Paul Winfree, James Carafano, Bret Baier and Joe Theismann joined WMAL on Friday!

Mornings on the Mall

Friday, August 5, 2016

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

 

5am – A/B/C   Federal Agency Rules Wearing ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ Flag Can Be Racial Harassment. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission agreed with a complainant who claimed that his coworker wearing the Gadsden flag (more popularly known as the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag) was a form of racial harassment. The complainant, who is black, objected to his coworker wearing a cap with the flag, a patriotic and anti-tyranny icon dating back to the Revolutionary War. The man stated that he “found the cap to be racially offensive to African Americans because the flag was designed by Christopher Gadsden, a ‘slave trader & owner of slaves.’” He also argues the flag is a “historical indicator of white resentment against blacks stemming largely from the Tea Party.”

5am – D         ‘Satan Club’ Requests Hit Schools. After-school religious clubs are the next venture of a national group that sought to install a statue of Satan outside two state capitols to protest Christian monuments on public grounds. KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — After-school religious clubs appear to be the next venture of a national group that sought to install a statue of Satan outside two state capitols to protest Christian monuments on public grounds. The Satanic Temple contacted nine public school districts across the country this week seeking to start after-school Satan programs. In all but one district, religious clubs are operated by the Child Evangelism Fellowship’s Good News Clubs, in which students can study the Bible and pray, according to temple co-founder Lucien Greaves. Several districts contacted by The Associated Press said they were reviewing the group’s request and noted their facilities were available to community groups.

5am – E         Navy getting rid of ‘blueberries’ camouflage uniform. The Navy’s most mocked camouflage uniform will be soon be a thing of the past, the service announced Thursday. The Navy Working Uniform Type I, blue camouflage utilities commonly referred to as “blueberries” will be replaced everywhere in the service by the forest-green NWU Type III camouflage utilities developed by Naval Special Warfare Command as a tactical uniform. According to an announcement today by Naval Personnel Command, sailors will have the option of wearing either the NWU Type I or III beginning Oct. 1 of this year, and will be required to wear the NWU Type III as the primary working uniform ashore and in port by Oct. 1, 2019. “As [Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson] and I travel to see sailors deployed around the world, one of the issues they consistently want to talk about are uniforms,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in a statement. “They want uniforms that are comfortable, lightweight, breathable … and they want fewer of them. We have heard the feedback and we are acting on it. As a direct result of Sailors’ input, effective Oct. 1, we will transition from the NWU Type I to the NWU Type III as our primary shore working uniform.” Apart from the common criticism that the uniforms, introduced in 2009, added more weight to sailors’ seabags, the pattern has been mocked as a pointless use of camouflage. “The Navy ‘blueberries’ – I don’t know what the name is, that’s what sailors call them – the great camouflage it gives is if you fall overboard,” Mabus reportedly said in 2013, acknowledging the controversy.

6am – A/B/C ‘We Do Not Pay Ransom,’ Obama Declares, Calling Criticism of Iran Deal Illogical. President Barack Obama said Thursday that it “defies logic” that a $400 million U.S. payment to Iran in January could be considered a “ransom” for hostages.” The State Department announced the payment on Jan. 17, a day after the Tehran freed four Americans and on the same weekend that U.N. sanctions on Iran were lifted. The State Department has said the payment was part of a settlement of a decades-long legal dispute before an international tribunal in The Hague and that the timing was coincidental. “We announced these payments in January, many months ago. They weren’t a secret. This wasn’t some nefarious deal,” Obama said at a news conference after meeting at the Pentagon with Vice President Joe Biden, members of his Cabinet, military commanders and senior staffers on the National Security Council.

6am – D         Olympics News:

