Anna Sale

UPDATED 10:00 p.m.

Arwa, here on the night shift.

Not too much have changed this Anna blogged this morning. We’ve added a segment to the show to talk about Vice President Joe Biden’s trip to Israel. He’ll be wrapping up a four-day visit tomorrow and will be delivering a speech at Tel Aviv University. We’ll talk with Aaron David Miller from the Woodrow Wilson Center about where things stand when it comes to US-Israeli relations.

South by Southwest kicks off this week, and it’s for more than just music and movie fans. It’s also one of the most prestigious conventions in the technology world. Twitter was actually introduced there in 2007. We’ll talk with our Tech Correspondent Baratunde Thurston about what to watch out for this year.

UPDATED: 8:00 p.m.  

Alex here on the night shift. 

Not much has changed. We're still eager to find out about Iran-Afghan relations and to check in on the status of aid getting to Haiti.So that's leading the show tomorrow. 

Though we did get curious once we dove in a little deeper into a study on Americans and retirement. It reveals another sector of society living hand to mouth in part because of the recession. Shockingly few American workers have saved for old age, which means that they are working longer and longer into their "golden" years. So what does that mean for the younger generation waiting to get into, and move up in, the workforce. By showtime tomorrow we will have a hopeful answer for you. 

And we'll eat some jellyfish live on air, because that is an environmentally friendly food. Tune in tomorrow to find out what other sumptuous meals are good for the planet, and what large rodent makes for a good chili! 

UPDATED 5:45 p.m.

Alex Goldmark here. 

We're monitoring the media blitz of Rep. Eric Massa tonight as he heads for the cable news channels to defend himself against ethics accusations. And also to throw a few more parting shots at President Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. It's an inside story for Washington, but some valuable insights might come out on how work gets done in the Obama White House. Our partners at The New York Times are covering that here. 

Also, it is python hunting season in Florida. We'll bring you a sharp shooter. 

UPDATED: 5:15 p.m. 

Alex Goldmark, Senior Producer, here. 

All is still rolling along smoothly today. We're still planning on covering the elections in Iraq, and to bring you a slew of entertainment and movie coverage tomorrow ahead of this weekend's Oscars. 

With American manufacturing taking an especially big hit this recession, we want to check in on some one-company towns around the country. We'll hear from the Mayors of three small towns that are having different experiences with plant shutdowns, cutbacks and similar dangers to their fragile economies. 

UPDATED 7:15 p. m. 

Alex Goldmark here with the night shift update. 

We've lined up our live reporter interviews from Chile for tomorrow morning. We'll get a sense of how the curfews and looting has unfolded as the hunt for water and gas gets more desperate in some areas. But we will stick with our plans to find out the science behind tsunamis and quakes and also the construction techniques that kept the death toll so low. 

Other than that, not much has changed, which means that here on the night shift we can get into long debates about the meaning of "999 dead in Operation Enduring Freedom." And should we consider a fallen CIA agent in Afghanistan differently than a troop killed in Somalia? Or across the Afghan border in Uzbekistan? It's all part of Operation Enduring Freedom so what's a radio show to do when covering "The War in Afghanistan."  Here's the official count from the DoD with little explanation on how the number is derived. We will hear from the mother of one of the first troops to be killed in Afghanistan on how she marks her loss eight years later.

POSTED: Friday at 3 p.m. Anna Sale on the Friday shift. 

We're following the breaking news reports today that New York Governor David Paterson is ending his reelection bid, and the news that handwriting will change on the Obamas' social calendar as Desiree Rogers resigns as White House Social Secretary. For our show on Monday, we're looking across the snowy horizon to see where the news next week will be.

UPDATED 7:00 p.m

Alex Goldmark, Senior Producer here. The heavy snow here in New York City has knocked our our satellite links; we have no TV, no wire services, but hey, we can blog and make phone calls. 

One new addition to the show deals with the shootings after Hurricane Katrina. We're following up on the disturbing revelations out of New Orleans about a police cover-up of shootings. There has been some great reporting from Pro-Publica and The Times Picayune, so we'll hear from one of the reporters and find out what the local reaction has been with a chat with a leader from the local NAACP. 

In lighter news, we're compiling a list of Olympic highlights - and lowlights too - to share with you tomorrow. If you have some of your own, leave a comment, or call us at 877-8-MY-TAKE. See which ones we pick tomorrow morning. We'll also have a little number on why curling is all the rage ... on Wall Street.

It's still Friday, so yes, we will have a movie segment a week ahead of the Oscars. We'll tell you what you need to do (instead of watching) to come up to speed on all the nominations by the time the big show hits the stage/screen/etc. 

UPDATED 4:45 p.m. A quick update from Alex Goldmark, producing this evening, with some ideas we're considering.

We're still looking to find out how cities like Miami and New York can help Haitian schoolchildren with distance learning. American educators have just come back from Haiti; they're trying to assess how technology and willpower might meet the needs of kids who are still showing up each day in front of crumbled school houses, hoping for a plan to get their schooling back on track.  It's not certain this will be on tomorrow, but we all think it's an intriguing story.

