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Tsunami Survivors Deal with Loss of Life, Livelihoods; 109th Congress to Face Difficult Challenges
Aired January 05, 2005 - 13:30 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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Many tsunami survivors are not only dealing with the stunning loss of life but the losses of their livelihoods as well. For those in the tourist industry, there are two major tasks, reconstruct the resorts and rebuild confidence among travelers.
CNN's Harris Whitbeck met a hotel owner in Sri Lanka who is determined to try again.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HARRIS WHITBECK (voice-over): This beachfront resort on Sri Lanka's northeastern coast was filled with holiday guests for the first time in years when the disaster hit. The hotel, built in the 1970s, had recently enjoyed a rebirth. It's Sri Lankan owners had big plans.
NEMVILAE (PH) PAUL, RESORT MANAGER: We were shaping up quite well, and also we were able to sort of build up this place in stages. And we had some plans for the future as well, upgrading the hotel and things like that, as time was going by.
WHITBECK: Hotels like this one along the beach in Trincomalee, some of the finest surfing in the world, had similar plans. Business was good. Locals were getting much-needed jobs.
But last December 26, hopes for growth were washed away along with many of the beachfront resorts. Several dozen tourists were killed during the tsunami.
At this hotel, the receptionist drowned after he ran into the waves to attempt to rescue a guest.
For hotel operators, the tsunami couldn't have come at a worse time.
WHITBECK (on camera): The tourism industry here had only recently taken off after the end of decades-long hostilities between the Sri Lankan government and Tamil separatist rebels.
(voice-over) But hotel operators say they are undeterred. Cleanup work has already begun, and resort managers are hopeful tourists will eventually come back.
PAUL: You just get over this and rebuild and get the confidence. We should -- we have the confidence, our company. So, we should win the confidence of our clients.
Harris Whitbeck, CNN, Trincomalee, Sri Lanka.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIPS: Well, if you're still waiting for news about the status of a loved one in the tsunami-affected regions, CNN would like to hear from you. We want to find out about your efforts to locate missing friends or relatives.
Please call CNN at 404-878-1500. The phone will be staffed from 8:00 a.m. Eastern to 5:00 p.m. Eastern. After those hours, the line will connect to voicemail.
There is also a link on our Web site at CNN.com/tsunami.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Some news a little closer to home -- live pictures now, Canon office building here on Capitol Hill.
It is a new year, a new congress, the 109th version of same -- a boat load of new challenges for President Bush as he enters his second term, and a congress that faces some really difficult challenges.
Our political analyst, Bill Schneider, has dropped by to see us to talk about what lies ahead for this congress.
We're not talking about second-tier issues, are we?
BILL SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: No. We're talking about...
O'BRIEN: These are big ones.
SCHNEIDER: These are big issues.
Start with Iraq, the most divisive issue in American politics, still a very difficult situation, totally unresolved.
Social security, the famous third rail of American politics, touch it and you die. Well, President Bush says he's going to touch it, and we'll see what happens.
Those are very, very tough.
O'BRIEN: Talk about confirmations, too. We've got the Gonzales confirmations soon to begin. Those are apt to be rather difficult, at least rhetorically. As far as the votes go, though, I mean, the Democrats really don't have a lot of say so, do they?
SCHNEIDER: Well, they don't have a majority. And Republicans are likely to give the president the confirmations in the Senate that he's looking for.
But there are two kinds of confirmations, cabinet confirmations and judicial confirmations -- very different because judicial confirmations are for life; cabinet confirmations are for just, for President Bush's second term.
You can expect them to be contentious, particularly Gonzales for attorney general because he is associated with the policies of torture of detainees. Those are going to create a lot of sparks even though he'll probably be confirmed.
Judicial nominations are where the explosion is going to occur because those people are appointed for life.
O'BRIEN: All right. And that gets us into the whole complicated subject of the rules of doing business here, and filibusters, and how those rules might change.
What is going to happen? How will that unfold? And how will Democrats try to block some of these nominations?
SCHNEIDER: Well, Democrats are the minority, but they have the right of filibuster. You need 60 votes to break a filibuster. Republicans have 55.
So Republicans are saying, we want to rewrite the rules. They have the majority. They can do that in the Senate. It's not in the constitution. And they're going to try to prevent Democrats from being able to filibuster judicial nominations.
The Democrats say, wait a minute. If they do that, try to rewrite the rules on a totally partisan basis, we're going to have a whole bunch of parliamentary maneuvers that are going to gum up the works and shut down the Senate just to show an act of defiance.
