Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

White House Giving Congress Details of What It Wants for Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan; Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial

Aired February 15, 2005 - 08:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Two people are said to be in stable condition this morning after a small plane crash in central Florida. Authorities say the single-engine plane stopped some 200 feet short of the runway, about 35 miles northwest of Orlando. The pilot and another person were killed in the crash.
And in California, another day of jury selection is set to begin in the Michael Jackson child molestation trial. Proceedings will get underway in about four hours from now. The defense presented its list of 100 possible witnesses yesterday. It read like a who's who of Hollywood. Among the names, Elizabeth Taylor, Jay Leno and NBA star Kobe Bryant. Some of the celebrities are Jackson's friends. Others have apparently met his accuser. More on that coming up a little bit later.

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Think that's trial's going to heat up? My gosh.

COLLINS: Yes, I think it will be really short too.

HEMMER: Thank you, Heidi.

We mentioned earlier the White House is giving Congress details of what it wants for the wars in Iraq, chiefly, and Afghanistan, and the price tag, too, and it is big.

Barbara Starr is at the Pentagon. Good morning.

BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Bill.

Well, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will be on Capitol Hill most of this week, looking for congressional support for the $82 billion budget supplemental request. Most of it indeed coming to the Pentagon about $75 billion or so, most of it of course going to continue the war in Iraq, which is now costing over $1 billion a week.

But let's have a look at where some of this money is going to go in military spending. Now about $12 billion of the $75 billion will go for repair and refurbishment of worn-out equipment, equipment that's been in the field for two years and needs some work. Included in that will be about $3 billion for armored vehicles, which, of course, was such a subject of controversy over the last several months. Another $5.7 billion for training those Iraqi security forces, key to getting them in the field and U.S. forces out of the field. And about another $5 billion for something they call army transformation, and what that's all about is restructuring the army to make it lighter, more mobile, more readily deployable, one of the big lessons from the war in Iraq.

There are other very interesting items in the budget supplemental, tsunami aid, about $950 million for aid to those Asian countries hit so hard by the tsunami. And about another $200 million for Palestinian security initiatives. This all, Bill, comes on top of the $2.5 trillion budget that the president sent to Congress last week.

O'BRIEN: Barbara, let me turn your attention to another topic on missile defense here. An interceptor rocket apparently did not lift off over the weekend. What happened?

STARR: Well, all of that, of course, also tied to the budget, because missile defense is one of the largest items in spending in the budget. This was the third test failure in a row. They say it was a software glitch, but this is continuing to put national missile defense behind schedule at a time when there so is much concern, of course, on the political side about countries like North Korea, and the missile defense budget, oddly enough, is being cut by about $5 billion over six years. They say it's to better focus it on getting that missile defense into the field in the near term. But the third test failure in a row now -- Bill.

HEMMER: Barbara Starr at the Pentagon there now. Thanks, Barbara -- Soledad.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, his dream lives on in the hearts of many, but it will still take money to build a national memorial for Martin Luther King Jr. Organizers hope to raise $5 million this month alone for a monument to Dr. King on the mall in Washington.

Harry Johnson is the president of the MLK National Memorial Foundation. He's in Washington this morning.

Nice to see you, sir. Thanks for being with us.

HARRY JOHNSON, PRESIDENT, MLK NATL. MEMORIAL FOUNDATION: Good morning. Thank you for allowing me to be on your program this morning.

O'BRIEN: Well, you're kind to say that.

February, as we mentioned, a very important month for you. You have a goal, if I'm not mistaken, of $5 million for this month alone. Halfway through the month, how are you doing so far?

JOHNSON: We're halfway there. We're excited. This was going to be our month for our public rollout. We've been in the quiet phase of the campaign for the past few years, thanks to good corporate supporters from General Motors to Tommy Hilfiger. And we're glad to please announce just last month that, Aflac, the duck insurance, gave us a million dollars. So this month, we want to roll out our public phase of this campaign with new PSAs, and we're pleased to announce we want to drive people to our Web site to pick up our new bracelet, which is the Build the Dream Bracelet, which we're asking people to go to our Web site, at www.buildthedream, or call our toll-free number, 888-4-the-dream and purchase one of our bracelets for awareness and help get the word out about the memorial.

O'BRIEN: See, and I was going to ask you about that, but now you've done your promo yourself, so we can move on to another thing. Are you on schedule to break ground in two years, is one of the estimates that I heard you were hopeful for. Do you think you can do that? You need to get to $100 million before you can do that, right?

JOHNSON: Yes, we do. We need to raise $66 million to break ground, and we're excited where we are. Right now, in comparison to the other memorials that have been built on the mall, WWII and FDR, we are further ahead than what they were at the same timeframe. We are set to go before some of our commissions next month to get our final design approval. We're excited that we're going to have the money in 2005 and break ground a year early. So This is an exciting time for us and the memorial foundation.