The FCC is looking at broadband access in rural America. We're reaching out to mayors and business folks in states where many, many people still don't have reliable access to broadband internet. (Compare this to highly connected Finland, which recently declared broadband access something that every one of its citizen has a legal right to.) We want to know the economic and social change that might come with the new FCC plan. Maybe it's better without internet in some ways. What do we know here in wired NYC?  Another story that might come together for tomorrow, or might hit later on.

UPDATED: 4:45 p.m. - Adam Hirsch, Web Producer, here, on the afternoon swing shift.

The second day of our "Frustration Nation" series is coming together nicely: the conversation about the role of the media in political gridlock will now include our friend Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, and long time political journalist Michael Kinsley. They've each watched politics and political reporting for decades and somehow kept their sanity: we're expecting a lively conversation from them.

We'll be talking with journalist Najibullah Quraishi and his producer, Jamie Doran, who managed to get themselves embedded with a group of Taliban insurgents in northern Afghanistan and documented it for Frontline.  The footage is pretty incredible, and Quraishi apparently barely made it away from the group alive, after they began disagreeing about the wisdom of allowing a reporter to tag along with them.

And as a follow-on to our segment about credit card changes this morning, we'll be talking about changes to debit card fees with reporters from our partners at The New York Times; that's just coming together now, but we'll fill in the details later tonight.

UPDATED 7:30 p.m. 

Alex Goldmark here on the Sunday shift. We're rolling ahead and getting excited about our Frustration Nation series (see below for details).

We're watching a few different stories that might make it into tomorrow's show or later in the week. For one, the U.S. casualty count in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan has reached 999 according to icasualties.org. We've always felt very strongly on The Takeaway about supporting our troops and giving voice to the military community. Before that number hits the tragic four digit mark we are opening our airwaves to vets, servicemen and families of the fallen (and anyone else, too) to leave a tribute message to someone who has served in Afghanistan. Call and leave a message at 877-8-MY-TAKE and we'll play them on-air soon. 

In Washington, governors from around the country met today and are trying to push the White House to let them in on health care negotiations. If that looks like it might change the game in any major way, we're ready to cover that too. 

We'll have our usual Olympic update from Vancouver, which tomorrow might involve the gold medal win of Bode Miller, and possibly an answer to the question how many of the little kids spinning around their living rooms faux figure skating, will actually hit the ice and practice ... or maybe how in the world I can practice curling in New York City.

And finally, we will learn about the modern Brady Bunch family and what new research has to say about blended families and raising healthy and happy step children.

Since 1969, Appalshop has chronicled life in the Appalachian mountains in all its beauty and ugliness.

UPDATED 6:00

Alex Goldmark here from the night shift, hitting the ground running today. 

A few announcements are planned out of Washington that we want to be sure we're ready for. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, is set to comment on rising health care premiums. We're getting responses from some of the health insurance companies most criticized for upping their rates. And, as we are wont to do on this radio show, we're putting out lines to everyday folk about how their lives have been or might be changed by increased health costs and by any potential actions from HHS. 

The second political tidbit to keep an eye on is President Obama's new fiscal commission. The Senate wouldn't pass it so he's making it happen by executive order, but still trying to keep the bipartisan mission of debt reduction. What does this new executive style of bipartisanship show us about Washington right now? And will it work? 

We would have checked in on the Olympic news anyway, but now that Lindsey Vonn has become the first American to win downhill gold, we will do it with renewed aplomb and national pride. Or love of sport and international fraternity. Or maybe it's just me that has an Olympic obsession this week and the rest of the editorial team will finally tell me to stop watching TV in the office. 

UPDATED 7:45 p.m.

A planned segment  on a nationwide decrease in the number of illegal immigrants isn't panning out the way we thought, so we're looking around for a second-hour lead story.

UPDATED: 4:57 p.m.

About ten minutes ago, all the networks started showing file footage of former President Clinton behind BREAKING NEWS text saying he's been taken to a New York hospital with chest pains.  The afternoon crew has swung into action, calling historians, politicos and cardiologists ... the goal being to be ready no matter how the story progresses.

UPDATED: 12:45 p.m.

Anna Sale here on the day producing shift.

Friday marks one month since the earthquake devastated Haiti. As we've covered this story, we've seen how the quake has affected communities far from the island nation, including the hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in the United States. Tomorrow, we will check in with people in three different Haitian American communities to see how they are coping and how they feel they are faring in their attempts to help back home.

UPDATED 8:45 p.m.

Alex Goldmark here with a night shift update. 

The car trouble at Toyota motors on. And we at The Takeaway always like to hear from different perspectives affected by the top news stories, so when we heard that Georgetown, Kentucky was rallying behind the Japanese car maker we wanted to add their voice to the national conversation. Now, we know it's to be expected that a town with a Camry plant will root for Toyota, but we still want to hear how the town is "praying" for the company to get back on its feet. We'll talk to a local community leader and a car expert about how Toyota might bounce back from the recall rut they're in.

