What do foreigners think about the US government shutdown?; NYT sets off a New York-Los Angeles taco showdown; 'Parkland': The search for the truth behind the JFK assassination; 'League of Legends' video game championship comes to LA; Friday Flashback: Government shutdown edition, plus much more.
What do foreigners think about the US government shutdown?
We've reported a lot this week about Americans' response to our government's partial shutdown, but we were curious about the foreign perspective on the shutdown.
We now turn to our neighbor to the north and journalist Neil Macdonald, senior Washington Correspondent for the National newspaper in Canada.
Friday Flashback: Government shutdown edition
Time for the government shut-down edition of the Friday Flashback, our weekly analysis of stories in the news. Here with us in the studio, James Rainey of the LA Times, and joining us from the DC, Nancy Cook of National Journal.
What's the mood in DC and anything like talks or negotiations planned for today or over the weekend?
When you develop a strategy, I think you are supposed to have an end game. What you see as the desired outcome and a plan to get there. What do you think the end game is for each side in this debate, how did they imagine the outcome when the standoff ends?
Earlier this week, Republican Senators Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell were caught between TV appearances doing a little strategy. Let's listen:
So far the key players in this have been the President, the House Speaker, John Boehner, and the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid. Is there someone else in Washington who might be able to step in and mediate to get everybody off the dime and moving toward some sort of compromise?
Let's go back to John Boehner. He went along with his conservative wing, and insisted on the health care language in the House budget bills. But now he's indicating he wants to craft a bill raising the debt ceiling that Democrats will be able to support. That's something that will infuriate the hard right wing of his conference. Seems like a pretty precarious balancing act he's trying here, right?
This brings up this doctrine, the so-called Hastert rule, named for a former Republican speaker, Dennis Hastert. What is the Hastert rule and how does it play into all this? Now Dennis Hastert is denying the Hastert rule never existed.
Back to the reality of the shut down. Polls seem to be showing that a majority of Americans, even those who don't like the health care law, don't think the government should be shut down because of it. Most blame the GOP.
Another study this week showed that women don't think the party has done anything that makes it more appealing to them. Here's the big question: Republicans can get elected to the Congress, but can they win the White House?
Just a month ago, the President was getting hammered by his own party over his plan for military strikes in Syria. Now, Democrats are united with him. Couldn't you argue that the budget stalemate has actually been good for him?
'Parkland': The search for the truth behind the JFK assassination
It's been almost 50 years since John F Kennedy was assassinated at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Over the years, numerous books and films have documented the events around the president's death.
The new film, "Parkland," takes an intimate look at the characters surrounding this tumultuous time.
The film's director and writer, Peter Landesman, talks to Take Two host Alex Cohen.
Calif. health exchange chief Peter Lee defends rollout, downplays confusion
California's Health insurance exchange opened for business on Tuesday. If you've tried to register on Covered California's website and shop around for policies, you know that it's not been the smoothest process.
It took several hours for people to get into the system that first day, but it's still early. You need to enroll by December 15 to be covered by January first of next year, and enrollment in the exchange runs through March 31.
To get a sense of how things are shaping up we are joined by Covered California executive director Peter Lee.
Interview Highlights
Four days in, how do you think it's going?
"I feel great, as you noticed we had a huge amount of traffic. We had more than 500,000 separate people logging on on day one, and many of them spent a lot of time there. Quite a few enrolled, we're going to be releasing the enrollment numbers later, but it was a good day and it has been a very good week with millions of Californians understanding that they need to shop around and they have opportunities they've never had before."
On the numbers: You mentioned 5 million visitors on Tuesday, but it turned out to be 645,000 hits:
"Let me be really clear, we were very accurate in what we reported on Tuesday, which was 5 million page visits and web hits, which is different than individual visitors. I think some of the press picked up the web hits, which in the Internet lingo is pretty clear to those who know it, as opposed to separate users."
When will we know how many have enrolled?
"We're going to do enrollment reports on a monthly basis, so we're going to release enrollment in November for the full month of October."
How have you handled the glitches?
"Life is never glitch-free. Anything we do...we're getting better and faster every day. I encourage people to go online. Today they can go online and today, if they want to find out if their doctor's in the network, they need to link to the individual health plans to find that. On Monday, we're going to have a consolidated directory of all the health plan physicians in one place.
"That's a huge service, some people are saying, 'Oh my God, that service isn't available on day one, that's a glitch.' Instead of saying, 'Boy for people who are working with large employers that are huge and have been doing this for 30 years, they don't have that service.' We're providing a service where individuals who have five plans to choose from can see in one place, is their doctor in which place. We're building a system to help consumers make informed choices that we think is world class. We're excited about it and we're improving it every day."
What about freelancers?
"One of the things, another example of improving the systems, starting on Monday, every person who goes through, we're going to survey them to see what we can do to make the system better and smoother.
"I'd remind us all that today, before the affordable care act, to apply for health coverage? Talk about an unfriendly system. You're asked about, have you had asthma? Have you had an allergy? Have you had cancer? Invasive questions about your health status, those are gone forever. We're not asking that at all because the rules have changed."
There has been a lot of preparation for this, so why so many issues so quickly?
"I would ask you or anyone who's listening to think of a big huge build or system that has launched on time and on budget? Few. We opened on time, on budget, if anyone expects perfection in anything in the world, I'm not sure what world they live in."