JOHNSON: It was approved by Congress in 1996, if I'm not mistaken. You've raised $34.5 million, and as we mentioned, the $100 million is sort of that big number you need to not only build, but also maintain it. Some people might say well, then, it seems like it's kind of slow. Are you feeling that the public's response has not been what you'd like it to be?

JOHNSON: Yes, this month is our month to get public awareness out there. We have new PSAs running with Morgan Freeman, and we're excited about the Nelly PSA to reach younger audiences. This month is going to be our month to get public awareness out. We are hopeful that once the public really hears about the memorial, that they will see the call to action and want to donate. With the millions of viewers that are viewing you today, if every American were to send in one dollar, this memorial would have been built, and can be built. If just our younger folks would send in their nickels and quarters, we can build this memorial. We're excited. I like saying, you know, who should build this memorial to Dr. King? It should be everyone who ever benefited from anything Dr. King said or did. And, Soledad, That includes all of us.

O'BRIEN: I know you said we're excited a number of times. Are you frustrated at all at the pace, or do you feel like it's going fine?

JOHNSON: No, it's going fine. I'm not frustrated. Doing this kind of work, you can't get frustrated. You're happy. We're asking people to help build the people's memorial. So I am excited about this, for what Dr. King meant to this country and, indeed, the world.

And finally, I heard the budget about the $300 million for our defense on the war of terror. This will be the first memorial on the mall to a man of peace. That is exciting to me, and it should be to all of America.

O'BRIEN: Harry Johnson is the president of the MLK Jr. National Memorial Foundation.

Good luck in reaching your goal.

JOHNSON: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: Thanks for coming in to talk to us about it.

JOHNSON: Appreciate you. Thank you.

(WEATHER REPORT)

HEMMER: A legend has passed away. The all-time bowl great Dick Weber has died. He died in his sleep at his home near St. Louis on Sunday night. He was one of bowling's first national TV stars and a funding member of the Professional Bowler's Association. Cause of death not known just yet. Dick Weber was 75, and so well known, put his name on that sport across the country.

O'BRIEN: How about this? Savannah State trying to forget its new distinction. Last night, it became the second Division i school in 50 years to go an entire season without a single win. Savannah State is the team you're watching there in white. Its 49-44 loss to Florida A&M kept the disappointing 0-28 season. The other school that shares this bad title is Prairie View in Texas.

And it looks like the NHL could officially call off the season any day now. But who needs the pros when you have hockey like this? It's Boston University versus Northeastern in the famed Beanpot Tournament. Fourteen minutes into overtime, B.U. freshman Chris Bourque back hands a loose puck into the net, gives the Terriers a 3-2 win. Bourque is the son of former Boston Bruins great and NHL hall- of-famer Ray Bourque. Each year, the Beanpot is played by the four Division I hockey teams, BU, BC, Northeastern and Harvard.

HEMMER: What happened to Harvard? What were they, second place?

O'BRIEN: Silver medal.

HEMMER: Pitchers and catchers report, by the way. Baseball season is starting to crank up.

O'BRIEN: Woo hoo!

HEMMER: I knew you were wondering.

What do you do when you're a bestselling author and your worst critic is your own husband? We'll hear from such a couple in a moment on that.

O'BRIEN: Also some popular painkillers have been linked to serious health risks. Dr. Gupta, though, has some alternatives. One suggestion, change your diet. It could ease the pain. That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: Welcome back, everyone. Paging Dr. Gupta this morning about healthy alternatives to prescription pain killers. And while the safety of drugs like Vioxx and Celebrex is now being debated, how do you spell relief? Sanjay is here to help out on that this morning.

Good morning.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

You know, this has been such a big topic, the fate of these pain relievers. FDA actually having hearings this week, three days of hearings, to try to figure out the fate of a lot of these popular medications, like Vioxx, Celebrex, Aleve even. You'll remember millions of Americans take these medications to fight off point. They took Vioxx, then that was taken off the market, so a lot of them switched to Celebrex. There were concerns about Celebrex. They switched to Aleve. Concerns about Aleve as well. So a lot of patients throwing up their hands, a lot of doctors as well, not sure what to really do.

Getting back to the basics as far as trying to cure pain, relieve pain, at least, some of the things that they've been recommending for some time really goes back to just good, plain common sense. Healthier eating. You got to lose some weight if you have arthritic pain. Physical therapy. They say there's a saying that says motion is lotion. The more you can move it around, the more you provide lotion to your joints. That fits into exercise as well. The basics. Everyone knows this stuff. But this is an opportunity to maybe get away from the medications a bit and remind people what really works.

