Live Blog from the Anchor Desk 11/11/08
Tonight on AC360°, the inside story on President-elect Barack Obama's meeting with President Bush at the Oval Office. Plus, the push to try to help America's "big three" automakers facing declining sales and profits. And, on this Veterans Day, Obama's battle plans for Afghanistan and Iraq.
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Evening Buzz: Another Bailout?
Maureen Miller
AC360° Writer
Tonight, we've learned new details on President-elect Barack Obama's meeting with President Bush in the Oval Office.
Sources on the Obama transition team say Mr. Obama urged Pres. Bush to take action to help the U.S. auto industry.
Here's a big reason why: 1,900 hourly workers are getting laid off at GM. That's on top of the 3,600 last week. And, shares of GM have fallen to their lowest level since World War Two.
America's so-called "big three" automakers (GM, Ford & Chrysler) are hurting badly. But should the U.S. government bail them out? We'd love to hear your thoughts.
A source tells CNN that Obama also talked with Pres. Bush about the need for a second stimulus package and an aid package for homeowners facing possible foreclosure.
And on this Veterans Day we're looking at Obama's battle plans for Iraq and Afghanistan. No new president has ever had to face so much on the job. CNN's National Security Analyst Peter Bergen has written a letter to Obama on how to rescue the war in Afghanistan. CLICK HERE TO READ BERGEN'S LETTER
Also tonight, President Bush talks with CNN's Heidi Collins. Hear what he says he regrets about his presidency and what he plans to do after he leaves the White House.
All that and more on AC360° at 10pm ET.
On the Radar: Wednesday
Cate Vojdik
AC360° Writer
Tick, tick… there are barely 70 days until Inauguration Day. (We’re counting so you don’t have to.) Tomorrow, President-elect Obama’s transition council holds its third meeting. There will be plenty to hash over: Treasury Secretary Paulson holds a news conference tomorrow to give an update on the financial rescue package; and Army Maj. Gen. Robert Cone will hold a press briefing on security and training operations in Afghanistan. These two crises are just two of the extreme challenges facing Obama. Candy Crowley will file a news-of-day piece on the latest in the transition.
On a lighter note, Randi Kaye will be digging deeper on Presidential Fitness and Americans’ fascination with it. Quick, how many of you have heard of Hooverball, the White House game du jour during the Hoover administration? If you’re drawing a blank, watch Randi’s report. President-elect Obama has already signaled that basketball, not Hooverball, will be the new game in town when he takes office. Randi will look at the fitness routines of presidents past and present to see what works best, what doesn’t and how former presidents’ preferred workouts have reflected on their presidencies. FULL POST
Beat 360° 11/11/08
Ready for today's Beat 360°?
Everyday we post a picture – and you provide the caption and our staff will join in too.
Tune in tonight at 10pm to see if you are our favorite!
Here is the 'Beat 360°' pic:
Hillary Clinton attends the 2008 Glamour Women of the Year Awards at Carnegie Hall on November 10, 2008 in New York City.
Have fun with it. We're looking forward to your captions!
Make sure to include your name, city, state (or country) so we can post your comment.
UPDATE: Check out our Beat 360° Winners!
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But wait!… There’s more!
When you win ‘Beat 360°’ not only do you get on-air prime-time name recognition (complete with bragging rights over all your friends, family, and jealous competitors), but you get a “I Won the Beat 360° Challenge” T-shirt!
Finding the First Dog...
In his speech after Tuesday night's election victory, President-elect Barack Obama promised his daughters a puppy to live with them in the White House.
The Obamas will hardly be the only first family to have a pet - George W. Bush's family has three dogs and a cat, and the Clintons had a cat and a dog. Thomas Jefferson even had two pet grizzly bears.
We want to know what kind of pet you would get if you lived in the White House. What dog breed do you think would be best for the Obamas? And what should they name their puppy?
You can submit your iReport photos here, or just leave us a comment with the best puppy for the president!
Spending Veteran's Day in Iraq
Arwa Damon | BIO
CNN International Correspondent
Its 9:30pm in Iraq’s capital on veterans day – sitting on the edge of a blast wall, I can hear the shouts coming from the handful of US troops playing basketball on the court nearby. Its something they couldn’t do a year ago – this base in southern Baghdad was mortared on a regular basis.
Few of the soldiers are even aware that it’s Veterans Day – far away from the ceremonies and parades back home in America, they are still fighting a war that the world would rather forget about. Many are on their 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th deployments.
“It’s a hard thing” 23 year old SSGT Raymundo Rogriduez who we interviewed yesterday for our veterans day package had told us. “When I did it the second time, coming back for this deployment I kind of told myself not to get too attached towards the end…because I knew when the day came it would be harder for me to get on that bus, that one last hug, that one last kiss, and you know tell them I will see you when I finish working.”