O'BRIEN: I can imagine how that might play among the constituents. It wouldn't necessarily play well.
SCHNEIDER: No.
O'BRIEN: And it could lay the groundwork for, you know, sort of a boomerang election two years from now if people become fed up with the whole process, in other words?
SCHNEIDER: That's right. The Republicans are going to say, you try to do that, you know what, look what happened to Tom Daschle.
They ran against Tom Daschle as someone who was obstructionist and who was gumming up President Bush's program and blocking his nominations.
And what did President Bush do? He sent back 10 judicial nominations that the Democrats had tried to stop in a more or less show of defiance that they were -- he wasn't -- going to let the Democrats stop him.
So the nominations are right back in the Senate's lap, and the Republicans are saying, if you defy us and try to shut down the Senate, just remember Daschle.
O'BRIEN: Let's talk about social security for just a moment as that domestic, third rail issue. What are the chances that social security will be changed in some substantive way that would lead it down the road toward privatization in this congress?
SCHNEIDER: Well, they may take steps. But I think that what the Democrats are saying is, there are ways that we can save the system that don't necessarily involve privatization.
The Democrats have to come up with those ways, whether it's changing the trust fund, whether it's possibly raising the wage level that's taxed, which is a tax increase that Republicans are very unlikely to buy.
We are going to see a war between the two parties over approaches to social security to save the system. And a lot of people are going to get very scared.
I'm not sure it's going to be resolved here.
O'BRIEN: And a final thought here, though, you have -- you have a party here, the Democratic Party, with a real identity crisis as it begins this congress. How is that going to play into this whole debate?
SCHNEIDER: Democrats have to figure out do they want to stand up and defy the Republican majority because look, face it. Democrats have no power. They are in the minority in both the House and the Senate.
So, they've got to figure out, do we want to try to obstruct things in order to tell voters where we stand and risk the charge of obstructionism, or do we want to essentially try to go along with the president wherever possible, make our views known, object along the way but be cooperative so we can't be charged as obstructionists.
That's a tough choice.
O'BRIEN: So the big debate is within the Democratic Party, itself.
SCHNEIDER: They have to decide what they want to do as a minority.
O'BRIEN: All right.
Bill Schneider, thanks for dropping by.
SCHNEIDER: Sure.
O'BRIEN: Appreciate it.
SCHNEIDER: OK.
O'BRIEN: Kyra?
PHILLIPS: All right. If you're looking to lose some weight, there are plenty of options out there. But which diet is the most effective?
Medical correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen, tells you what you need to know coming up.
Plus, bundle up. A winter storm is causing a mess in the Midwest. Rob Marciano out in the middle of it -- Rob?
ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Kyra, we're in Chicago where already three to four inches of snow has fallen. Flights are being cancelled at O'Hare, and it's just begun.
It's a huge storm, and we'll report live from the headlines in just a minute.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: Well, no telling how many people have made that popular, annual resolution to lose weight, but are the scales tipped against most of them?
CNN's medical correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen, here with a study about long-term dieting success. The bottom line -- to stand by your plan, not your man.
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. Forget about the men.
PHILLIPS: Stick to plans.
COHEN: Stand by your plan. That is the lesson to be learned from this is if you stick to your diet, it might actually work.
What happened in this study done by Tufts University is that they said, you know what, there are so many popular diets out there but rarely are they put to a scientific test.
People spend billions of dollars on books like these and on diet plants and all the other things that go with diets. Do they really work?
So, they chose four of them. They chose Atkins, Ornish, Weight Watchers, and the Zone. And they put people are these diets for a year to see what would happen.
Well, what happened is that 75 percent of the people could not stick to the diet, could not stick to the diet for that whole year. So when you looked at this whole group of people and how they did, what they found is that they started off at 220 pounds.
All of these people were either obese or overweight. And after one year on average they lost six pounds. So the bottom line is, find a diet that you can stick with.
And that's what's really important here. Find a diet that you can stick with.
PHILLIPS: All right. Six pounds in a year, that's water weight, OK. I can starve myself and lose that in a week, so I think.
Any good news in this study because it doesn't seem very encouraging?
COHEN: There actually was some good news in the study. What they found is that when people were able to stick to the diet, they did pretty well. They lost 15 pounds in one year, which isn't bad.
And so, the bottom line of this study is that, as the study author said, you have to be a diet matchmaker. You have to find the diet that works for you because they are so many out there.
And they're really not that bad or not that good, it depends on who you are. So find the one that works for you. Try out some. And when you find the one that works for you, he said it actually works.