HEMMER: I like the motion idea. What about eating and diet. Can you eat certain foods that will keep pain away at a better degree?

GUPTA If you look at the source of pain, what really hurts when someone has arthritis, it really is inflammation. People have measured this. There are ways of measuring the inflammation. If you can cut down on the inflammation through antiinflammatory medications we've heard of, but diet as well. There are some natural antiinflammatory foods, foods that do that better than others. Again, fruits and vegetables, strawberries, citrus, melons in particular. Any vegetables, really. Also, nuts, soy, flax seed oil and flax seeds. Oily fish, fish with a lot of the Omega 3 fatty acids.

HEMMER: Love the salmon.

GUPTA: Yes, exactly.

HEMMER: What about staying away from certain foods? What do you recommend?

GUPTA: And there are foods that are going to sort of worsen that inflammation as well. You know, again, going back to the root of pain, what are those foods that might make it worse? People sort of know this instinctively. They eat more of these foods, they don't feel as well. Caffeine, high animal fats, lots of processed foods can do it as well.

Really, we're seeing a sort of sea change here when it comes to inflammation, when it comes to people with arthritis. A lot of these medications, they were supposed to be the great promise. They cause more harm in so many ways than they do benefits. So what are we going to turn to? We're hopefully going to figure that out.

HEMMER: You say a sea change.

GUPTA: Really, the Cox-2 inhibitors, the Vioxx, Celebrex, when they came up, they were supposed to be the sort of panacea for arthritis for so many, and they worked for a lot of people. Unfortunately, when you have these risks of cardiac disease, that's too much of a risk to play with.

HEMMER: We can't lose the caffeine, though.

GUPTA: I know you can't.

HEMMER: Don't take away the coffee.

GUPTA: How are those joints feeling, by the way?

HEMMER: They're feeling just fine now with the coffee in them.

Thank you, Sanjay.

GUPTA: All right. Take care.

HEMMER: Here's Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Well, a stunning revelation from one of Hollywood's most famous duos, Cheech and Chong. The "Cafferty File" is up next. Stay with us on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: They haven't collaborated on paper, but they're one heck of a writing team. Pat Conroy's given us "The Great Santini," "Beach Music" and "The Prince of Tides." His latest now is "The Pat Conroy Cookbook." Cassandra King's new novel is called "The Same Sweet Girls." The two authors are married to their work, and each as well, and recently I got a chance to speak to both of them.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: You have both written memoirs. Cassandra, yours is called "The Same Sweet Girls," which I understand a little bit of a tongue-in-cheek title. It's about college friends who meet every year for a reunion, and it's based on your own experiences. Tell me a little bit about what made you take your experience and turn it into a book.

CASSANDRA KING, AUTHOR, "THE SAME SWEET GIRLS": Soledad, I thought that these women all had so many experiences that other women would identify with, having to do with raising children, changing careers, having difficulty in relationships, and going through several marriages and so forth. And I've been threatening to write this book for a long time.

O'BRIEN: Now, Pat, your book is a cookbook. And it's sort of maybe better described as a memoir with some recipes in between the pages as well. Why did you decide to do it that way?

PAT CONROY, AUTHOR, "THE PAT CONROY COOKBOOK": You know, I was trying to figure out how to write an autobiography without making it the most boring book in the world and I read other writers' autobiographies and I could not believe -- they were putting me to sleep at night. So I tried to figure out a sneaky, secret way to do an a autobiography, and I came across a cookbook. I thought, let me write about the great places I've been, the great people I've known, the great meals I've eaten and let me throw it into a cookbook form to fool everybody, including me.

O'BRIEN: You're being funny and sarcastic, of course, because I think that's a great idea. You know, I mean, if you think about how you've lived a life, you're always talking about what you ate, who you met, things like that. It seems to work really well. Now, you're married to each other. You're both writers. Do you -- what's your writing strategy? Do you write separately? Do you work collaboratively ever? Do you allow each other to read works that aren't quite finished? How does it work?

KING: Yes, we do work totally separately. We each have our own writing space in the house. And sometimes we don't see each other all day. We do this several, several times where we just retreat to our rooms and retreat to our own world and so we don't collaborate. But after we have a draft, I'm always eager for Pat to read it and see what he thinks.

O'BRIEN: Do you go to each other for critiques? Do you like getting -- I mean, it's got to be hard to get a critique of something as intensely personal from the person who's closest to you in your life, right?

KING: Right, yes. That's hard. I just -- I don't critique Pat's work a lot.

O'BRIEN: Because he's got the thin skin, or what?

KING: Yes.

