Mornings on the Mall 08.16.16

Steve Kastenbaum, Amb. John Bolton, Washington Post’ Wesley Lowery and Larry Kudlow joined WMAL on Tuesday!

Mornings on the Mall

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor

5am – A/B/C DC Teachers Outraged Walmart Wants To Help Them. (Daily Caller) —

Washington, D.C.’s teachers union is expressing outrage over a promotion by Walmart that awards free school supplies to teachers. Walmart is currently running an election-themed back-to-school promotion in which students can nominate their teacher to be a “commander-in-teach.” Winners of the contest will receive $490 to pay for school supplies in their classroom. And that has the Washington Teachers’ Union (WTU) irate. The union, which represents over 5,000 current and former teachers in D.C., says that it’s wrong for Walmart to help teachers when members of the Walton family have also donated money to support charter schools. “Walmart has tried to position itself as a friend and supporter of public schools and teachers when in reality the opposite is true,” WTU President Elizabeth Davis said in a statement. “Walmart and the Walton Family have consistently sought to privatize our schools and destroy public education.” D.C. has one of the most robust charter school systems in the country, with about half of all public school students attending them. Despite Davis’ rhetoric, charter schools are still public schools, though many are operated by private organizations. The Walton Family Foundation has donated millions of dollars to various groups supporting charter schools in D.C., part of a national investment that exceeds $1 billion.

5am – D         >> OLYMPICS NEWS

• Pouring rain adds another hurdle to Olympic track and field. RIO DE JANEIRO — Imagine spending four years training for Olympic moment. And then, on the night of your event, it begins to rain. And not just rain but pour, as it did during early events here at the Olympic Stadium before an official delay after less than 30 minutes of nighttime competition.
• USA’s Simone Biles disappointed by mistake, not medal with bronze on beam. Biles claimed bronze in the balance beam final here at Rio Olympic Arena on Monday, taking third in an event she was favored to win after a mistake on a somersault almost brought her off the apparatus.
• Diving for gold: In a finish that blew us all away, Shaunae Miller of the Bahamas held on to edge American and reigning world champion Allyson Felix in the women’s 400 meters by diving forward at the finish line. The scene was stunning from any camera angle we could get our hands on.
• Pouring rain adds another hurdle to Olympic track and field. RIO DE JANEIRO — Imagine spending four years training for Olympic moment. And then, on the night of your event, it begins to rain. And not just rain but pour, as it did during early events here at the Olympic Stadium before an official delay after less than 30 minutes of nighttime competition. “It’s track and field,” said Jeffrey Julmis of Haiti, one of four runners to advance through the first heat of the men’s 110-meter hurdles. “Any given day anything can happen.” It’s almost assuredly unfair, in the grand scheme of things: Athletes pushing themselves for a shot at Olympic gold only be slowed — and drenched — by a downpour. “I’m pretty pissed about the fact that it’s raining, to be honest with you,” said the USA’s Jeff Porter, who also advanced. “I’m pretty angry that it’s raining.”

5am – E         Hillary News:

• GOP lays out case for charging Clinton with perjury. (The Hill) — A pair of leading House Republicans on Monday laid out detailed instructions for the Justice Department to file perjury charges against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. More than a month after first requesting the department open a criminal probe into Clinton for alleged misstatements she made under oath, the GOP heads of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees told a federal prosecutor specifically where they believed Clinton had lied to Congress about her email setup at the Department of State. In at least four separate occasions during a marathon appearance before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, the lawmakers alleged, the former secretary’s claims were at odds with what the FBI has now discovered to be the truth about her private server.

6am – A/B/C A 12-year-old is off to the Ivy League. ‘It’s a challenge to keep him challenged,’ his dad says. When he was three months old, Jeremy Shuler’s parents were surprised to find he seemed to pay close attention to things for so long. Instead of the seconds they expected from an infant, he would watch closely for half an hour. And it seemed the things that fascinated him most were letters and numbers — they joked that he sat through a whole video to get to the credits. When he was 15 months old, Jeremy knew the alphabet and found letters and numbers everywhere — in his pasta, in clouds, in stars, in the patterns of marble tiles. It was hard to give him a bath, because he kept writing letters and numbers with the shower hose at bathtime. When he was a year and a half old, he asked his mother about an email she was typing to a friend in Seoul, and she off-handedly showed him letters in Korean. The next day he was combining consonant and vowel sounds to make syllables. And he was reading a book in Korean. Something had clicked. By the time he was 2, Jeremy could easily read both Korean and English on his own. After that, his father Andy Shuler said, they realized, “This is going to be different.”

When he was 12, Jeremy Shuler got accepted to college.

