WMAL's legal analyst Joe diGenova, Redskins analyst Trevor Matich, Ric Edelman, former DC detective Rod Wheeler and guest hosts Steve Moore and Kerry Picket joined WMAL on Monday.
Mornings on the Mall
Monday, December 22, 2014
Hosts: Brian Wilson, Steve Moore and Kerry Picket
5am – A/B/C After The Murder of Two NYPD Cops, Are We Having What President Obama Calls A ‘Healthy Conversation’?
- Americans don't 'feel good seeing somebody choked and dying': Obama says Ferguson and Garner deaths have started a 'healthy conversation' about race – and insists 'people are basically good.' (Daily Mail) — President Barack Obama said on Friday that the tragic deaths of two black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City this year sparked a 'healthy conversation' in America that will allow the country to 'come together and to take a practical approach' to solving race relations issues. 'This isn’t a situation where people feel good seeing somebody choked and dying,' the president said this afternoon at his year-end press conference. 'I think that troubles everybody.'Obama also contended that 'people are basically good and have good intentions,' even though 'sometimes our institutions and our systems don’t work as well as they should.'
- 2 N.Y.P.D. Officers Killed in Brooklyn Ambush; Suspect Commits Suicide. (NY Times) – Two police officers sitting in their patrol car in Brooklyn were shot at point-blank range and killed on Saturday afternoon by a man who, officials said, had traveled to the city from Baltimore vowing to kill officers. The suspect then committed suicide with the same gun, the authorities said. The officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, were in the car near Myrtle and Tompkins Avenues in Bedford-Stuyvesant in the shadow of a tall housing project when the gunman, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, walked up to the passenger-side window and assumed a firing stance, Police Commissioner William J. Bratton said. Mr. Brinsley shot several rounds into the heads and upper bodies of the officers, who never drew their weapons, the authorities said. Mr. Brinsley, 28, then fled down the street and onto the platform of a nearby subway station, where he killed himself as officers closed in. The police recovered a silver semiautomatic handgun, Mr. Bratton said.
5am – D Your Favorite Christmas Hero Is a Terrible Role Model. The Lessons You Need to Learn from It’s a Wonderful Life. (RicEdelman.com) — In It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey (played by Jimmy Stewart) is called “the richest man in town.” He's selfless and concerned about the community. He puts everybody's needs above his own. The entire film is structured to show you that he’s a great role model. But he’s not – at least, not financially. That’s because, while George Bailey was rich in heart, he was a complete failure financially. Too many Americans already believe that being rich is bad. It's a Wonderful Life does reinforce this myth. So do stories involving Grinch, Scrooge and Gordon Gekko. I was on The Oprah Winfrey Show a few years ago. Following each broadcast, Oprah would have me stay to talk with her audience for an hour or so. During that session, a woman told me she felt guilty about saving money, because she felt having more money than others was bad. "You're confusing wealth with materialism," I said. "It's not evil to have money. It's evil to love money." You could see it in her eyes – and Oprah exclaimed to her, and to audience cheers, “You just had an a-ha moment!” George Bailey could use one of those, too. He could have been selfless and good, with integrity intact – and still done better for his family financially.
5am – E Eagles-Redskins: Takeaways from Washington's 27-24 win. LANDOVER, Md. — The Philadelphia Eagles have proved themselves to be a mirage, a team that got away with its faults until it couldn't any longer. Leaders in the NFC East as recently as a week ago, they're now just about done in the playoff race, and they're in no position to argue that they deserve any better. Penalties, missed field goals, two more turnovers by Mark Sanchez and an inability to keep track of former teammate DeSean Jackson turned into a 27-24 loss to the lowly Washington Redskins on Saturday night, the Eagles' third straight defeat and one that gives Dallas two chances to clinch the NFC East. "We're currently minus-9 in the turnover margin, so us having nine wins is really impressive for that," said safety Malcolm Jenkins, echoing the mood of a locker room hit with a communal reality check. "And really we were on borrowed time playing that style of football. If we had run the table in December with that kind of football, it would have been surprising, and it's something we didn't fix."
6am – A/B/C 2 N.Y.P.D. Officers Killed in Brooklyn Ambush: Are De Blasio, Holder, Sharpton and Obama Responsible for Anti-Police Rhetoric?
6am – D Marco Rubio: Rand Paul ‘Chief Cheerleader’ of Obama Foreign Policy. Sen. Marco Rubio responded to criticism from fellow Republican and potential 2016 presidential rival Sen. Rand Paul over his position on Cuba, insisting today that he would oppose the “Obama-Paul foreign policy,” and referring to the Kentucky senator as “chief cheerleader” of the president’s overseas agenda. “Rand, if he wants to become the chief cheerleader of Obama’s foreign policy, he certainly has a right to do that,” Rubio, R-Fla., told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on “This Week.” “I’m going to continue to oppose the Obama-Paul foreign policy on Cuba because I know it won’t lead to freedom and liberty for the Cuban people, which is my sole interest here.” Earlier this week, Paul tweeted on Rubio’s position on engagement with Cuba that he “is acting like an isolationist who wants to retreat to our borders and perhaps build a moat. I reject this isolationism.”
