October 2008 - Posts
By Jeannie Ohm, NBC News Correspondent
WASHINGTON – Inside the Oval Office, the president and his soon to be successor pose awkwardly for the cameras. The first question shouted to the President-elect, "Are you going to inherit a recession from the President?" The president in that scenario was Bill Clinton and standing next to him was George W. Bush.
That was how the scene unfolded eight years ago when Bush made his first visit to the White House as President-elect on December 19th, 2000. At the time, both Bush and Clinton brushed aside the question about the "R-word." But Clinton did offer this advice, "He'll have economic challenges and we ought to give him a chance to meet them, not try to figure it all out in advance."
Fast forward to the present, Bush's own successor won't have the same luxury of time. Thursday's report that the economy shrank 0.3 percent in the July-September period provides further evidence for economists who say the country is in a recession and probably has been for several months.
Even the president's top economic advisor, Edward Lazear, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, recently weighed in that parts of the country are in a recession.
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By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News
WASHINGTON – Army Sgt. Jeffrey Hardaway, 35, of Kileen, Texas, hobbled on his crutches to a microphone to say a few words after receiving a Purple Heart recently at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
"First of all I'd like to thank my wife for putting up with me," he said to laughter and applause from a roomful of soldiers in Walter Reed's Joel Auditorium on Oct. 23.
"And second, I'd like to thank everyone here at Walter Reed for helping me ... ," he continued. "Thirdly, I'd like to, ah, what a lot of people don't know is we lost our embed reporter that day, and his name was Julio. He was from Spain, and, um ... "
At this point Hardaway lost his composure and broke down.
" ... I'm sorry," he said moments later. "He became a close friend. I wish I could say something to his family."
Hardaway was talking about Julio Parrado, 32, a correspondent for the Spanish newspaper El Mundo and an embedded reporter with the U.S. Third Infantry Division at the outset of the war in Iraq. He was killed on April 7, 2003, by the same missile that seriously wounded Hardaway.
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By Jennifer Carlile, msnbc.com reporter
HONOLULU – "I was trippin' when I found out (Barack) Obama worked here – I was like, what?!" Jason Juan discussed the Democratic presidential candidate’s first job as he scooped ice cream at the Baskin-Robbins franchise on South King Street where Obama once worked.
"Newscasters came here, people came here from Japan; it was pretty cool," the 19-year-old said.
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| Jennifer Carlile/ msnbc.com |
| Jason Juan, who has worked at Honolulu's South King Street Baskin-Robbins for four years, gives an embarrassed grin as his picture is taken. |
Although the store is just a few blocks from Obama's old high school, Punahou, I was also taken aback to find out the presidential candidate received his first W-2 from this address, as it was my first place of employment as well. However, we probably donned the famous pink shirts about 15 years apart, and while it gave him a life-long distaste for ice cream, I still have a healthy appetite for the 31 flavors.
Last April, Obama told a crowd in Malvern, Pa., that working at the ice cream chain "was actually kind of embarrassing because you had to wear, like, a brown cap and stuff [like] the apron," he explained. "Girls would come in and you'd be trying to talk to them, and they wouldn't give you the time of day, because you were wearing this cap."
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By Libby Leist, NBC News Producer
Thanks to Mom, powerful people wear red.
Tiger Woods has said he wears red when he competes on Sundays, usually the final day of golf tournaments, because his mother told him it symbolizes power.
And Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said recently that thanks to her mother’s advice, she wears red when she wants "to feel really on top of things."
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| AFP/Getty Images file |
| U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Oct. 16. |
In an interview conducted with Girl Scout magazine in September and just released by the State Department today, Rice told a group of Girl Scouts that her favorite color is navy blue, but on some days she feels the urge to wear red.
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| Getty Images file |
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Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, speaks during a campaign rally on Sept. 29 in Ohio. |
"I love navy blue," Rice said. "But when I want to feel really on top of things I wear red I wear red because my mother told me once ...when I was younger, I liked to wear pretty muted colors. And my mother said, ‘When you get to be 35, all of a sudden you're going to want to wear red.’ I had no idea what she meant, but she was right. So when I want to feel really on top of things, I wear red."
In fact, Woods and Rice seem to have gotten good advice from mom. A study done by British scientists in 2005 concluded that athletes who wore red were more likely to succeed than those wearing other colors.
Based on studying the outcomes of four sports in the 2004 Olympics, the scientists determined that wearing red was more than just a lucky hunch.
"We find that wearing red is consistently associated with a higher probability of winning," the researchers wrote in an article in the journal Nature.
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| AFP/Getty Images |
| Sen. John McCain and his wife Cindy McCain attend a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Oct. 21. |
And while red is the symbolic color of the GOP, did Rice pass her mother’s advice onto Sarah Palin and Cindy McCain? The vice presidential candidate and McCain’s wife have been frequently sighted on the campaign trail wearing red.
By Kevin Tibbles, NBC News Correspondent
HOLLAND, Ohio – In a modest suburb, on a modest street, sits the modest ranch-style home of "Joe the Plumber." The Holland, Ohio resident whose name was bandied about at last night’s presidential debate more than twenty times.
If the powers that be had their wits about ‘em they'd name a street after him. Joe's Way perhaps. Maybe they could make it a one way street leading to the local H&R Block franchise.
Today it is all Joe from coast to coast as we all scramble to find out how he's doing while his fifteen minutes flash by.
Now this leafy neighborhood festooned with pumpkins and decorations is living its own private Halloween – complete with satellite trucks, bright lights and journalists pounding on doors trick or treating for tidbits of information.
So far, Joe remains amazed at being thrust into the spotlight. Let's see how long that lasts.
Video analyzer: How many mentions of 'Joe the Plumber' during debate
Click here for debate analysis in First Read
By John Rutherford, Producer, NBC News
WASHINGTON - Army Staff Sgt. Tara Harrilson was wounded three times in Afghanistan, the first time when she was stabbed while on a Special Forces mission in 2004.
"I was outside the wire with my team, and it was pretty much – long story, short – it was a setup, and there were a whole lot of bad men and four of us," the 27-year-old native of Gaithersburg, Md., said recently.
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| Louie Palu/ZUMA Press |
| Army Staff Sgt. Tara Harrilson at Walter Reed Medical Center on Sept. 26. |
"I didn't realize it until afterward, but I had been stabbed several times from different angles while trying to get out of the area," she said. "I can't go into more details than that."
Tara was wounded two more times in a series of explosions in 2005. In one of them, some body armor was blown off a hook and landed on top of her head, herniating her brain into her neck and causing a spinal cord injury. She also suffered shrapnel wounds on her arms, legs and chest in the explosions.
"I've lost a lot of vision in my left eye, hearing in the left ear," she said. "I can use my left side pretty good, just not real fine, like to grip and open a bottle, and I've lost a lot of feeling in it."
‘A slow process’
Tara, who walks with a cane, is still recovering from her wounds at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
"I think I'm doing really good for someone who just had brain surgery," she said.
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