CONROY: Cassandra always tells me that her writing is a lot better than mine, so I will get her -- a good day for us when is I put five hand written pages on the stairs leading to her writing room, and I will find ten pages of type-written manuscript script on my pillow.

O'BRIEN: And you guys are not competitive at all. Final question for you, Cassandra, is he a good cook? I mean, he's got the cook book now, "The Pat Conroy Cookbook." Can he really cook?

KING: He really can cook. He's a fabulous cook. That is one of my favorite things about being married to Pat is that he also cooks.

O'BRIEN: Icing on the cake. Authors Pat Conroy and Cassandra King talking with us.

HEMMER: Nice stuff.

KING: Here's Jack.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: There you go. A big name insurance company billed Medicare for some concert performers. There's no fraud in our government. and Circuit City could be up for sale. Andy Serwer's "Minding Your Business."

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Yes, good morning.

Let's talk about Circuit City, first of all. Here's a stock that's going to move today. Guarantee you. Circuit City announcing this morning it's received an unsolicited takeover bid from a company called High Fields Capitol -- that's a Boston hedge fund. They want to buy the whole kit and caboodle. Not just a piece of the company. $17 a share, we want everything. The consumer electronics giant obviously in a dogfight with Best Buy these days.

And you're seeing this more and more with these hedge funds. They're getting so big, they have to put the money to work. They're looking to buy whole things. We saw this with ESL, Eddie Lampert's company, with Sears and K-Mart.

Now HealthSouth. You know, I love this story, I love this company, I love Richard Scrushy, because the news that comes out of this trial just continues to blow my mind. The "Birmingham News" reporting that the company HealthSouth billed Medicare for its annual meeting entertainers.

And they were some amazing entertainment. We're talking about A- list acts. So here's what happened. They'd have this big convention down in Orlando. And here's who they have. Faith Hill, Reba McEntire, Alabama, Amy Grant, Brooks and Dunn, K.C. and the Sunshine Band. There you go, Brooks and Dunn right there. You're allowed to put a little bit of overhead into Medicare, but not this kind of stuff.

I mean, this is -- $325 million they tried to shuttle through here. And the regulators picked it up. I mean, you think about some of the songs the entertainers could do now, now that they knew about this. Of course, the entertainers had no idea. Say Faith Hill, this fraud, this fraud. Or I can feel your fraud. How about this, K.C. and the Sunshine Band, shake, shake, shake your Medicare fraud. One thing that K.C. wouldn't have to change, though, would be that's the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it.

CAFFERTY: All right. Time for "The File." Cheech and Chong, those lame pot smoking actors that made those crummy films -- Andy's taking exception -- made those crummy films back in the '60s and '70s, say they never inhaled in their marijuana-themed movies. Maybe if they had, the pictures would have been better. The two appeared together for the first time in 20 years at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen this last weekend.

Tommy Chong said that the one time they did light up during the movie "Up in Smoke," they wasted a ton of time waiting to hear the cue, which they kept missing. Marin and Chong, who recently completed a nine-month sentence for trying to sell marijuana pipes on the Internet, said they are planning a new film, possible titles include "Lord of the Smoke," and "Grumpy Old Stoners."

SERWER: Great Americans.

CAFFERTY: Sylvester Stallone has published the premiere issue of "Sly" magazine, aimed at teaching men how to quote, "stay in the game past 40." Stallone is the magazine's 58-year-old editorial director and as such, his picture appears 34 times in the 120-page inaugural addition.

SERWER: Only 34?

CAFFERTY: "Sly" magazine includes advice on diet, clothing, travel, cigars, alcohol, HDTVs and sex. The premiere March issue features porn star Jenna Jamison, a Q & A with actor Ray Liotta, 25 ways to beat the clock and a sneak peek into "Rocky 6," in which Rocky Balboa competes in wheelchair races against residents of a nursing home.

Looking for a new way to blow your money? How about kissing school? There is one in Seattle, Washington. Where else would they have such a thing? $275 and a Seattle shrink will teach you how to pucker up. Sherri Byrd (ph) oversees couples who create love nests with sleeping bags and pillows on the classroom floor.

Byrd says most of students are married, they're in their late 30s to mid 50s. Byrd's number one tip for a great kiss? Slow down. She says men in particular rush through kisses and let their minds wander too much. No doubt because they're thinking about what comes next. That's just the way men are.

SERWER: They're like dogs.

O'BRIEN: Dinner.

CAFFERTY: Dinner. A cigarette.