6am – D         Hillary Clinton: U.S. Ground Troops Against ISIS ‘Off the Table.’ Clinton rallied with Vice President Joe Biden in Scranton, mocking Trump for saying that his plan to defeat ISIS was “secret” and saying that he knew more about ISIS than some of the generals in the United States military. “No, Donald, you don’t,” she said. Clinton failed to mention that there are already American troops on the ground fighting ISIS. Officially there are about 3,825 American troops in Iraq and 300 in Syria, according to President Obama’s June War Powers Resolution. The Pentagon has repeatedly refused to reveal the full numbers of troops and members of military special forces that are on the ground in Iraq and Syria. “There’s been a decision made not to release that number … I don’t have a reason not releasing this number other than it’s the orders that I’m under,” Captain Jeff Davis, the director of the Defense Press Office said in March.

6am – E         15 Guantanamo detainees sent to UAE in major transfer. PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Fifteen prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention center were sent to the United Arab Emirates in the single largest release of detainees during the Obama administration, the Pentagon announced Monday. The transfer of 12 Yemeni nationals and three Afghans to the UAE comes amid a renewed push to whittle down the number of detainees held at the U.S. prison in Cuba that President Barack Obama aims to close. The Pentagon says 61 detainees now remain at Guantanamo, which was opened in January 2002 to hold foreign fighters suspected of links to the Taliban or the al-Qaida terrorist organization. During the Bush administration, 532 prisoners were released from Guantanamo, often in large groups to Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. The latest batch of released prisoners had been held without charge at Guantanamo, some for over 14 years. They were cleared for release by the Periodic Review Board, comprised of representatives from six U.S. government agencies. The UAE successfully resettled five detainees transferred there last year, according to the Pentagon.

Kerry Using Money To Make Deals Regarding Detainees. (WSJ) — In recent months, the transfers have increasingly involved Mr. Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden, who at times have worked to “close the deal” with foreign leaders on resettling or repatriating detainees, officials said. The U.S. usually pays foreign governments to monitor transferred detainees, and underwrites resettlement costs—for language instruction, vocational courses and the like—up to $100,000 each, a senior administration official said. Officials wouldn’t discuss specific security arrangements, but people familiar with the matter said the U.S. typically conducts electronic surveillance of former detainees, while local authorities keep physical tabs on them.

7am – A         Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission identifies medical marijuana growers and processors. The state has awarded preliminary licenses to more than 20 companies to grow and process marijuana in Maryland, a major step forward in the effort to make medical cannabis available to patients in Maryland. Licenses were awarded Monday to companies across the state, from Washington County in Western Maryland to Worcester County on the Eastern Shore. They plan to grow marijuana plants and turn them into pills, oils, extracts and other products for patients suffering from a range of illnesses. Several of the winning applicants have political connections.

7am – B/C     INTERVIEW – STEVE KASTENBAUM — Correspondent in RIO covering the Olympics

• OLYMPICS NEWS
• Pouring rain adds another hurdle to Olympic track and field. RIO DE JANEIRO — Imagine spending four years training for Olympic moment. And then, on the night of your event, it begins to rain. And not just rain but pour, as it did during early events here at the Olympic Stadium before an official delay after less than 30 minutes of nighttime competition.
• USA’s Simone Biles disappointed by mistake, not medal with bronze on beam. Biles claimed bronze in the balance beam final here at Rio Olympic Arena on Monday, taking third in an event she was favored to win after a mistake on a somersault almost brought her off the apparatus.
• Diving for gold: In a finish that blew us all away, Shaunae Miller of the Bahamas held on to edge American and reigning world champion Allyson Felix in the women’s 400 meters by diving forward at the finish line. The scene was stunning from any camera angle we could get our hands on.

7am – D         INTERVIEW – AMB. JOHN BOLTON – Former Ambassador to the UN

• Hillary Clinton: U.S. Ground Troops Against ISIS ‘Off the Table.’
• Trump To Propose Ideological Test For All Potential Immigrants
• Trump: Hillary Doesn’t Have The ‘Mental And Physical Stamina’ To Defeat ISIS
• Trump promises to work with NATO to defeat Islamic State
• Trump Says He Would Ally With Russia in Anti-ISIS Campaign
• 15 Guantanamo detainees sent to UAE in major transfer.
• In recent months, the transfers have increasingly involved Mr. Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden, who at times have worked to “close the deal” with foreign leaders on resettling or repatriating detainees, officials said.

7am – E         Tim Kaine says he now opposes offshore drilling, citing Defense Department concerns. (Richmond Times-Dispatch) Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., says he now opposes offshore drilling, citing concerns raised by the Department of Defense. The position puts Kaine, the Democratic nominee for vice president, in line with the position of Hillary Clinton, the party’s presidential nominee. Kaine, who had long called for a re-examination of the federal moratorium on offshore drilling, discussed his position in a video tweeted Monday by 350Action, a group that seeks to influence policymakers to combat climate change.  In the video clip, someone asks Kaine if he will “support Hillary Clinton and support a ban on offshore drilling.” Kaine says: “I actually am now in that position because the Obama administration has decided not to do offshore drilling because the Defense Department objects and I share those objections.” The Republican Party of Virginia, which circulated the video on Monday, said Kaine made the comments Saturday at a campaign event in Manchester, N.H. It accused Kaine of a flip-flop. “The wind in the Democrat party is blowing in a liberal direction, and Tim Kaine is shifting his positions yet again to fit in,” said John Whitbeck, chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia.