PHILLIPS: And it's OK to splurge once in a while. It's not like you have to be, you know, doing these every single day by the minute.
COHEN: That's right. And what they found was that actually with the strictest diets, people would get more frustrated because they would stick to it and stick to it, and then they would go off and they would...
PHILLIPS: Sure, you want to rebel.
COHEN: Right, and you say, forget it. And you just sort of go off and have some Twinkies.
PHILLIPS: All right. Or wine.
COHEN: Or wine, whatever.
PHILLIPS: Elizabeth Cohen, thanks so much.
COHEN: Thanks.
PHILLIPS: All right -- Miles?
O'BRIEN: All right. Let's check the nation's weather. As a matter of fact, the weather here is kind of lousy. Let's take a look at the White House right now.
Gray day, 48 degrees. It's raining a little bit on me right now, and I don't have an umbrella.
Rob Marciano, I didn't mean to steal your thunder by doing a weather forecast there. But you're in Schiller Park, Illinois where they got some real weather today, a little winter weather.
How are things going there?
MARCIANO: Well, it's starting to pile up, Miles. And I always appreciate your help here in the weather department.
It's been snowing now for six, seven hours very lightly. So, it's been hard for this to actually catch up. Three or four inches on the ground where it's actually sticking, so we expect another three or four inches to come about in the next couple of hours.
I tracked this guy down a few minutes ago. He says he's busy, but I'm hoping that we can talk to him because there are a few things --
Hey, Jim, could you stop for second?
There's a few things I've always wondered about snow plows. I mean, you see these as a kid. Your psyched, as a kid, to get the snow.
Hey, Jim, can you come out? Do you got a second?
JIM LUCCHESI, SNOW PLOW DRIVER: Sure.
MARCIANO: Come on. Help me out here because I don't make very good television.
What time did you start working this morning?
LUCCHESI: 7:00 a.m.
MARCIANO: 7:00 a.m.
Let's come up to the plow. I've got a couple of questions. What's your last name?
LUCCHESI: Lucchesi.
MARCIANO: Lucchesi, OK. Good Irish boy. I like that.
All right, paisan. Tell me about -- this is a big plow. About how much does this thing weigh?
LUCCHESI: 2,500 to 3,000 pounds.
MARCIANO: 3,000 pounds?
LUCCHESI: Yes.
MARCIANO: And is there a minimum threshold that we can actually start plowing snow? Or you get to a half inch and you're ready to go?
LUCCHESI: From a half inch up on up to anything.
MARCIANO: OK. Now, I see these coming down the street, and a lot of times sparks are flying out. Does that ever scare you? Are you worried about, you know, something happening?
LUCCHESI: No, not too scared of the sparks.
MARCIANO: Somehow, I want to believe that nothing really scares you.
I don't know if we've got enough cable for this. But I want -- you've got a double plow going on. This one's a little bit smaller?
LUCCHESI: This is a little smaller, a little lighter version. But it can do -- this truck can do two lanes at once.
MARCIANO: OK.
LUCCHESI: And we just widen the spread behind the truck, and that will cover a couple of lanes.
MARCIANO: Speaking of spread, you spread -- this is a double whammy. You've got two plows, and you've got a salt spreader in the back.
This mixture right here, you go to different cities, they've got salt. They've got gravel. They've got sand. What's the -- what's the -- come on over here.
What's the mixture here?
LUCCHESI: Well, right now we have a little sand in here because last night the temperatures were a little colder. So, we ran a little sand. But we'll be going to straight salt as the temperature stays up high.
MARCIANO: You fill this puppy up full. How long can you go before you have to refill the thing tank?
LUCCHESI: Oh, probably around a 20-mile round-trip.
MARCIANO: And how fast can you be going while you're plowing and, or sanding at the same time?
LUCCHESI: We don't like to go over 35 with the plow down, tops. With the plow in the air, you can go a little faster, maybe 40, 45.
MARCIANO: I'm really sticking today. Are you fighting any problem spots out there?
LUCCHESI: Well, it was tracking a little a little problems earlier, but we got a good handle on it now. And we are staying ahead of the game.
MARCIANO: Jim, thanks very much for your help.
LUCCHESI: You're welcome.
MARCIANO: I know you're a busy guy. You got to get back to work.
Hey, we've got some video, some more serious snow out of Nebraska, Omaha specifically. And some of the areas around there are nine, 10 inches of snow on the ground.
Folks are out there shuffling, trying to dig their cars out. And if you they can't dig their cars out, we've even seen some folks strap on the skis to try to get around. A lot of that snow is heading this way. Another four to six inches expected later on tonight.