While the Obama administration's proposed changes to the No Child Left Behind law are grabbing all the education headlines, a new court ruling in Washington state highlights tensions brewing in many states capitals. A judge found that by not adequately funding education, Washington was not upholding its constitutional duty to provide "ample" education for all students. He ordered the legislature to figure out how to fix it.

UPDATED 4:30 PM SUNDAY

Alex Goldmark spending Super Bowl Sunday watching the news wires and the TV screen at the same time. Yes, it's quite manageable multi-tasking. 

We're monitoring the power plant explosion in Connecticut. It's an interesting study in breaking news. Original reports said "mass casualties" and potentially 250 injured. Those reports have been been scrubbed from websites, but I'm sure they will surface again soon if you're following the story. At The Takeaway, we're waiting to see what the scope of the damage is, both human and material.

And if the Saints win the Super Bowl, we expect New Orleans to party like its Fat Tuesday eight days early. And since we like a party, at least us on The Takeaway night shift, we're lining up someone to shake off the hangover and wake up early to bring us the highlights of the after party. If the Colts win, well, then we'll see how to cover in the morning. Sorry Peyton.

Car trouble continues for Toyota. But was it a problem of outsourcing... to the USA? We'll take a look at how much Toyota's foreign status played a part in the causes, and the exacerbation of their acceleration problems. 

Updated at 6:50 PM

Noel King here, filling in on the night shift.

We added a second guest to our coverage of Toyota’s woes in the wake of a worldwide recall of cars with faulty gas pedals. LA Times reporter Ken Bensigner co-authored a series of investigative stories that probe Toyota’s safety record. Bensigner’s reporting has drawn accolades and raised even more questions about how Toyota handles consumer complaints. Observers and analysts are in a frenzy over Toyota's safety problems, but Producer Marine Olivesi reached out to several Toyota owners this afternoon - and couldn't find even one who was concerned about the recall.

We continue our conversation on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell with Michael Hyacinthe, a former member of the Naval Construction Battalion who has some ideas of his own on what the military's policy toward gay and lesbian members should be. And since Hyacinthe’s is just one point of view; we’ll play more of the responses that flooded into our spinvox line.

As Anna wrote earlier, we’re covering the kick-off of the National Tea Party conference in Nashville. Fordham political science professor Tom De Luca joins us to put the Tea Party movement in context. You might be surprised just how many similar movements the US has inspired in its roughly 235-year history.

The cash-strapped city of Colorado Springs is cutting back on services that many people consider basic: things like mowing public parks and picking up the trash. Instead, the city wants residents to pitch in and fill the services gap. We talk to Mayor Lionel Rivera about whether or not Colorado Springs is on its way to becoming a Do-It-Yourself city.

Finally, Haitian American author Edwidge Dandicat shared with us a poignant Haitian tradition – which she says is helping her cope with the devastation caused by a massive earthquake that struck Haiti more than three weeks ago. You’ll hear all about it tomorrow morning.

UPDATED: 7:55 PM

Alex Goldmark here watching over the night shift.

A few things have changed since Anna's last post. We've been reading between the lines of some interesting comments about Don't Ask Don't Tell today. General Gates told a Congressional hearing: “If legislation is passed repealing the law, we feel strongly we will need time for implementation of that change.” Well, what changes exactly? How does officially recognizing that someone is gay change the way you treat them or the institutions of the military? And what are the potential ripple effects of altering the way gays are treated in the military that might go beyond life in uniform?

On a side note, we're having a fierce debate here on how much humor is appropriate, if any, for this topic. One producer has concientiously objected to pulling and editing some movie clips that others here think might lighten the tone and mood of the interview tomorrow. Tune in to see who gets their way.

We're also going to hear from the Boy Scouts. They are turning 100 years old this year, and in honor of that milestone they are making a special effort to reach out to hispanic youths.

Our deficit explanations (referenced below) that Anna was hunting down before might have to wait until Thursday. So goes live radio.

UPDATED: SUNDAY, 6:31 PM

Alex Goldmark on the Sunday shift.

President Obama's budget comes out tomorrow just as we'll be going live on-air. Our Washington correspondent, Todd Zwillich, will be on hand to extract the important implications from the heap of numbers. We expect to see some serious cuts as the president reveals how he will try to reign in spending. 

We're also following the murmurs around the Khalid-Sheik Mohammed trial. It appears that a passionate local community board in downtown Manhattan have raised enough of a fight to get the trial moved out of the neighborhood where the twin towers once stood. What's interesting, though, is how they organized and got their way, and why another town not too far away, is lobbying hard to host the trial New York didn't want. 

And we're waiting to find out why someone in Juarez, Mexico went on a shooting spree at a high school party leaving 13 dead. When we know, we'll let you know. 

All this week, we’ve been focusing on the State of Our Union. President Obama offered his version on Wednesday night. Today in Washington, Jefferson Keel, the president of the National Congress of American Indians and a member of the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, offers his take on the state of the Indian union.