Transcripts For WRC Today 20091103 : vimarsana.com

good morning. decision 2009. voters heading to the polls in a number of states this morning. and while president obama isn t on the ballot, the results could speak volumes about what voters think of the job he s doing. new images. police release computer-enhanced photos of what madelyn mccann would look like today, exactly 2 1/2 years after her mysterious disappearance. this morning, the new push to find who is is responsible. and absolute disaster. a fork lift operator bumps into a shelf at a vodka warehouse, and the whole place comes crashing down. and with over $100,000 in damage, that driver s career could be on the rocks today, tuesday, november 3rd, 2009. captions paid for by nbc-universal television and welcome to today on this tuesday morning. i m meredith vieira. and i m matt lauer. that vodka story s something. our crew just ran out of here with sponges. he s in big trouble. he is in big trouble. ooh. that s a lot of we ll have more on that. meanwhile, it s election day. if you re at the white house today, you re downplaying the significance of today s results, but the hd of the republican party says we could be seeing a referendum on president obama s first ten months in office. that s right. three races stand out the governors races in new jersey and virginia and a house battle in upstate new york. president obama has spent a lot of time helping all three democratic candidates, and the outcomes could be a strong indication of the president s political influence. just ahead, we ll talk about that with a man who served as mr. obama s campaign manager during the presidential campaign. also, we have been told for years now that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but can it help protect your family from things like the swine flu? kellogg s is drawing a lot of flack for claiming right on the box that rice crispies and their sugary cousin coco crispys, help support their children s immunity. is that true? is it an ad gimmick or both? we ll have more coming up. and madame tussauds s one of new york s most popular tourist attractio attractions, but recently, some visitors got a lot more than they could bargain for when al roker stepped in for his wax figure. that s a little spooky. that one of you is a little spooky. it s very spooky. let s start with the election in several states and what s at stake for democrs, republicans and president obama. chuck todd is nbc s political director and chief white house correspondent. chuck, good morning to you. good morning, matt. well, the white house complains regularly that everything they do gets covered as if it s election day. well, today is election day in a handful of states, and while president obama isn t on the ballot, it is a big test for him in his role as head of the democratic party. with democrats facing tough odds in virginia, new jersey and new york today, it s no wonder president obama didn t have a lot to say monday. we weren t talking politics, we were talking jobs. reporter: but since this is the first election on the president s watch, analysts are scrutinizing every vote closely. people will interpret the outcomes as saying something about the president. reporter: that may be why mr. obama spent sunday in new jersey, in full campaign mode, trying to help embattled incumbent governor jon corzine eke out a victory. i am fired up! reporter: corzine is in a very tight race with republican chris christie, who once held a double-digit lead. christie threw his weight around as district attorney reporter: but thanks to a barrage of negative ads, including this one, mocking christie s waistline. would you get away with it? reporter: and the rise of independent chris daggett, corzine has closed the gap, giving the president what could be his party s lone bright spot today. hello. how are you? reporter: and in upstate new york, one unusual congresonal race could tell us about the republicans future direction. party has been split between the actual nominee, dede scozzafava, and conservative independent doug hoffman. over the weekend, scozzafava dropped out, but instead of endorsing her republican rival, she endorsed democrat bill owens, even recording a campaign message on his behalf. he will be an independent voice devoted to doing what is right for new york. reporter: a hoffman victory would be seen by some conservatives as a rejection of the washington republican establishment. if it goes country club blue blood moderate, it s going to lose. if it goes reagan conservative and commits, it s going to win landslides. reporter: this republican infighting has democrats giddy. vice president biden traveled to the district monday to stir the pot. this is the republican question can they find candidates that they can rally around, moderate republicans, conservative republicans, can the party figure out a way to paper over these divisions within the party and unite behind strong nominees? now, one place where the republicans did find unity is in virginia. republican bob mcdonnell is expected to score a big victory there. and the significance? well, it s a state that president obama carried in 2008, so a lot of bragging rights there for the republicans. also, meredith, mayors races all over the country, not just in new york city. there are going to be new mayors in atlanta and houston. all right, chuck todd. thank you very