But the bigger issue, Miles or Kyra, is that the ice that was in Kansas City last night, that ribbon of ice, is going to be spreading across central parts of Illinois, Indiana, and northern parts of Ohio, southern parts of Michigan.
And yes, it's going to continue to be a mess for a lot of people. Big storm affecting everybody, really, from coast-to-coast.
Back to you.
O'BRIEN: All right. Thank you very much, Rob Marciano. Sounds like plenty of overtime for Mr. Lucchesi and his compadres out there.
MARCIANO: Yes.
O'BRIEN: All right. Fourteen years ago, right here on Capitol Hill, her testimony brought sexual harassment in the workplace right onto the forefront.
Up next, Anita Hill, as we look back at some of the biggest stories CNN has ever covered in the past quarter-century.
LISOVICZ: I'm Susan Lisovicz at the New York Stock Exchange.
Coming up, Detroit's car makers are losing their share of the U.S. market. I'll tell you which imports are taking the lead right after this break.
Don't go away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: The Rotunda, an extraordinary example of the Beaux arts architecture style and still houses many congressional offices to this day.
Our silver anniversary here at CNN is coming up, and we're taking the opportunity to revisit some of the watershed events in the 25 years of Cable News Network.
This was a big one. The U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings of 1991, right here on Capitol Hill.
A law professor from the University of Oklahoma came forward with accusations that a justice nominee had sexually harassed her. Here is a look back at that controversy and a visit with one Anita Hill.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANITA HILL, PROFESSOR: I have no personal vendetta against Clarence Thomas.
UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT (PH), CNN (voice-over): When law professor Anita Hill came forward with sexual harassment charges against a future Supreme Court justice during his Senate confirmation hearings, it shocked the nation, divided and captivated it at the same time.
HILL: I seek only to provide the committee with information which it may regard as relevant.
CLARENCE THOMAS, SUPREME COURT JUSTICE: I've heard enough lives.
UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: No matter who you believed, Hill's testimony televised Senate testimony brought workplace sexual harassment into the forefront.
HILL: It's good to be home.
UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: After it was over, Hill went back to teaching law at the University of Oklahoma. But her life would never be the same.
HILL: I had no appreciation for the fact that there would be so much attention to this issue and that I would become a symbol of the issue.
UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: Hill wrote a book about her experiences called "Speaking Truth to Power." She's now 48 years old and teaches at Brandeis Brandeis University in Massachusetts.
What drives her, she says, is a responsibility to her students.
HILL: They deserve a better society. That is what motivates me, and I think that I can be a part of creating that. Haven given that chance, I don't want to blow it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: Well, we have 25 years worth of memories to share with you in 2005. We'll have "Then & Now" pieces for you now and again to highlight those big stories and check on the people who made them.
So stay tuned, as always -- Kyra?
PHILLIPS: All right. Well, the big three U.S. automakers continue to lose sales to foreign competition. Susan Lisovicz joins us now live from the New York Stock Exchange with all the numbers.
Hi, Susan.
LISOVICZ: Hi, Kyra. Well, the big three aren't as big when it comes to U.S. market share. Kyra, despite big year-end promotions and countless buyer incentives, it was still a weak year for U.S. car makers.
Both Ford and GM actually saw sales decline last year. Compare that to a 10 percent gain for Toyota or a 24 percent jump for Nissan.
Even though domestic car makers still have the biggest piece of the U.S. market, their combined share of the U.S. market last year was an all-time low, less than 59 percent.
Japanese and Korean manufacturers, meanwhile, are catching up. Their piece of the U.S. market grew by 2 percentage points last year, about 35 percent overall.
Turning to today's market, there is some growth to report, finally, in 2005. There you see the Dow industrials holding on to their lead, up 37 points, 10,668.
And the NASDAQ is actually in the black right now, up just about one point. It's been a tough start to the year, though.
That's the latest from Wall Street.
Coming up on the next hour of LIVE FROM, I'll tell you why Americans buying drugs from Canadian pharmacies may no longer be saving as much as before.
For now, Kyra, back to you.
PHILLIPS: All right, Susan. Thanks so much.
Well, coming up in the second hour of LIVE FROM, we're going to hear from President Bush live from Madison County, Illinois, where he's making his case for limiting lawsuits.
O'BRIEN: The lawsuits of Madison County, we're calling it.
Also, Kyra, actor and activist Richard Gere's message to the Palestinians, more coverage of the tsunami disaster, of course.
CNN's Anderson Cooper walks amid the devastation.