So many Americans made that promise but couldn’t keep it. Others have returned home physically and emotionally scarred, trying to re-enter the “normal” world in a society that is distanced and disassociated from war, where few can even begin to relate to what life here in Iraq is like.
“I think the thing that will change the most for me is that I will feel a great need to try and educate family and friends and anyone who will listen to what its really like over here.” 25 year old Lt. Rob Ganim on his first tour who just stopped by for a chat said.
“I think I will find myself emotional towards people that don’t understand and say things that they don’t have any true experience or knowledge of. I feel like its my responsibility as a soldier and a leader to make it clear what we’re really doing.”
The Shot: Real Housewives
The show "Real Housewives of Atlanta" has a fan in Anderson.
How a Republican learned to love Obama and win Pennsylvania
Blake Cabot
Technology Entrepreneur
I’m a fiscal conservative, and have been a Republican all my life. Although the social values issues pushed by Republicans over the past two decades have never appealed to me, I believe in international trade and less government, as long as it’s not accompanied by a ballooning deficit. And I expect competence.
But there has been no accountability in the Bush Administration: After Abu Ghraib and the disasters of Iraq, Bush didn’t fire Rumsfeld or any other senior member of his staff. So John Kerry had my vote in 2004, though I wasn’t happy about it. And adding $5 trillion to the debt - as Bush has done - is not fiscally conservative.
McCain’s idea of lowering taxes for everyone across the board – when we’re already adding hundreds of billions of dollars of debt – pushed me over the edge. And then to have Republicans call Obama a socialist, while they were nationalizing a huge part of the national economy – well, that has nothing to do with the Republican Party that I grew up in.
By contrast, Obama’s take on issues made a lot of sense to me, and he was inspiring as a public speaker – especially his speech in Iowa about how this whole country needed drastic changes.
So I decided this was the election of my generation and signed up to go work for Obama in mid-summer. On September 13th, I headed to Camp Obama in Brooklyn. The camp felt very much like business school training, focusing on motivation, management techniques, and specific tasks to be done in the field. Ten days later I was on my way to Lebanon, Pennsylvania as a deputy field organizer.
Lebanon is a largely Republican county in the middle of the state. Once a German Dutch settlement, the area had gone from union Democrat to socially conservative Reagan Republican, and remained overwhelmingly white.
I stayed at the home of local volunteers who housed me for over six weeks. I would come back often exhausted late in the evening, but there was Don, waiting up for me, to make sure I was home safe and fill me in on what had been happening. Toward the end of the campaign, as the nights became longer and more grueling, I found myself getting back at 4 or 5 a.m. There was Don, more than once, waking up and giving me a hug. My host couple couldn’t have been more wonderful.
360 Crime Blotter 11/11/08
Compiled by Gabriel Falcon
AC360 Writer
Welcome to the 360 Crime Blotter.
Some of the best crime writing comes from cops on the beat. But it’s not fiction. It’s fact, put down on paper in incident reports. We’re going to bring you their first-hand accounts. Taken from police department web sites, the official submissions run the gamut from mundane misdemeanors to the most serious of felonies. They all show what police officers across the country face 365 days a year. So let’s get started:
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Seattle police department
The Seattle Police Department is attempting to identify the individual pictured here. He is believed to be the suspect in a recent sexual assault that occurred in an area hospital in the 700 Block of Broadway. This crime occurred in the early morning hours of Saturday, November 1st. FULL POST
America's last World War I veteran
David J. DeJonge
President, DeJonge Studios
President & Co founder ~ World War One Memorial Foundation
I have spent many hours photographing historical figures and correspond off-and-on with some of them, but I am just a man from the Midwest who cares deeply for the American veteran.
This is the story of my effort to bring honor to an entire generation, a fight that has become deeply personal.
Twelve years ago I began a project titled ‘Faces of Five Wars,’ documenting the veterans who fought in the wars of the 20th century. I pleaded with a national organization of photographers to dispatch members to shoot portraits of every living World War I veteran. When this did not happen, I made it my mission and was honored to spend time with the last nine surviving Americans.
Photographing Lloyd Brown, the last World War I Navy veteran, changed my life.
When I contacted Lloyd’s daughter Nancy to schedule an interview and portrait session she said, “Just look for the mailbox. It will be the one with the name peeling off.”
How emblematic, I thought, of America’s failure to remember the veterans of a conflict marked by the horrors of poison gas and trench warfare. On Veterans Day or Memorial Day or when another World War I veteran died there would be a flurry of media attention, but like a wave on the sea this attention would splash ashore but then fade away.
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