• Schumer: Stop ‘victory tax’ on US Olympic athletes. LAKE PLACID, N.Y. – Gold medalist Justin Olsen spends 10 to 11 months out of the year training for the Winter Olympic bobsled competition. He says the sport racks up a lot of expenses. “At 20 years old, I started the sport. I spent $15,000 my first year, and that was everything I had. So I was pretty much broke within my first year, but I decided that this was what I was going to do and we find a way,” Olsen said. Tuesday, Olsen joined over a dozen Olympians at the Lake Placid Olympic Training Center as U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer announced his push for a bill that would help cut back on some of the taxes Olympic athletes face. “When they win, there’s no question that they worked hard,” said Schumer, D-New York. “So the fact that our athletes are sort of punished by our IRS for winning with a quote victory tax, that’s sort of an oxymoron in itself. Why are we taxing victory?” When Olsen won a gold medal in the 2010 Winter Olympics in the four-man bobsled competition, he says he earned $25,000 in prize money, but he only came home with around $17,000 after taxes. Schumer says the new bill would allow U.S. Olympians and Paralympians to exempt the value of the medals and Olympic cash prizes from their taxable income. Competitors say that though there are professional athletes among the Olympic winners, many are working jobs on the side to help cover training expenses. They say at the end of the day, it’s not about the money that they win.
• American interest in the #Olympics is at an all-time low. What gives? (Newsweek) – The 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro kick off on Friday. Michael Phelps, winner of a record 18 gold medals, will carry the flag for the Americans during the opening ceremony, which will take place in Rio’s Maracanã Stadium. There will probably be fireworks and a lot of good old-fashioned pageantry too. Can you feel the excitement? Not really? You’re not alone. According to a new Gallup poll, only 48 percent of Americans plan to watch a “great deal” or “fair amount” of the Olympics, while 51 percent plan to watch “not much” or “none at all.” These numbers mark a huge decline in interest from what Gallup has typically found since it began polling Americans about their plans to watch the Olympics in 2000. This is pretty remarkable, especially considering the consistency of interest in the four previous Summer Games. The Olympics offer pretty much the same thing every summer they come around. There is agony, ecstasy, triumph and defeat. There are inspirational stories. There are records broken. There are winners awkwardly biting their gold medals as if they expect to find chocolate inside.
• Australian swimming coach complains of ‘soupy’ water in training pool.  An Australian swimming coach refused to let his athletes practice in the main Games training pool due to fears of infection. Michael Bohl, one of the leading coaches on Australian team, became concerned when he saw the training pool in Barra da Tijuca become “cloudy” and “soupy” during the afternoon, less than two days before the start of the swimming program. Bohl’s group, which included backstroke world champion Mitch Larkin and butterflyers Emma McKeon and Grant Irvine, had booked a session in the training pool and would have had uninterrupted use of it. Instead, they switched to the far busier main competition pool before undertaking their laps.
• Investigation alleges USA Gymnastics turned ‘blind eye’ to abuse. A painstaking investigation, based on numerous interviews and lengthy reviews of public records, alleged that USA Gymnastics failed to notify authorities of “many allegations of sexual abuse by coaches.” Thursday’s report by the Indianapolis Star, “Out of Balance,” started when the newspaper began investigating schools, day-care centers and notification procedures, according to an editor’s note. The Star reported that USA Gymnastics “compiled complaint dossiers on more than 50 coaches and filed them in a drawer in its executive office in Indianapolis.” This was not the first story of such an explosive nature in women’s gymnastics. In 2011, the Orange County Register conducted an extensive investigation in which three gymnasts accused Don Peters of sex abuse. Peters was later expelled from the sport for life.
• Plenty of action at Rio Olympics, which is why there are 450,000 condoms / The organizers of these Games are prepared and ready for plenty of bedroom gymnastics. The International Olympic Committee confirmed it would provide 450,000 condoms for the Village, which equates to 42 per athlete, or two per day assuming they check in ahead of the event and remain until the end.
• Russian diplomat drags robber into his car and shoots him dead near #Rio2016  / RIO DE JANEIRO — Rio de Janeiro’s Civil Police confirmed that the Russian vice-consul in the city engaged in a physical fight with an armed, would-be robber in which the weapon fired and killed the assailant. The attempted robbery happened as the diplomat’s car was stuck in traffic along the main thoroughfare of the Barra da Tijuca neighborhood, where the majority of the events will take place during the Summer Olympics. Opening ceremonies are Friday.
• Third of Russian team banned from Olympics. A total of 271 Russian athletes have been cleared to take part in the Rio Olympics, Alexander Zhukov, president of the Russian Olympics Committee, told reporters in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday. The International Olympic Committee confirmed the number in a statement issued in the evening. The news means 118 competitors of the 389-strong Russian team have been banned from competing in Rio.
• Rio officials lost the keys to the Olympic stadium. (The Independent) – A gate of the Maracana Stadium, the host venue of the Rio Olympics, had to be forced open after organisers reportedly lost the key. Julia Carneiro, a BBC reporter in Rio de Janeiro, captured the incident on video outside the stadium, prior to Wednesday’s women’s football match between Sweden and South Africa. Two men described as ‘firemen’ are seen using a pair of bolt cutters to break the padlock and open the gate.