LIVE FROM's "Hour of Power" from Capitol Hill begins after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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 January 5, 2005 - 13:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Many tsunami survivors are not only dealing with the stunning loss of life but the losses of their livelihoods as well. For those in the tourist industry, there are two major tasks, reconstruct the resorts and rebuild confidence among travelers.
CNN's Harris Whitbeck met a hotel owner in Sri Lanka who is determined to try again.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HARRIS WHITBECK (voice-over): This beachfront resort on Sri Lanka's northeastern coast was filled with holiday guests for the first time in years when the disaster hit. The hotel, built in the 1970s, had recently enjoyed a rebirth. It's Sri Lankan owners had big plans.
NEMVILAE (PH) PAUL, RESORT MANAGER: We were shaping up quite well, and also we were able to sort of build up this place in stages. And we had some plans for the future as well, upgrading the hotel and things like that, as time was going by.
WHITBECK: Hotels like this one along the beach in Trincomalee, some of the finest surfing in the world, had similar plans. Business was good. Locals were getting much-needed jobs.
But last December 26, hopes for growth were washed away along with many of the beachfront resorts. Several dozen tourists were killed during the tsunami.
At this hotel, the receptionist drowned after he ran into the waves to attempt to rescue a guest.
For hotel operators, the tsunami couldn't have come at a worse time.
WHITBECK (on camera): The tourism industry here had only recently taken off after the end of decades-long hostilities between the Sri Lankan government and Tamil separatist rebels.
(voice-over) But hotel operators say they are undeterred. Cleanup work has already begun, and resort managers are hopeful tourists will eventually come back.
PAUL: You just get over this and rebuild and get the confidence. We should -- we have the confidence, our company. So, we should win the confidence of our clients.
Harris Whitbeck, CNN, Trincomalee, Sri Lanka.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIPS: Well, if you're still waiting for news about the status of a loved one in the tsunami-affected regions, CNN would like to hear from you. We want to find out about your efforts to locate missing friends or relatives.
Please call CNN at 404-878-1500. The phone will be staffed from 8:00 a.m. Eastern to 5:00 p.m. Eastern. After those hours, the line will connect to voicemail.
There is also a link on our Web site at CNN.com/tsunami.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Some news a little closer to home -- live pictures now, Canon office building here on Capitol Hill.
It is a new year, a new congress, the 109th version of same -- a boat load of new challenges for President Bush as he enters his second term, and a congress that faces some really difficult challenges.
Our political analyst, Bill Schneider, has dropped by to see us to talk about what lies ahead for this congress.
We're not talking about second-tier issues, are we?
BILL SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: No. We're talking about...
O'BRIEN: These are big ones.
SCHNEIDER: These are big issues.
Start with Iraq, the most divisive issue in American politics, still a very difficult situation, totally unresolved.
Social security, the famous third rail of American politics, touch it and you die. Well, President Bush says he's going to touch it, and we'll see what happens.
Those are very, very tough.
O'BRIEN: Talk about confirmations, too. We've got the Gonzales confirmations soon to begin. Those are apt to be rather difficult, at least rhetorically. As far as the votes go, though, I mean, the Democrats really don't have a lot of say so, do they?
SCHNEIDER: Well, they don't have a majority. And Republicans are likely to give the president the confirmations in the Senate that he's looking for.
But there are two kinds of confirmations, cabinet confirmations and judicial confirmations -- very different because judicial confirmations are for life; cabinet confirmations are for just, for President Bush's second term.
You can expect them to be contentious, particularly Gonzales for attorney general because he is associated with the policies of torture of detainees. Those are going to create a lot of sparks even though he'll probably be confirmed.
Judicial nominations are where the explosion is going to occur because those people are appointed for life.
O'BRIEN: All right. And that gets us into the whole complicated subject of the rules of doing business here, and filibusters, and how those rules might change.
What is going to happen? How will that unfold? And how will Democrats try to block some of these nominations?
SCHNEIDER: Well, Democrats are the minority, but they have the right of filibuster. You need 60 votes to break a filibuster. Republicans have 55.
So Republicans are saying, we want to rewrite the rules. They have the majority. They can do that in the Senate. It's not in the constitution. And they're going to try to prevent Democrats from being able to filibuster judicial nominations.
The Democrats say, wait a minute. If they do that, try to rewrite the rules on a totally partisan basis, we're going to have a whole bunch of parliamentary maneuvers that are going to gum up the works and shut down the Senate just to show an act of defiance.
O'BRIEN: I can imagine how that might play among the constituents. It wouldn't necessarily play well.