much. david plouffe served as presidt obama s campaign manager during the presidential campaign. he is out with a new book, the audacity to win. david, good morning to you. good morning, meredith. before we get to the book, let s talk about these governors races in new jersey and virginia. in new jersey, a very close race. in virginia, as chuck pointed out, the republican is in the lead right now. president obama campaigned for the democratic candidates in those states fiercely, really, over the past few weeks. what does it say? i mean, obviously, he is not on the ballot, but what will the outcome say about his ability to deliver? well, i think the results of these elections tend to be overread. these are local races. i think he believes governor corzine and creigh deeds in virginia could serve both states better as governor and be important to him. i think the most important development coming out of today has nothing to do with the results. it s the congressional race in new york 23, where the sarah palin, rush limbaugh, glenn beck wing of the party drove a moderate not just out of the race, but out of the republican party. but he wouldn t be campaigning for them if he didn t think the race was important. it s less the politics than the governance. he believes they would be good individuals to serve as governor of their state and hopes they will win today because he thinks both states will be better off with their leadership. but this tends to be overcovered. i agree with the bush administration in 01 and 05. these are local races. there are 18,000 lifetime between now and next november. and would you say the se thing if the democrats were leading? absolutely. we won a congressional district in new york earlier this year. we weren t pounding our chest about the significance of that. we have a good night tonight. i promise you we won t be overstating that. one of the reasons the democrat in virginia is behind is because the independents are leaving him, and the same could be said for president obama. support of the independents he had during the campaign, which you said was crucial, has ero eroded. and it s not just the independents. i want you to look at this morning s front page of the liberal website the huffington post. on the left side, it shows a cover of your book, the audacity to win, and on the right side, the mock-up cover the timidity to govern. that s coming from people who appreciate the president, voted for the president. they re asking now this was the candidate of change they re asking, where s the change? well, there s a lot of change. i couldn t disagree more strongly with that. we re dealing with historic challenges in the economy, trying to figure out what to do with afghanistan, winding down the war in iraq. what this president is doing, he s doing he s asking this country and washington to do something it hasn t done in a long time, which is tackle long-term challenges. so, as we try to rebuild the economy in the short-term and focus on job creation, on energy and health care, the things that will determine the strength of this country for decades that washington has ducked, he s leading the charge. he s trying to fight for the middle class, change the way washington works but do you understand this perception among those who, again, supported him, that he s dragging his fight, that they don t see anything happening? well, i completely reject that. listen, people are impatient, and they should be. we re dealing with the worst economy in over 60 years. people are tense and want results, but what he s doing expanding stem cell research, the biggest middle class tax cut in history, trying to finally deliver after a century on the promise of health care. listen, he takes the long-term view of things, not just the politics of the moment, and he s committed to doing the things he thinks will strengthen the country in the long term. i want to talk about some of the aspects of your book. you talk about sarah palin in the book. you call the decision to pick her as mccain s running mate downright bizarre, ill-considered and deeply puzzling choice. at what point did you within the campaign realize that was going to backfire or believe that would backfire on mccain? well, we thought immediately so. now, obviously, in the few days after it, it was seen as a brilliant choice and she became a phenomenon, but our sense was this was a window into the two candidates, and our opponent s choice seemed somewhat reckless. he had been criticizing us for lack of experience for five or six months and then unwound that really in one moment with the selection of palin. and i think what people liked about president obama s selection was it was methodical, it was well thought out. he put the governing part ahead of the campaign. so, and listen, palin continues to be something in our party we treasure, because what she s doing up in new york 23, along with her partners supporting the conservative right? yes. i think they re driving moderates out of the party. and remember, comparatively, republicans are at the lowest point they ve been in their history. why? centrists and moderates are abandoning that party. young vod voeters, hispanic voters, african-american voters. by the way, we as a party can t accept that. we ve got to deliver. we have to do the right thing so you don t think you re underestimating her? no. listen, she s obviously got powerful support