6am – E         Apple announces long-awaited bug bounty program. Tech companies hold the keys to some of our most personal information — payment details, health records, chat logs with our lovers and archives of family photos — and, as we hand over more and more private data, it becomes increasingly important that companies earn our trust by keeping it secure. Over the past five years, most major tech companies have instituted bug bounty programs, welcoming vulnerability reports from hackers and reimbursing for reports in cash. Companies that don’t have the technical expertise to run their own bounty programs have outsourced this important security work to outside firms. But for years, Apple remained a holdout. While security has been a crucial part of its corporate narrative, Apple has quietly refused to pay for bug reports, at times frustrating security researchers who found it difficult to report flaws to the company. That changed today, as Apple’s head of security engineering and architecture, Ivan Krstic, announced to Black Hat attendees that Apple will begin offering cash bounties of up to $200,000 to researchers who discover vulnerabilities in its products.

7am – A         INTERVIEW — PAUL WINFREE – federal budget expert and director of the Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation

• BIO: Paul Winfree, an economist and leading voice in Washington for free markets and fiscal responsibility, is director of the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation. He also is the think tank’s inaugural Richard F. Aster fellow. Winfree, previously a senior policy analyst in Heritage’s Center for Data Analysis, returned to the think tank in 2015 after serving as director of income security at the Senate Committee on the Budget. He was responsible for the committee’s work on tax, health, and welfare policy.  He also helped develop legislative proposals, including congressional budget resolutions and annual appropriations bills.
• TOPIC: Zika Funds Available- Florida increased its fight against Zika after 14 confirmed cases of the virus were contracted locally.  Police are even giving out insect repellant to homeless people in the Miami area where the outbreak seems the worst.  The Obama Administration says they are running out of funds to combat the Zika virus but federal budget expert Paul Winfree says Zika could be paid for with Ebola funds.  He found there are about $2.77 billion in unobligated balances from the 2015 fiscal year Ebola emergency supplemental appropriation that could be used towards a fighting Zika.
• President Barack Obama on Thursday said it was time for Congress to lay aside politics and to act to provide additional money to combat the Zika virus before government funding dries up. (Reuters | Thu Aug 4, 2016 9:14pm EDT) –  “Our experts at the CDC, the folks on the front lines have been doing their best in making due by moving funds from other areas, but now the money we need to fight Zika is rapidly running out,” Obama said at a press conference at the Pentagon. He warned that development of a vaccine for the virus could be delayed if Congress does not provide any more money and urged Americans to contact lawmakers to pressure them to take up the issue. Concern over the threat from Zika, which can cause a birth defect called microcephaly marked by small head size that can lead to severe developmental problems in babies, has risen since Florida authorities last week detected the first signs of local transmission in the continental United States. Zika funding remains stalled six months after Obama asked the Republican-led Congress to approve $1.9 billion in emergency funds.

7am – B/C     2016 News:

• Clinton surges to big lead in McClatchy-Marist poll. (McClatchy Washington Bureau) — WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has surged to a 15-point lead over reeling, gaffe-plagued Republican Donald Trump, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll. Clinton made strong gains with two constituencies crucial to a Republican victory – whites and men – while scoring important gains among fellow Democrats, the poll found. Clinton not only went up, but Trump also went down. Clinton now has a 48-33 percent lead, a huge turnaround from her narrow 42-39 advantage last month.
• Donald Trump protesters to build ‘wall’ around Renaissance Center during Detroit speech. DETROIT — A group of anti-Donald Trump Detroiters are planning a unique demonstration during the Republican presidential nominee Monday visit to the Motor City. They plan to form a human wall. Trump is scheduled to address members of the Detroit Economic Club inside the Marriott Hotel at the General Motors Corp. Renaissance Center at noon Monday. The protest is planned from noon until 2 p.m. “Bring yourself, brings your friends, bring your creativity and outrage,” says a Facebook event page advertising the protest. “Because no matter who wins, we lose when racism, misogyny and bigotry are on the rise. “Instead, let’s demonstrate what it means to reclaim our humanity: Self-determination! caring and egalitarian communities! Mutual aid and autonomy! Solidarity! Dignity!”