SCHNEIDER: No.
O'BRIEN: And it could lay the groundwork for, you know, sort of a boomerang election two years from now if people become fed up with the whole process, in other words?
SCHNEIDER: That's right. The Republicans are going to say, you try to do that, you know what, look what happened to Tom Daschle.
They ran against Tom Daschle as someone who was obstructionist and who was gumming up President Bush's program and blocking his nominations.
And what did President Bush do? He sent back 10 judicial nominations that the Democrats had tried to stop in a more or less show of defiance that they were -- he wasn't -- going to let the Democrats stop him.
So the nominations are right back in the Senate's lap, and the Republicans are saying, if you defy us and try to shut down the Senate, just remember Daschle.
O'BRIEN: Let's talk about social security for just a moment as that domestic, third rail issue. What are the chances that social security will be changed in some substantive way that would lead it down the road toward privatization in this congress?
SCHNEIDER: Well, they may take steps. But I think that what the Democrats are saying is, there are ways that we can save the system that don't necessarily involve privatization.
The Democrats have to come up with those ways, whether it's changing the trust fund, whether it's possibly raising the wage level that's taxed, which is a tax increase that Republicans are very unlikely to buy.
We are going to see a war between the two parties over approaches to social security to save the system. And a lot of people are going to get very scared.
I'm not sure it's going to be resolved here.
O'BRIEN: And a final thought here, though, you have -- you have a party here, the Democratic Party, with a real identity crisis as it begins this congress. How is that going to play into this whole debate?
SCHNEIDER: Democrats have to figure out do they want to stand up and defy the Republican majority because look, face it. Democrats have no power. They are in the minority in both the House and the Senate.
So, they've got to figure out, do we want to try to obstruct things in order to tell voters where we stand and risk the charge of obstructionism, or do we want to essentially try to go along with the president wherever possible, make our views known, object along the way but be cooperative so we can't be charged as obstructionists.
That's a tough choice.
O'BRIEN: So the big debate is within the Democratic Party, itself.
SCHNEIDER: They have to decide what they want to do as a minority.
O'BRIEN: All right.
Bill Schneider, thanks for dropping by.
SCHNEIDER: Sure.
O'BRIEN: Appreciate it.
SCHNEIDER: OK.
O'BRIEN: Kyra?
PHILLIPS: All right. If you're looking to lose some weight, there are plenty of options out there. But which diet is the most effective?
Medical correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen, tells you what you need to know coming up.
Plus, bundle up. A winter storm is causing a mess in the Midwest. Rob Marciano out in the middle of it -- Rob?
ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Kyra, we're in Chicago where already three to four inches of snow has fallen. Flights are being cancelled at O'Hare, and it's just begun.
It's a huge storm, and we'll report live from the headlines in just a minute.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: Well, no telling how many people have made that popular, annual resolution to lose weight, but are the scales tipped against most of them?
CNN's medical correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen, here with a study about long-term dieting success. The bottom line -- to stand by your plan, not your man.
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. Forget about the men.
PHILLIPS: Stick to plans.
COHEN: Stand by your plan. That is the lesson to be learned from this is if you stick to your diet, it might actually work.
What happened in this study done by Tufts University is that they said, you know what, there are so many popular diets out there but rarely are they put to a scientific test.
People spend billions of dollars on books like these and on diet plants and all the other things that go with diets. Do they really work?
So, they chose four of them. They chose Atkins, Ornish, Weight Watchers, and the Zone. And they put people are these diets for a year to see what would happen.
Well, what happened is that 75 percent of the people could not stick to the diet, could not stick to the diet for that whole year. So when you looked at this whole group of people and how they did, what they found is that they started off at 220 pounds.
All of these people were either obese or overweight. And after one year on average they lost six pounds. So the bottom line is, find a diet that you can stick with.
And that's what's really important here. Find a diet that you can stick with.
PHILLIPS: All right. Six pounds in a year, that's water weight, OK. I can starve myself and lose that in a week, so I think.
Any good news in this study because it doesn't seem very encouraging?
COHEN: There actually was some good news in the study. What they found is that when people were able to stick to the diet, they did pretty well. They lost 15 pounds in one year, which isn't bad.
And so, the bottom line of this study is that, as the study author said, you have to be a diet matchmaker. You have to find the diet that works for you because they are so many out there.
And they're really not that bad or not that good, it depends on who you are. So find the one that works for you. Try out some. And when you find the one that works for you, he said it actually works.
PHILLIPS: And it's OK to splurge once in a while. It's not like you have to be, you know, doing these every single day by the minute.