8am – A         INTERVIEW — WESLEY LOWERY — a national reporter covering law enforcement and justice for the Washington Post

• Latest on MILWAUKEE UNREST
• Milwaukee Mostly Calm Amid Curfew Following Violent Protests.  Milwaukee was mostly calm after overnight as a 10 p.m. curfew for teenagers went into effect following two violent street protests over the fatal police shooting of a local man. More than 100 National Guard members were on standby but there was “no major arson or property damage,” the city’s police chief Ed Flynn told reporters in an update shortly before midnight. Shots were fired outside the 7th District police station but it remained “open for business,” Flynn said. Six arrests were made earlier in the day.

8am – B         Breakfast News:

• You’ve been holding your coffee cup all wrong. (Indy) — Scientists in South Korea have decided to go away, with their equations, experiments, simulations and whatnot, to find the best way to hold coffee for minimal spillage. They have decided we’ve been doing it wrong. The study, published in the journal Achievements in Life Sciences found that if we hold a cup by the handle or the outside, we add to the force with which the coffee moves inside the cup, making a spill more likely. Instead, they recommend the ‘claw hand’ technique in which you grip over the top of the cup.
• Toasteroid: Smart-toaster that Prints Messages, Reminders, Weather Forecast, And Doodle. No more boring toast time because Toasteroid, the smart-toaster, can make every toast special. The trending products in the market now are smart devices ranging from smartphones, to smartwatches, to smart televisions. There is a new smart device, however that would brighten someone’s day with just a slice of bread. Toasteroid is a toaster that is able to print figures on a piece of bread to make toast time more special. Designers of the said smart-toaster put up the device on Kickstarter for pledges so that it would be funded and thus be put in the market. The toaster can print letters to form a brief message, print a reminder, weather forecast or a doodle. It uses a companion application and can be controlled using iOS or Android devices, The Verge reported. The device, Toasteroid can be easily operated using simple commands from the smartphone application. The project would come to the market if it reaches $150,000 worth of pledges on Kickstarter. So far, the project is backed by over 900 people and has accumulated a total of about $85,750.  If the quota of pledges is reached by September 20, 2016, Toasteroid would be funded. There is an $85 or more pledge for Toasteroid and $79 or more for Toasteroid Mini.

8am – C         OLYMPICS NEWS:

• Pouring rain adds another hurdle to Olympic track and field. RIO DE JANEIRO — Imagine spending four years training for Olympic moment. And then, on the night of your event, it begins to rain. And not just rain but pour, as it did during early events here at the Olympic Stadium before an official delay after less than 30 minutes of nighttime competition.
• USA’s Simone Biles disappointed by mistake, not medal with bronze on beam. Biles claimed bronze in the balance beam final here at Rio Olympic Arena on Monday, taking third in an event she was favored to win after a mistake on a somersault almost brought her off the apparatus.
• Diving for gold: In a finish that blew us all away, Shaunae Miller of the Bahamas held on to edge American and reigning world champion Allyson Felix in the women’s 400 meters by diving forward at the finish line. The scene was stunning from any camera angle we could get our hands on.
• The Reason Olympic Athletes Bite Their Medals. (Daily Caller) — Viewers watching the Summer Olympics in Rio have surely wondered why star athletes bite down on their gold, silver or bronze medals once they’re hung around their necks. They bite them mainly because the photographers tell them to do so. David Wallechinsky, the president of the International Society of Olympic Historians and co-author of “The Complete Book of the Olympics,” explained why in 2012. “It’s become an obsession with the photographers,” Wallechinsky said. “I think they look at it as an iconic shot, as something that you can probably sell. I don’t think it’s something the athletes would probably do on their own.”

8am – D         INTERVIEW —  LARRY KUDLOW – CNBC Senior Contributor and host of The Larry KudlowShow on WMAL Saturdays at 7 pm

• Larry’s thoughts on Trump’s ISIS speech:
• Hillary Clinton: U.S. Ground Troops Against ISIS ‘Off the Table.’
• Trump To Propose Ideological Test For All Potential Immigrants
• Trump: Hillary Doesn’t Have The ‘Mental And Physical Stamina’ To Defeat ISIS
• Trump promises to work with NATO to defeat Islamic State
• Trump Says He Would Ally With Russia in Anti-ISIS Campaign
• KUDLOW has a new book coming out “JFK and the Reagan Revolution: A Secret History of American Prosperity” on September 5th.
• Kudlow column: Insanity once more: The Hillary Clinton economic plan

8am – E         Fairfax City Residents Upset at Council’s Secrecy Following Mayor’s Meth Arrest. FAIRFAX CITY, Va – (WMAL) The Fairfax City Council is set to hold a public meeting tonight, one week after a much-maligned closed-door session that left residents feeling like they were being left in the dark following their mayor’s highly publicized resignation. Mayor R. Scott Silverthorne was arrested on August 4, charged with distributing Methamphetamine in exchange for group sex.