California says it wants to enroll more than 2 million people into health coverage by the end of next year. The most of any state. Do you think you're going to get there?
"Our goal through Covered California, our forecast is that by the end of 2014, starting January 1, 2015, we forecast to have about 1.2 million Californians enrolled with subsidies. In addition the folks at Medi-Cal think that they'll have about a million people enrolled through Medi-Cal. I think we'll be there."
Government shutdown: Where to go if your National Park vacation is ruined
The federal government shut down three days ago. That shutdown includes 26 National Park properties, including nine of the biggest, such as Yosemite. A big disappointment for anyone making the trip to visit one.
RELATED: Shutdown: Can't go to a national park? Try these Calif. state parks
Tourists are already at a bit of a loss, and the stalemate could also negatively affect the economies of towns near the parks. Here to explain what's happening and offer alternatives to would-be visitors is KPCC's environment reporter, Molly Peterson.
'League of Legends' video game championship comes to LA
We won't know if L.A. is hosting the World Series for a while, but another world championship is going on tonight at the Staples Center. It has sold out 11,000 seats in the arena, millions of people will stream it online, and there's a $2 million prize pool up for grabs. It's all for a multi-player video game called "League of Legends" in which magical characters battle for domination.
KPCC's Jacob Margolis attended a semi-final match last weekend to get an idea for what all of the fuss was about.
When I first got this assignment, I wasn’t expecting just a bunch of guys sitting in front of computer screens at a table with a few people around them watching. But as soon as I walked into USC’s Galen Center it became very clear just how wrong I was.
There were maybe 8,000 people sitting in the arena staring at humongous screen filled with game action. Below that, smaller screens filled with the faces of the players reacting to what’s going on.
This probably beats sitting in your dorm room watching your roommate play video games, but you're still watching someone else play video games.
Mike Mishkin, a college student from St. Louis, has been playing League of Legends for 20 hours a week for about a year now, and he flew across the country just to see the matchup.
"I don’t know, I’d say it’s most being in the crowd and being so close to the action even though it’s virtual action," said Mishkin.
League of Legends is an online multiplayer game. Two teams of five go head-to-head to destroy the other team’s base. Each player can choose a special character and earn gold to increase their power. There’s a lot of tactics and quick decision making. Some would even call the players pro athletes, including the U.S. government.
The U.S. began granting P-1A visas to League of Legends players. These are the same visas that are given to hockey or baseball players, or basically anyone who is an internationally recognized athlete.
"We had to make a case to the U.S. government that the league championship series, which is the professional league where our pro players participate in weekly games, was a legitimate career profession and a viable career path for people to make money and make a living," said Dustin Beck is vice president of electronic Sports at Riot Games, creators of League of Legends.
32 million people play the game regularly but there are only 40 professional players in the North American league. One of those pros is Alberto Rengifo, better known as Crumbs in the League of Legends Universe. He got his visa this year and sees himself as a professional athlete.
"It’s very easy to see as a simple game, it looks like a cartoon almost," said Rengifo. "It’s very basic like that but the more you play, the more you realize it’s more like chess and most of the game is won by mindgames."
Rengifo moved from Canada to Los Angeles, where he lives in a house with his four other team mates.
"Practice-wise just with my team. Everybody seems to play 14 hours a day six times a week for about 9-10 months out of the year," said Rengifo.
They spend time learning strategies for different characters in the game. Researching other teams tactics and coming up with their own. Their entire lives are devoted to the game.
"The game is constantly changing…Every couple of weeks they come up with a new patch so they update the games," said Rengifo . "It’s sort of a relearning process. And as a pro gamer, it’s our job to find out what’s the strongest thing at that certain patch and abuse it."
The better players can make as much as six figures, just playing video games. Riot created this league hoping it might become as popular here as it is in place like South Korea, where it’s been a mainstream sport for years now. But what are the odds that this could become mainstream in the U.S.?
"I think what you really need is the people who play these games need to become adults and have children and grandchildren and watch with their kids," said Michael Pachter, a research analyst at Wedbush Securities. "Because the reason you and I like baseball is because our dad’s like baseball and they taught us to like baseball.”
It’s possible that electronic sports could become more popular, but it’s going to take a long time says Pachter. But even though it might never unseat things like the Super Bowl or The World Series in terms of popularity, for the amateur players who traveled hundreds or thousands of miles to compete.
NYT sets off a New York-Los Angeles taco showdown
We've got something of a beef to settle...or you might say carne asada. Yesterday, the New York Times published a special taco issue of the food section. Their food writer Ligaya Mishan made a provocative claim:
"New York has great tacos, tacos that can go mano-a-mano with the best of Los Angeles. That city may have us outnumbered but not outgunned."
Here with a response is our own L.A. taco expert, Bill Esparza. He writes about L.A. street food for Los Angeles Magazine and L.A. Weekly and blogs on his own at Street Gourmet L.A.
Tenacious D brings A-list comics together for first-ever Festival Supreme
Later this month, some of the greatest names in modern comedy, including Zach Galifianakis, Adam Sandler and Sarah Silverman will take to the stage in Santa Monica.
It's the first-ever Festival Supreme, a celebration of music and comedy, that’s put together by Jack Black and Kyle Gass, otherwise known as Tenacious D. T
The band sits down with host Alex Cohen to talk about why they put together the festival and why its being held at Santa Monica Pier.