amongst an element of the party, but that doesn t reflect the country as a whole. you talked about reverend wright during the campaign and all the controversy surrounding him, and you say about in your campaign, you folks, he wasn t on the radar screen. you weren t even aware of the videos until they appeared on television and you blame yourself. you re the campaign manager. how do you miss that? good question. no, he was on our radar screen, but we hadn t done as thorough research as we should have, and it was a moment where we failed the candidate, really. and we recovered from that because of president obama, because he gave a remarkable speech that allowed us to really survive that moment of crisis. so, he could have torpedoed that election, then. well, the potential was there, sure. all right. david plouffe, thank you so much. the book is called the audacity to win. now let s check on the rest of the morning s top stories from ann curry at the news desk. good morning, everybody. hamid karzai today is promising to crack down on corruption in the wake of accusations of fraud in his country s recent elections. he is also reaching out to his opponent, saying he wants to make his government more inclusive. today, north korea announced it has made noticeable successes in weaponizing plutonium. it said it has finished reprocessing 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods, which experts say now gives north korea enough plutonium to make at least one more nuclear bomb. experts think that north korea already has enough material to make at least six nuclear weapons. secretary of state hillary clinton is pressing iran to fully accept a proposal that would have iran send most of its nuclear material to other countries for reprocessing. she said iran has already accepted the deal in principle and adds the proposal will not be changed. overseas markets are mostly lower this morning, and cnbc s trish regan s at the new york stock exchange with more on this. what are you watching today? good morning, ann. watching the fed. it begins its two-day policy meeting on interest rates. the consensus is they will remain unchanged, maintain the zero interest rate policy. however, everyone s watching very carefully to see what the fed says in its statement. the concern is, at some int, they re going to have to develop an exit strategy and raise rates. otherwise, we could be in an inflationary environment, ann. trish regan this morning. trish, thanks. the yankees now lead the world series three games to two after the phillies won last night 8-6. game six is tomorrow night in new york. and now, that fork lift operator in russia. we already showed this to you once. we want to show you again because it s too good to believe actually, so dramatic. this fork lift operator had a really bad day when he smashed into shelves in a warehouse full of vodka and cognac. within seconds, the warehouse was destroyed. the driver suffered a leg injury but is said to be okay. the damage, as you heard earlier, is more than $100,000. definitely shaken and not stirred this morning. it is now 7:12. let s go back to matt, meredith and al. the real story is what s going on with mark s voice. some yankees fans don t know when to stop yelling, right? well, we yelled at tv. we ll yell on wednesday night when they come back to the bronx. how s the weather? chilly, in the 40s, but clear, so no problem there. the good news is, we ve got plenty of quiet weather across the country. things very, very quiet. we ve got a few snow showers across the u.p. of michigan. not much going on. big story, actually, the heat down in the southwest. temperatures a little on the toasty side. we re talking about temperatures that are going to be anywhere from 5 to almost 20 degrees above normal. tucson, arizona s high today getting into thethe snoof good morning. quite a cold start here and look at that fog. a live view from the sky water camera over the potomac river. we have fog over the river valley this morning and temperatures in the upper 30s and 40s. afternoon highs in the low 60s with a few clouds low day and then tomorrow, frosty and that s your latest weather. matt? all right, al, thank you very much. and now to a fresh appeal to find madeleine mccann, the little girl who disappeared while vibrationing with her parents in portugal. now police are hoping for help finding he with computer-enhanced images. reporter: mccann vanished on may 3rd, 2007, just nine days before her 4th birthday. now police have released new, computer-aged pictures of what she might look like today at age 6 1/2. one with blond hair and a second image showing her with a suntan and darker hair. those pictures splashed all over today s london newspapers. her parents hope the images and this video will go viral on the internet. keeping this information secret only increases the anguish of madeleine s family and friends. reporter: and on british television this morning, they said they re trying to appeal directly to the kidnapper or anyone in the know. we re just trying to prompt them, really. they probably know the right thing to do is to come forward, and we re just trying to prompt them into doing that, really. this is targeted specifically to the auctor and the people that know that person. reporter: there have been persistent rumors that madeleine may have been tak off to somewhere in south africa, one reason for