilet seat.

7am – D         INTERVIEW – KT MCFARLAND – Fox News National Security Analyst (@KTMCFARLAND)

• New poll finds young Arabs are less swayed by the Islamic State
• Belgium charges two, detains three over Brussels, Paris attacks. Belgium has charged two more men with terrorist offences linked to last month’s bombings in Brussels and also searched a house related to the attacks in Paris, detaining three people, federal prosecutors said on Tuesday.
• North Korea Threatens South Korea Over 13 Defectors. North Korea on Tuesday accused South Korea of kidnapping 13 of its citizens who had been working in a restaurant in China, and it demanded their repatriation. The response was the first by North Korea to a highly unusual group defection last week. The 13 North Koreans were the largest single group to defect to South Korea during Kim Jong-un’s reign. Mr. Kim has been trying to stem the flow of North Koreans fleeing to the South.
• U.S. sources: Signs of North Korea mobile ballistic missile launch. (CNN)U.S. intelligence satellites have spotted signs that North Korea may be preparing for an unprecedented launch of a mobile ballistic missile which could potentially hit portions of the U.S., CNN has learned. Two U.S. officials told CNN that if the regime proceeds with a launch, the latest assessments are the most likely scenario is the launch of the so-called Musudan missile, which the U.S. believes could potentially hit Guam and perhaps Shemya Island in the outer reaches of Alaska’s Aleutian chain.
• Obama to decide on declassifying 9/11 documents within 60 days. President Obama will decide whether to declassify 28 pages of sealed documents — which some suspect show a Saudi connection to the 9/11 attacks — within 60 days, according to a former senator who co-chaired the 2002 joint congressional inquiry into the attacks. Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham told Fox News late Tuesday that the White House had informed him that a decision on whether to declassify the documents would be made in one to two months. nGraham, who has pressed for the documents to be made public, told Fox he was “pleased that after two years this matter is about to come to a decision by the president.”Both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations have refused to unseal the documents, claiming it would jeopardize national security. Critics claim the reluctance is a calculated move to hide Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the attacks that killed almost 3,000 people. Obama had come under renewed pressure to release the documents ahead of a a planned presidential trip to Saudi Arabia for a summit of Gulf leaders next week.

7am – E         Entertainment News:

• Mark Zuckerberg takes swipe at Donald Trump in Facebook F8 speech. Things got a little political during the Facebook F8 developer’s conference in San Francisco today when CEO Mark Zuckerberg took a jab at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. While he was there to talk tech, Zuckerberg also took the opportunity to show his distaste for Trump’s controversial immigration stance, CNET reports.” “I hear fearful voices talking about building walls,” Zuckerberg said during the conference keynote. “If the world starts to turn inwards, then our community will just have to work harder to bring people together.”
• Ben Affleck confirmed to direct and star in solo Batman movie. Oscar-winning actor will aim to resurrect the caped crusader’s big screen fortunes following critical derision for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Ben Affleck will direct and star in his own Batman movie, Warner Bros chairman and CEO Kevin Tsujihara has officially confirmed. Affleck is currently starring as the caped crusader in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. He has generally been praised for his debut in the role, though Zack Snyder’s superhero epic has received short shrift from critics and looks likely to fall short of the magic $1bn mark at the box office despite a blistering worldwide opening weekend of $422.5m last month.
• Daniel Radcliffe to Star in Edward Snowden-Themed Play ‘Privacy.‘ Former Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe is returning to the stage in Privacy , an off-Broadway play inspired by whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency (NSA). It marks Radcliffe’s first play in New York since appearing in The Cripple of Inishmaan in 2014. He has previously starred in Equus in London’s West End and on Broadway. Privacy examines the complicated relationship between humans and technology. It was created by James Graham and Josie Rourke and first performed at the Donmar Warehouse in London in 2014. Rourke, Donmar’s creative director, will direct Radcliffe in the New York adaptation.

 

8am – A/B/C INTERVIEW – VIRGINIA DELEGATE RICHARD ANDERSON – Delegate, 51st House District (Prince William County)

Chair, House Science & Technology Committee

Virginia General Assembly

• Delegate Rich Anderson will be filing legislation for next year’s legislative session that will prohibit the naming of state buildings after living individuals.

8am – D/E     Miniature Horses, a “Therapy Turkey” and the Rise of Support Animals in Flight. Service-animal registrations are at an all-time high as helping aides in the form of monkeys and 160-pound bulldogs make their way onto airplanes with ease. They say the Golden Age of air travel is over. But if your anxiety is assuaged by the soothing bleats of an emotional support goat, now is a magical time to fly.  Ever since the 1986 Air Carrier Access Act was passed to let seeing-eye dogs on planes, the definition of what constitutes a helping animal has stretched to a point where miniature horses and capuchin monkeys are permitted to fly.  All you need is a doctor’s note, a service animal registration ($64.95 online, vests and buttons included) and a critter that fits on your lap or inside your row. Cost for a therapy pet to travel: zero.