7am – D         INTERVIEW — JIM CARAFANO-  leading expert in national security and foreign policy challenges, is The Heritage Foundation’s Vice President, Foreign and Defense Policy Studies  and Director of Heritage’s Institute for International Studies

• ‘We Do Not Pay Ransom,’ Obama Declares, Calling Criticism of Iran Deal Illogical

7am – E         Creepy clown with black balloons wandering Wisconsin. Wisconsin residents are calling police, asking about a disheveled clown walking through Green Bay with four black balloons. But, there’s not much police can do. The clown doesn’t appear armed or dangerous — just really creepy. “This person is not breaking the law,” said Captain Kevin Warych of the Green Bay Police Department. “He can walk in a clown costume anywhere he wants.” The clown, who is being referred to as Gags – The Green Bay Clown, was first spotted at 2 a.m. Aug. 1, according to a fan Facebook page that popped up the next day. Commenter Shannon Mueller said if she met Gags, she would “curl into the fetal position and die of heart exploding from pure terror.” Photos of Gags show a figure with full face makeup – high eyebrows, hollow eyes and a black smile. The clown wears a soiled-looking jumpsuit with a ruffled collar.

8am – A/B/C Schumer: Stop ‘victory tax’ on US Olympic athletes. LAKE PLACID, N.Y. – Gold medalist Justin Olsen spends 10 to 11 months out of the year training for the Winter Olympic bobsled competition. He says the sport racks up a lot of expenses. “At 20 years old, I started the sport. I spent $15,000 my first year, and that was everything I had. So I was pretty much broke within my first year, but I decided that this was what I was going to do and we find a way,” Olsen said. Tuesday, Olsen joined over a dozen Olympians at the Lake Placid Olympic Training Center as U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer announced his push for a bill that would help cut back on some of the taxes Olympic athletes face. “When they win, there’s no question that they worked hard,” said Schumer, D-New York. “So the fact that our athletes are sort of punished by our IRS for winning with a quote victory tax, that’s sort of an oxymoron in itself. Why are we taxing victory?” When Olsen won a gold medal in the 2010 Winter Olympics in the four-man bobsled competition, he says he earned $25,000 in prize money, but he only came home with around $17,000 after taxes. Schumer says the new bill would allow U.S. Olympians and Paralympians to exempt the value of the medals and Olympic cash prizes from their taxable income. Competitors say that though there are professional athletes among the Olympic winners, many are working jobs on the side to help cover training expenses. They say at the end of the day, it’s not about the money that they win.

8am – D         INTERVIEW — BRET BAIER – ANCHOR, SPECIAL REPORT, FOX NEWS CHANNEL

• TOPICS: Clinton surging in polls, Iran cash deal and mustard
• Clinton surges to big lead in McClatchy-Marist poll.
• ‘We Do Not Pay Ransom,’ Obama Declares, Calling Criticism of Iran Deal Illogical.
• Why was Bret hoarding MUSTARD at the RNC?

8am – E         Mayor of Fairfax City & Two Others arrested for distribution of methamphetamine. Three Arrested for Distribution of Methamphetamine. In late July, the Organized Crime and Narcotics (OCN) Division received information about a possible distributor of methamphetamine and immediately began an investigative inquiry. Methamphetamine is listed as a Schedule II controlled substance by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration.  Based on information obtained during the investigation, a suspect was identified who was allegedly distributing methamphetamine through a website used to arrange for casual sexual encounters between men. An undercover detective created a profile on this website and within a few days, the suspect made contact through the website. After the initial exchange, the suspect communicated via text messaging. During the course of communication, the suspect advised that he could provide methamphetamine for sexual encounters. Undercover detectives agreed to meet the suspect for a group sexual encounter in exchange for methamphetamine. The suspect arranged to bring methamphetamine along with other men to the engagement. On Thursday, August 4, the Street Crimes Unit (part of the Organized Crime and Narcotics Division) met the suspect at the Crowne Plaza Hotel located at 1960 Chain Bridge Road in Tysons Corner. The initial suspect was identified as Richard “Scott” Silverthorne, 50, of Fairfax. Silverthorne provided methamphetamine to the undercover detectives and was subsequently arrested and charged with felony distribution of methamphetamine and misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia. Silverthorne holds the office of Mayor of the City of Fairfax, Virginia and is also employed as a substitute teacher for the Fairfax County Public Schools.