the tan version of her photograph. everybody will remember her as a blond-haired child and she could very well be disguised that doesn t necessarily have to be a suntan. it could be a fake tan, just like her hair could be dyed. reporter: jerry and kate mccain, once named as suspects but cleared by portuguese police, say they believe madeleine is still alive. they have waged a high-profile campaign, hiring a private detector, meeting with pope benedict, going on oprah. they say their hope in finding her was renewed after hearing about the jaycee dugard case in california, that if jaycee can be found after 18 years, madeleine could be found alive as well. this as police hope someone who knows her whereabouts will come forward. for today, george lewis, nbc news, london. it is now 7:16. once again, here s meredith. matt, thank you. and now to rhode island, where health officials have ordered cameras installed at one rhode island hospital because of an alarming number of medical mistakes. nbc s jeff rossen has details. reporter: there have been so many mistakes at the prestigious rhode island hospital, the state health department is cracking down, saying doctors here keep operating on the wrong body parts. january 2007, a resident and a nurse placed a drain on the wrong side of a patient s head. july 2007, a neurosurgeon cut open the wrong side of a patient s head. november 2007, a resident started to operate on the wrong side of a patient s head. for that, the health department fined rhode island s hospital $50,000. but again, may 2009, a surgeon operated on the wrong side of a child s mouth. and the last straw, on october 22nd, 2009, a surgeon operated on the wrong finger. we were, you know, i think pretty upset with the findings we got. they didn t follow their protocol. they didn t mark the fingers. reporter: now, rhode island s hospital will be fined an extra $150,000. they have to installed cameras in operating rooms, retrain surgeons and hire consultants to observe surgeries. these events happen in some of the nicest hospitals. it is something that is unacceptable. it shouldn t be happening in any hospitals. reporter: rhode island s hospital released this statement we remain more committed than ever to reduce the incidence of all medical rors. patient safety has always been and remains our number one priority. this morning, health officials are making sure of it, calling this a matter of grave concern. jeff rossen, nbc news, new york. it is 7:18, and once ain, here s matt. meredith, thanks. jury selection is now under way in the trial of a man who s accused of killing a popular news anchor in little rock, arkansas. nbc s janet shamlian has the latest on that. janet, good morning. reporter: matt, good morning. as a news reporter and anchor here in little rock, this is the type of story anne pressly surely would have been covering, a job that now falls to her colleagues, as her alleged killer is brought to trial a year after a beating so brutal, her own mother barely recognized her. i m here on daybreak reporter: she was a familiar face and a known name here in arkansas. you can see, we re not actually on the property. reporter: but a year ago, anne pressly went from reporting the news to becoming a headline herself. our hearts are heavy here at katv tonight after learning that our own anne pressly died earlier this evening. reporter: when the 26-year-old didn t answer her mom s early-morning wa-up call, patricia kennedy drove to her daughter s home and found what no mother should ever see. i was running. i ran around the corner, back toward her bedroom, and i was screaming, ann, ann! reporter: and then she found ann, bloody and beaten to within an inch of her life. she had been raped and robbed. she was unconscious but alive. we are guardedly optimistic about the potential for her recovery. reporter: as was everyone. she s strong and she ll be okay, and there s so many people praying. reporter: but the 26-year-old never regained consciousness. she died five days after the attack. how could this happen? reporter: the attack appeared to be a random robbery. pressly had two cocker spaniels, and detectives thought her killer may have gotten into the house through a dog door. this girl did nothing wrong to deserve this. now, like, you know, i m angry. reporter: four weeks later, 28-year-old curtis vance was charged with capital murder. [ inaudibl] reporter: in may, vance asked for a new defense team, saying he didn t trust his court-appointed lawyers. the request was denied. prosecutors believe the killing happened during a random home invasion unrelated to pressly s local fame. they claim to have a taped confession and solid dna evidence tying vance to the bloody crime scene. the defense says it will challenge both. the crime that he committed was so heinous and so violent that i think nothing short of the maximum sentence allowable under capital murder is the appropriate way to go. reporter: pressly s mother will take the stand as one of the witnesses in what promises to be heartbreaking testimony about finding her daughter and, ultimately, losing her. if you live in and around little rock, you know about this case, something the court learned yesterday, as potential jurors were called for questioning. of the 125 summoned, only 1 said they had not heard about this case, and prosecutors have indicated they are going to seek the death penalty here