HEMMER: Today's top stories, coming up in a moment, including the latest on the Michael Jackson matter. The list of potential witnesses is out and it reads like a who's who in Hollywood. Details on that list in a moment when we continue after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: Good morning. Investigators in Beirut learning just how massive that bomb was 24 hours ago that killed the former prime minister. This morning, surveying the devastation from the center of that blast.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired February 15, 2005 - 08:30   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Two people are said to be in stable condition this morning after a small plane crash in central Florida. Authorities say the single-engine plane stopped some 200 feet short of the runway, about 35 miles northwest of Orlando. The pilot and another person were killed in the crash.
And in California, another day of jury selection is set to begin in the Michael Jackson child molestation trial. Proceedings will get underway in about four hours from now. The defense presented its list of 100 possible witnesses yesterday. It read like a who's who of Hollywood. Among the names, Elizabeth Taylor, Jay Leno and NBA star Kobe Bryant. Some of the celebrities are Jackson's friends. Others have apparently met his accuser. More on that coming up a little bit later.

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Think that's trial's going to heat up? My gosh.

COLLINS: Yes, I think it will be really short too.

HEMMER: Thank you, Heidi.

We mentioned earlier the White House is giving Congress details of what it wants for the wars in Iraq, chiefly, and Afghanistan, and the price tag, too, and it is big.

Barbara Starr is at the Pentagon. Good morning.

BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Bill.

Well, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will be on Capitol Hill most of this week, looking for congressional support for the $82 billion budget supplemental request. Most of it indeed coming to the Pentagon about $75 billion or so, most of it of course going to continue the war in Iraq, which is now costing over $1 billion a week.

But let's have a look at where some of this money is going to go in military spending. Now about $12 billion of the $75 billion will go for repair and refurbishment of worn-out equipment, equipment that's been in the field for two years and needs some work. Included in that will be about $3 billion for armored vehicles, which, of course, was such a subject of controversy over the last several months. Another $5.7 billion for training those Iraqi security forces, key to getting them in the field and U.S. forces out of the field. And about another $5 billion for something they call army transformation, and what that's all about is restructuring the army to make it lighter, more mobile, more readily deployable, one of the big lessons from the war in Iraq.

There are other very interesting items in the budget supplemental, tsunami aid, about $950 million for aid to those Asian countries hit so hard by the tsunami. And about another $200 million for Palestinian security initiatives. This all, Bill, comes on top of the $2.5 trillion budget that the president sent to Congress last week.

O'BRIEN: Barbara, let me turn your attention to another topic on missile defense here. An interceptor rocket apparently did not lift off over the weekend. What happened?

STARR: Well, all of that, of course, also tied to the budget, because missile defense is one of the largest items in spending in the budget. This was the third test failure in a row. They say it was a software glitch, but this is continuing to put national missile defense behind schedule at a time when there so is much concern, of course, on the political side about countries like North Korea, and the missile defense budget, oddly enough, is being cut by about $5 billion over six years. They say it's to better focus it on getting that missile defense into the field in the near term. But the third test failure in a row now -- Bill.

HEMMER: Barbara Starr at the Pentagon there now. Thanks, Barbara -- Soledad.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, his dream lives on in the hearts of many, but it will still take money to build a national memorial for Martin Luther King Jr. Organizers hope to raise $5 million this month alone for a monument to Dr. King on the mall in Washington.

Harry Johnson is the president of the MLK National Memorial Foundation. He's in Washington this morning.

Nice to see you, sir. Thanks for being with us.

HARRY JOHNSON, PRESIDENT, MLK NATL. MEMORIAL FOUNDATION: Good morning. Thank you for allowing me to be on your program this morning.

O'BRIEN: Well, you're kind to say that.

February, as we mentioned, a very important month for you. You have a goal, if I'm not mistaken, of $5 million for this month alone. Halfway through the month, how are you doing so far?

JOHNSON: We're halfway there. We're excited. This was going to be our month for our public rollout. We've been in the quiet phase of the campaign for the past few years, thanks to good corporate supporters from General Motors to Tommy Hilfiger. And we're glad to please announce just last month that, Aflac, the duck insurance, gave us a million dollars. So this month, we want to roll out our public phase of this campaign with new PSAs, and we're pleased to announce we want to drive people to our Web site to pick up our new bracelet, which is the Build the Dream Bracelet, which we're asking people to go to our Web site, at www.buildthedream, or call our toll-free number, 888-4-the-dream and purchase one of our bracelets for awareness and help get the word out about the memorial.

O'BRIEN: See, and I was going to ask you about that, but now you've done your promo yourself, so we can move on to another thing. Are you on schedule to break ground in two years, is one of the estimates that I heard you were hopeful for. Do you think you can do that? You need to get to $100 million before you can do that, right?

JOHNSON: Yes, we do. We need to raise $66 million to break ground, and we're excited where we are. Right now, in comparison to the other memorials that have been built on the mall, WWII and FDR, we are further ahead than what they were at the same timeframe. We are set to go before some of our commissions next month to get our final design approval. We're excited that we're going to have the money in 2005 and break ground a year early. So This is an exciting time for us and the memorial foundation.