6am – E Holiday Travel:
- Over 90 Percent Of D.C. Area Holiday Travelers Projected To Make Journey In A Vehicle. (DCist) — Of the nearly six million people who live in the D.C. metro area, 41 percent are expected to engage in holiday travel, a 3.3 percent increase from 2013. And of those 2,450,700 people, 91 percent (!) are expected to travel by vehicle, according to AAA Mid-Atlantic. John Townsend of AAA attributes this 3.5 percent increase from last year on falling gas prices. “Not only is this the biggest exodus since the onset of the Great Recession in 2007, it is also the highest number of holiday travelers hailing from this area since records have been kept," Townsend said in a release. Only four percent of travelers are expected to travel by train out of Union Station, by bus at local terminals or by cruise-ship. Air travel is projected to increase by 5.4 percent, with 131,700 locals expected to visit an airport.
- Winter Storms Loom Over Holiday Travel Week. The beginning of the week also will see rain and showers for the East Coast, southeast coast and mid-Atlantic, with snow expected to fall in the upper Midwest and western Great Lakes on Tuesday, according The Weather Channel. It said that rain will pick up and thunderstorms will develop for the Gulf Coast and southeast — with a few "strong to severe" storms possible. By Christmas eve, low pressure will intensify to bring heavy rain along the East Coast and some spots in the northeast could suffer localized flooding, according to The Weather Channel. It said the Great Lakes area will see some snow showers on Christmas eve, with, parts of Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio could experiencing snow accumulations. The winter weather will continue on Christmas Day, with wind and snow showers expected in the Great Lakes and snow showers in the Northeast, The Weather Channel said.
7am – A INTERVIEW – JOE DIGENOVA – legal analyst
- Sony's legal issues: On Friday, Obama said: Sony Made Mistake Pulling ‘The Interview'; U.S. Will Respond Proportionally At Time And Place We Choose
- Obama says Ferguson and Garner deaths have started a 'healthy conversation' about race – and insists 'people are basically good'
7am – B SNL’s ‘Asian-American Doll’ Commercial Desperately Avoids Offending Minorities. (Mediaite) — During tonight’s 2014 finale, Saturday Night Live took on the propensity of major corporations to get themselves into trouble with racially-insensitive branding concepts. And so, they introduced a Barbie-like doll named “Asian-American Doll,” but placed all the liability on the consumer to give it appropriate names, hobbies, and accessories (the joke being that they “haven’t heard the end of it” since introducing a Native American doll named “Flying Eagle). When one little girl suggests naming her doll “Kiko,” the narrator said, sure, but that’s on you, little girl — we had nothing to do with that.
7am – C D.C. has passed sea level rise 'tipping point,' more cities to follow: study. (Mashable) — SAN FRANCISCO — Major U.S. coastal cities, including Washington, D.C. and Wilmington, North Carolina, have already slipped past a sea level rise-related “tipping point,” and into a new era of increasingly common and damaging coastal flooding events, a new study found. Other cities along the East and Gulf Coasts are following close behind, with the majority of coastal areas in the U.S. expected to see 30 or more days of “nuisance-level flooding” each year by 2050, regardless of how significantly countries cut emissions of the greenhouse gases that are causing global warming, according to the study. The study defines this flood frequency as the "tipping point" in the local flood regime, with major implications for the management of coastal roads and critical infrastructure located close to sea level, since there will be far less time for repairs between floods. Nuisance-type flooding is defined as flooding to a height of between 1 to 2 feet above local high-tide levels. Such floods, the study said, are now five to 10 times more likely today than they were just 50 years ago.
7am – D INTERVIEW — TREVOR MATICH – WMAL's Redskins Analyst — recapped the Eagles-Redskins game; Washington's 27-24 win.
7am – E Tom Coburn: I’m ‘Proud’ America Elected Obama President, ‘He’s A Neat Man.’ During an interview with “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday, prior to his departure from the Senate in January, Sen. Tom Coburn discussed his strange-but-true friendship with President Barack Obama, calling him a “neat man,” while talking highly of the president on a personal level. “My relationship with Barack Obama is not based on my political philosophy or his,” Coburn told Lesley Stahl. “It’s based on the fact that he’s a genuinely very smart, nice guy.” “I just love him as a man,” Coburn said. “I think he’s a neat man.” “You don’t have to be the same to be friends,” Coburn added. Obama and Coburn’s friendship stems from the pair entering upper chamber in Congress as freshman senators following their 2004 electoral victories. “I’m proud of our country that we elected Barack Obama…I mean it says something about us nationally,” said Coburn, who is leaving the Senate to battle prostate cancer. “It’s kind of like crowning your checker when you get to the end of the checker board. Here’s another thing that shows America is special.”
8am – A INTERVIEW — RIC EDELMAN – financial planning guru and WMAL radio host of The Ric Edelman Show on Saturdays at 10 am. He can also be found at RicEdelman.com
- Your Favorite Christmas Hero Is a Terrible Role Model. The Lessons You Need to Learn from It’s a Wonderful Life
8am – B/C What films are your favorite Christmas-time films?
8am – D INTERVIEW – ROD WHEELER – Law Enforcement Expert and Former Washington DC Homicide Detective – analyzed the murders of two NYPD cops after anti-police protests and rhetoric.
TOMORROW: Larry Kudlow and guest host Susan Ferrechio