COHEN: That's right. And what they found was that actually with the strictest diets, people would get more frustrated because they would stick to it and stick to it, and then they would go off and they would...
PHILLIPS: Sure, you want to rebel.
COHEN: Right, and you say, forget it. And you just sort of go off and have some Twinkies.
PHILLIPS: All right. Or wine.
COHEN: Or wine, whatever.
PHILLIPS: Elizabeth Cohen, thanks so much.
COHEN: Thanks.
PHILLIPS: All right -- Miles?
O'BRIEN: All right. Let's check the nation's weather. As a matter of fact, the weather here is kind of lousy. Let's take a look at the White House right now.
Gray day, 48 degrees. It's raining a little bit on me right now, and I don't have an umbrella.
Rob Marciano, I didn't mean to steal your thunder by doing a weather forecast there. But you're in Schiller Park, Illinois where they got some real weather today, a little winter weather.
How are things going there?
MARCIANO: Well, it's starting to pile up, Miles. And I always appreciate your help here in the weather department.
It's been snowing now for six, seven hours very lightly. So, it's been hard for this to actually catch up. Three or four inches on the ground where it's actually sticking, so we expect another three or four inches to come about in the next couple of hours.
I tracked this guy down a few minutes ago. He says he's busy, but I'm hoping that we can talk to him because there are a few things --
Hey, Jim, could you stop for second?
There's a few things I've always wondered about snow plows. I mean, you see these as a kid. Your psyched, as a kid, to get the snow.
Hey, Jim, can you come out? Do you got a second?
JIM LUCCHESI, SNOW PLOW DRIVER: Sure.
MARCIANO: Come on. Help me out here because I don't make very good television.
What time did you start working this morning?
LUCCHESI: 7:00 a.m.
MARCIANO: 7:00 a.m.
Let's come up to the plow. I've got a couple of questions. What's your last name?
LUCCHESI: Lucchesi.
MARCIANO: Lucchesi, OK. Good Irish boy. I like that.
All right, paisan. Tell me about -- this is a big plow. About how much does this thing weigh?
LUCCHESI: 2,500 to 3,000 pounds.
MARCIANO: 3,000 pounds?
LUCCHESI: Yes.
MARCIANO: And is there a minimum threshold that we can actually start plowing snow? Or you get to a half inch and you're ready to go?
LUCCHESI: From a half inch up on up to anything.
MARCIANO: OK. Now, I see these coming down the street, and a lot of times sparks are flying out. Does that ever scare you? Are you worried about, you know, something happening?
LUCCHESI: No, not too scared of the sparks.
MARCIANO: Somehow, I want to believe that nothing really scares you.
I don't know if we've got enough cable for this. But I want -- you've got a double plow going on. This one's a little bit smaller?
LUCCHESI: This is a little smaller, a little lighter version. But it can do -- this truck can do two lanes at once.
MARCIANO: OK.
LUCCHESI: And we just widen the spread behind the truck, and that will cover a couple of lanes.
MARCIANO: Speaking of spread, you spread -- this is a double whammy. You've got two plows, and you've got a salt spreader in the back.
This mixture right here, you go to different cities, they've got salt. They've got gravel. They've got sand. What's the -- what's the -- come on over here.
What's the mixture here?
LUCCHESI: Well, right now we have a little sand in here because last night the temperatures were a little colder. So, we ran a little sand. But we'll be going to straight salt as the temperature stays up high.
MARCIANO: You fill this puppy up full. How long can you go before you have to refill the thing tank?
LUCCHESI: Oh, probably around a 20-mile round-trip.
MARCIANO: And how fast can you be going while you're plowing and, or sanding at the same time?
LUCCHESI: We don't like to go over 35 with the plow down, tops. With the plow in the air, you can go a little faster, maybe 40, 45.
MARCIANO: I'm really sticking today. Are you fighting any problem spots out there?
LUCCHESI: Well, it was tracking a little a little problems earlier, but we got a good handle on it now. And we are staying ahead of the game.
MARCIANO: Jim, thanks very much for your help.
LUCCHESI: You're welcome.
MARCIANO: I know you're a busy guy. You got to get back to work.
Hey, we've got some video, some more serious snow out of Nebraska, Omaha specifically. And some of the areas around there are nine, 10 inches of snow on the ground.
Folks are out there shuffling, trying to dig their cars out. And if you they can't dig their cars out, we've even seen some folks strap on the skis to try to get around. A lot of that snow is heading this way. Another four to six inches expected later on tonight.