JOHNSON: It was approved by Congress in 1996, if I'm not mistaken. You've raised $34.5 million, and as we mentioned, the $100 million is sort of that big number you need to not only build, but also maintain it. Some people might say well, then, it seems like it's kind of slow. Are you feeling that the public's response has not been what you'd like it to be?

JOHNSON: Yes, this month is our month to get public awareness out there. We have new PSAs running with Morgan Freeman, and we're excited about the Nelly PSA to reach younger audiences. This month is going to be our month to get public awareness out. We are hopeful that once the public really hears about the memorial, that they will see the call to action and want to donate. With the millions of viewers that are viewing you today, if every American were to send in one dollar, this memorial would have been built, and can be built. If just our younger folks would send in their nickels and quarters, we can build this memorial. We're excited. I like saying, you know, who should build this memorial to Dr. King? It should be everyone who ever benefited from anything Dr. King said or did. And, Soledad, That includes all of us.

O'BRIEN: I know you said we're excited a number of times. Are you frustrated at all at the pace, or do you feel like it's going fine?

JOHNSON: No, it's going fine. I'm not frustrated. Doing this kind of work, you can't get frustrated. You're happy. We're asking people to help build the people's memorial. So I am excited about this, for what Dr. King meant to this country and, indeed, the world.

And finally, I heard the budget about the $300 million for our defense on the war of terror. This will be the first memorial on the mall to a man of peace. That is exciting to me, and it should be to all of America.

O'BRIEN: Harry Johnson is the president of the MLK Jr. National Memorial Foundation.

Good luck in reaching your goal.

JOHNSON: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: Thanks for coming in to talk to us about it.

JOHNSON: Appreciate you. Thank you.

(WEATHER REPORT)

HEMMER: A legend has passed away. The all-time bowl great Dick Weber has died. He died in his sleep at his home near St. Louis on Sunday night. He was one of bowling's first national TV stars and a funding member of the Professional Bowler's Association. Cause of death not known just yet. Dick Weber was 75, and so well known, put his name on that sport across the country.

O'BRIEN: How about this? Savannah State trying to forget its new distinction. Last night, it became the second Division i school in 50 years to go an entire season without a single win. Savannah State is the team you're watching there in white. Its 49-44 loss to Florida A&M kept the disappointing 0-28 season. The other school that shares this bad title is Prairie View in Texas.

And it looks like the NHL could officially call off the season any day now. But who needs the pros when you have hockey like this? It's Boston University versus Northeastern in the famed Beanpot Tournament. Fourteen minutes into overtime, B.U. freshman Chris Bourque back hands a loose puck into the net, gives the Terriers a 3-2 win. Bourque is the son of former Boston Bruins great and NHL hall- of-famer Ray Bourque. Each year, the Beanpot is played by the four Division I hockey teams, BU, BC, Northeastern and Harvard.

HEMMER: What happened to Harvard? What were they, second place?

O'BRIEN: Silver medal.

HEMMER: Pitchers and catchers report, by the way. Baseball season is starting to crank up.

O'BRIEN: Woo hoo!

HEMMER: I knew you were wondering.

What do you do when you're a bestselling author and your worst critic is your own husband? We'll hear from such a couple in a moment on that.

O'BRIEN: Also some popular painkillers have been linked to serious health risks. Dr. Gupta, though, has some alternatives. One suggestion, change your diet. It could ease the pain. That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: Welcome back, everyone. Paging Dr. Gupta this morning about healthy alternatives to prescription pain killers. And while the safety of drugs like Vioxx and Celebrex is now being debated, how do you spell relief? Sanjay is here to help out on that this morning.

Good morning.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

You know, this has been such a big topic, the fate of these pain relievers. FDA actually having hearings this week, three days of hearings, to try to figure out the fate of a lot of these popular medications, like Vioxx, Celebrex, Aleve even. You'll remember millions of Americans take these medications to fight off point. They took Vioxx, then that was taken off the market, so a lot of them switched to Celebrex. There were concerns about Celebrex. They switched to Aleve. Concerns about Aleve as well. So a lot of patients throwing up their hands, a lot of doctors as well, not sure what to really do.

Getting back to the basics as far as trying to cure pain, relieve pain, at least, some of the things that they've been recommending for some time really goes back to just good, plain common sense. Healthier eating. You got to lose some weight if you have arthritic pain. Physical therapy. They say there's a saying that says motion is lotion. The more you can move it around, the more you provide lotion to your joints. That fits into exercise as well. The basics. Everyone knows this stuff. But this is an opportunity to maybe get away from the medications a bit and remind people what really works.

HEMMER: I like the motion idea. What about eating and diet. Can you eat certain foods that will keep pain away at a better degree?

GUPTA If you look at the source of pain, what really hurts when someone has arthritis, it really is inflammation. People have measured this. There are ways of measuring the inflammation. If you can cut down on the inflammation through antiinflammatory medications we've heard of, but diet as well. There are some natural antiinflammatory foods, foods that do that better than others. Again, fruits and vegetables, strawberries, citrus, melons in particular. Any vegetables, really. Also, nuts, soy, flax seed oil and flax seeds. Oily fish, fish with a lot of the Omega 3 fatty acids.

HEMMER: Love the salmon.

GUPTA: Yes, exactly.

HEMMER: What about staying away from certain foods? What do you recommend?

GUPTA: And there are foods that are going to sort of worsen that inflammation as well. You know, again, going back to the root of pain, what are those foods that might make it worse? People sort of know this instinctively. They eat more of these foods, they don't feel as well. Caffeine, high animal fats, lots of processed foods can do it as well.

Really, we're seeing a sort of sea change here when it comes to inflammation, when it comes to people with arthritis. A lot of these medications, they were supposed to be the great promise. They cause more harm in so many ways than they do benefits. So what are we going to turn to? We're hopefully going to figure that out.

HEMMER: You say a sea change.

GUPTA: Really, the Cox-2 inhibitors, the Vioxx, Celebrex, when they came up, they were supposed to be the sort of panacea for arthritis for so many, and they worked for a lot of people. Unfortunately, when you have these risks of cardiac disease, that's too much of a risk to play with.

HEMMER: We can't lose the caffeine, though.

GUPTA: I know you can't.

HEMMER: Don't take away the coffee.

GUPTA: How are those joints feeling, by the way?

HEMMER: They're feeling just fine now with the coffee in them.

Thank you, Sanjay.

GUPTA: All right. Take care.

HEMMER: Here's Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Well, a stunning revelation from one of Hollywood's most famous duos, Cheech and Chong. The "Cafferty File" is up next. Stay with us on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: They haven't collaborated on paper, but they're one heck of a writing team. Pat Conroy's given us "The Great Santini," "Beach Music" and "The Prince of Tides." His latest now is "The Pat Conroy Cookbook." Cassandra King's new novel is called "The Same Sweet Girls." The two authors are married to their work, and each as well, and recently I got a chance to speak to both of them.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: You have both written memoirs. Cassandra, yours is called "The Same Sweet Girls," which I understand a little bit of a tongue-in-cheek title. It's about college friends who meet every year for a reunion, and it's based on your own experiences. Tell me a little bit about what made you take your experience and turn it into a book.

CASSANDRA KING, AUTHOR, "THE SAME SWEET GIRLS": Soledad, I thought that these women all had so many experiences that other women would identify with, having to do with raising children, changing careers, having difficulty in relationships, and going through several marriages and so forth. And I've been threatening to write this book for a long time.

O'BRIEN: Now, Pat, your book is a cookbook. And it's sort of maybe better described as a memoir with some recipes in between the pages as well. Why did you decide to do it that way?

PAT CONROY, AUTHOR, "THE PAT CONROY COOKBOOK": You know, I was trying to figure out how to write an autobiography without making it the most boring book in the world and I read other writers' autobiographies and I could not believe -- they were putting me to sleep at night. So I tried to figure out a sneaky, secret way to do an a autobiography, and I came across a cookbook. I thought, let me write about the great places I've been, the great people I've known, the great meals I've eaten and let me throw it into a cookbook form to fool everybody, including me.

O'BRIEN: You're being funny and sarcastic, of course, because I think that's a great idea. You know, I mean, if you think about how you've lived a life, you're always talking about what you ate, who you met, things like that. It seems to work really well. Now, you're married to each other. You're both writers. Do you -- what's your writing strategy? Do you write separately? Do you work collaboratively ever? Do you allow each other to read works that aren't quite finished? How does it work?

KING: Yes, we do work totally separately. We each have our own writing space in the house. And sometimes we don't see each other all day. We do this several, several times where we just retreat to our rooms and retreat to our own world and so we don't collaborate. But after we have a draft, I'm always eager for Pat to read it and see what he thinks.

O'BRIEN: Do you go to each other for critiques? Do you like getting -- I mean, it's got to be hard to get a critique of something as intensely personal from the person who's closest to you in your life, right?

KING: Right, yes. That's hard. I just -- I don't critique Pat's work a lot.

O'BRIEN: Because he's got the thin skin, or what?

KING: Yes.

CONROY: Cassandra always tells me that her writing is a lot better than mine, so I will get her -- a good day for us when is I put five hand written pages on the stairs leading to her writing room, and I will find ten pages of type-written manuscript script on my pillow.