But the bigger issue, Miles or Kyra, is that the ice that was in Kansas City last night, that ribbon of ice, is going to be spreading across central parts of Illinois, Indiana, and northern parts of Ohio, southern parts of Michigan.
And yes, it's going to continue to be a mess for a lot of people. Big storm affecting everybody, really, from coast-to-coast.
Back to you.
O'BRIEN: All right. Thank you very much, Rob Marciano. Sounds like plenty of overtime for Mr. Lucchesi and his compadres out there.
MARCIANO: Yes.
O'BRIEN: All right. Fourteen years ago, right here on Capitol Hill, her testimony brought sexual harassment in the workplace right onto the forefront.
Up next, Anita Hill, as we look back at some of the biggest stories CNN has ever covered in the past quarter-century.
LISOVICZ: I'm Susan Lisovicz at the New York Stock Exchange.
Coming up, Detroit's car makers are losing their share of the U.S. market. I'll tell you which imports are taking the lead right after this break.
Don't go away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: The Rotunda, an extraordinary example of the Beaux arts architecture style and still houses many congressional offices to this day.
Our silver anniversary here at CNN is coming up, and we're taking the opportunity to revisit some of the watershed events in the 25 years of Cable News Network.
This was a big one. The U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings of 1991, right here on Capitol Hill.
A law professor from the University of Oklahoma came forward with accusations that a justice nominee had sexually harassed her. Here is a look back at that controversy and a visit with one Anita Hill.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANITA HILL, PROFESSOR: I have no personal vendetta against Clarence Thomas.
UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT (PH), CNN (voice-over): When law professor Anita Hill came forward with sexual harassment charges against a future Supreme Court justice during his Senate confirmation hearings, it shocked the nation, divided and captivated it at the same time.
HILL: I seek only to provide the committee with information which it may regard as relevant.
CLARENCE THOMAS, SUPREME COURT JUSTICE: I've heard enough lives.
UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: No matter who you believed, Hill's testimony televised Senate testimony brought workplace sexual harassment into the forefront.
HILL: It's good to be home.
UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: After it was over, Hill went back to teaching law at the University of Oklahoma. But her life would never be the same.
HILL: I had no appreciation for the fact that there would be so much attention to this issue and that I would become a symbol of the issue.
UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: Hill wrote a book about her experiences called "Speaking Truth to Power." She's now 48 years old and teaches at Brandeis Brandeis University in Massachusetts.
What drives her, she says, is a responsibility to her students.
HILL: They deserve a better society. That is what motivates me, and I think that I can be a part of creating that. Haven given that chance, I don't want to blow it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: Well, we have 25 years worth of memories to share with you in 2005. We'll have "Then & Now" pieces for you now and again to highlight those big stories and check on the people who made them.
So stay tuned, as always -- Kyra?
PHILLIPS: All right. Well, the big three U.S. automakers continue to lose sales to foreign competition. Susan Lisovicz joins us now live from the New York Stock Exchange with all the numbers.
Hi, Susan.
LISOVICZ: Hi, Kyra. Well, the big three aren't as big when it comes to U.S. market share. Kyra, despite big year-end promotions and countless buyer incentives, it was still a weak year for U.S. car makers.
Both Ford and GM actually saw sales decline last year. Compare that to a 10 percent gain for Toyota or a 24 percent jump for Nissan.
Even though domestic car makers still have the biggest piece of the U.S. market, their combined share of the U.S. market last year was an all-time low, less than 59 percent.
Japanese and Korean manufacturers, meanwhile, are catching up. Their piece of the U.S. market grew by 2 percentage points last year, about 35 percent overall.
Turning to today's market, there is some growth to report, finally, in 2005. There you see the Dow industrials holding on to their lead, up 37 points, 10,668.
And the NASDAQ is actually in the black right now, up just about one point. It's been a tough start to the year, though.
That's the latest from Wall Street.
Coming up on the next hour of LIVE FROM, I'll tell you why Americans buying drugs from Canadian pharmacies may no longer be saving as much as before.
For now, Kyra, back to you.
PHILLIPS: All right, Susan. Thanks so much.
Well, coming up in the second hour of LIVE FROM, we're going to hear from President Bush live from Madison County, Illinois, where he's making his case for limiting lawsuits.
O'BRIEN: The lawsuits of Madison County, we're calling it.
Also, Kyra, actor and activist Richard Gere's message to the Palestinians, more coverage of the tsunami disaster, of course.
CNN's Anderson Cooper walks amid the devastation.
LIVE FROM's "Hour of Power" from Capitol Hill begins after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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