O'BRIEN: And you guys are not competitive at all. Final question for you, Cassandra, is he a good cook? I mean, he's got the cook book now, "The Pat Conroy Cookbook." Can he really cook?

KING: He really can cook. He's a fabulous cook. That is one of my favorite things about being married to Pat is that he also cooks.

O'BRIEN: Icing on the cake. Authors Pat Conroy and Cassandra King talking with us.

HEMMER: Nice stuff.

KING: Here's Jack.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: There you go. A big name insurance company billed Medicare for some concert performers. There's no fraud in our government. and Circuit City could be up for sale. Andy Serwer's "Minding Your Business."

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Yes, good morning.

Let's talk about Circuit City, first of all. Here's a stock that's going to move today. Guarantee you. Circuit City announcing this morning it's received an unsolicited takeover bid from a company called High Fields Capitol -- that's a Boston hedge fund. They want to buy the whole kit and caboodle. Not just a piece of the company. $17 a share, we want everything. The consumer electronics giant obviously in a dogfight with Best Buy these days.

And you're seeing this more and more with these hedge funds. They're getting so big, they have to put the money to work. They're looking to buy whole things. We saw this with ESL, Eddie Lampert's company, with Sears and K-Mart.

Now HealthSouth. You know, I love this story, I love this company, I love Richard Scrushy, because the news that comes out of this trial just continues to blow my mind. The "Birmingham News" reporting that the company HealthSouth billed Medicare for its annual meeting entertainers.

And they were some amazing entertainment. We're talking about A- list acts. So here's what happened. They'd have this big convention down in Orlando. And here's who they have. Faith Hill, Reba McEntire, Alabama, Amy Grant, Brooks and Dunn, K.C. and the Sunshine Band. There you go, Brooks and Dunn right there. You're allowed to put a little bit of overhead into Medicare, but not this kind of stuff.

I mean, this is -- $325 million they tried to shuttle through here. And the regulators picked it up. I mean, you think about some of the songs the entertainers could do now, now that they knew about this. Of course, the entertainers had no idea. Say Faith Hill, this fraud, this fraud. Or I can feel your fraud. How about this, K.C. and the Sunshine Band, shake, shake, shake your Medicare fraud. One thing that K.C. wouldn't have to change, though, would be that's the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it.

CAFFERTY: All right. Time for "The File." Cheech and Chong, those lame pot smoking actors that made those crummy films -- Andy's taking exception -- made those crummy films back in the '60s and '70s, say they never inhaled in their marijuana-themed movies. Maybe if they had, the pictures would have been better. The two appeared together for the first time in 20 years at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen this last weekend.

Tommy Chong said that the one time they did light up during the movie "Up in Smoke," they wasted a ton of time waiting to hear the cue, which they kept missing. Marin and Chong, who recently completed a nine-month sentence for trying to sell marijuana pipes on the Internet, said they are planning a new film, possible titles include "Lord of the Smoke," and "Grumpy Old Stoners."

SERWER: Great Americans.

CAFFERTY: Sylvester Stallone has published the premiere issue of "Sly" magazine, aimed at teaching men how to quote, "stay in the game past 40." Stallone is the magazine's 58-year-old editorial director and as such, his picture appears 34 times in the 120-page inaugural addition.

SERWER: Only 34?

CAFFERTY: "Sly" magazine includes advice on diet, clothing, travel, cigars, alcohol, HDTVs and sex. The premiere March issue features porn star Jenna Jamison, a Q & A with actor Ray Liotta, 25 ways to beat the clock and a sneak peek into "Rocky 6," in which Rocky Balboa competes in wheelchair races against residents of a nursing home.

Looking for a new way to blow your money? How about kissing school? There is one in Seattle, Washington. Where else would they have such a thing? $275 and a Seattle shrink will teach you how to pucker up. Sherri Byrd (ph) oversees couples who create love nests with sleeping bags and pillows on the classroom floor.

Byrd says most of students are married, they're in their late 30s to mid 50s. Byrd's number one tip for a great kiss? Slow down. She says men in particular rush through kisses and let their minds wander too much. No doubt because they're thinking about what comes next. That's just the way men are.

SERWER: They're like dogs.

O'BRIEN: Dinner.

CAFFERTY: Dinner. A cigarette.

HEMMER: Today's top stories, coming up in a moment, including the latest on the Michael Jackson matter. The list of potential witnesses is out and it reads like a who's who in Hollywood. Details on that list in a moment when we continue after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: Good morning. Investigators in Beirut learning just how massive that bomb was 24 hours ago that killed the former prime minister. This morning, surveying the devastation from the center of that blast.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com