if curtis vance is convicted. matt, back to you. janet shamlian in arkansas this morning. janet, thank you very much. just ahead on a tuesday morning, a wealthy florida mother claims she was kidnapped and held for ransom, but police aren t buying it. now she is under psychiatric care and her lawye are with us for an exclusive live interview. we ll get to that story. still to come, are some cereal makers preying on your swine flu fears when they say that their cereal helps protect your children? the controversial claim now on some boxes about immunity. also, if you ve ever been to madame tussauds, you know it s an unusual place. well, watch what happens when al steps in for his wax dummy and gives some unsuspecting fans a sce and a thrill. good morning. the time right now is 7:26. it s tuesday, november 3rd, 2009. i m barbara harris. it s election day and vots are casting their ballot in west virginia. here s a live look in menace sis. the polls are opened until 7:00 tonight. lawyers for the d.c. sniper are expected to appeal to the supreme court and he s mentally ill and his condition was worsened by being in the gulf war. we ll take a break and we are off to a cold start and we have patchy frost this morning but sunshine should make it into the low 60s. how is the traffic, jerry? it s very slow. again, the fog is an issue. as for the parkway northbound at 197, it s still causing major delays. barbara? how can 7:30 now on a tuesday morning. it s the 3rd day of november 2009. got a nice crowd out on the plaza this morning. want to thank them for stopping by. some of these people, some fans right there. some of them may even be playing hooky from work or school. that s okay, meredith will write them a note. inside studio 1a, matt lauer along with meredith vieira. still ahead, a claim on cereal boxes getting a lot of people s attention. maybe you ve seen it. it reads helping to support your family s immunity. it s compelling to many parents with the swine flu going around. is it true or just a gimmick? we ll get the latest and see what the cereal maker is saying in response to the criticism. i used to try to convince my mom that cap n crunch was good for me. did it work? no. she never bought it. also ahead, ever been to a museum and feel like the portraits are looking back at you well, what if they yelled at you? we ll see what happened when al filled in at madame tussaudss. he did such a good job. plus, first lady fashion. wel look at mrs. obama s top outfits since the election. she s had a lot of them. but first, a bizarre story out of florida. a mother claimed she was kidnapped, tied up and held for ransom, but now police believe it was all a scheme. that woman s lawyers are with us exclusively. we ll talk to them in a moment. but first, nbc s peter alexander has the details on the story. peter, good morning. matt, good morning to you. even the sheriff in florida says this case reads like a novel, with allegations of sex, lies and extortion. a beautiful mother of two claiming she was kidnapped by gunmen and held for days against her will. her family was rightfully terrified. but now that she s safe, authorities aren t buying her story. they are portraits of what appears to be the all-american family. quinn gray, her husband reed, and their two young daughters. a couple married for ten years. attractive, wealthy and seemingly care-free. but this past labor day weekend, an improbable twist quinn disappeared from the couple s mul multimillion dollar beach front home near jacksonville, florida. the 37-year-old housewife later told authorities she was kidnapped at gunpoint and tied up, describing a hellish four days of forced captivity and sexual assault. nbc news has obtained a copy of this ransom note that quinn gray told investigators her abductor forced her to write to her husband. there are three men holding me right now and they want $50,000 cash, she wrote, stay at the house, no cops, keep your cell phone on you, keep the kids with you. please do this, honey, please. but sheriff david shore says it was all a hoax. it became more and more evident, really to everyone involved, that it was something far more complex and involved than a kidnapping. reporter: the sheriff says gray wasn t a victim at all. quinn gray was not kidnapped. and we stand by that. and she ll have her day in court. reporter: gray was arrested last month for trying to extort $50,000 from her husband, a successful business owner who makes upwards of $70,000 a month. if i wanted $50,000, all i would do is take it out of the bank account. reporter: also arrested, this man, 25-year-old bosnian immigrant jasmine ismanovich, jailed on extortion charges. authorities say they had prepared their scheme for weeks. in more than 100 pages of recently released court documents, investigators say they stated several locations, including this jacksonville hotel, where the manager says they looked like boyfriend and girlfriend. i looked straight at her and said, hey. she said hey. didn t look like she was in distress at all. reporter: reed admits in court papers that their marriage became rocky in 2007. both partners admit having affairs, but they have since reconciled. while he s stunned by the allegations, reed gray is standing by his wife and paying for her defense. i want her to feel great about everything after this is all over, and i think that s going to be the outcome. reporter: quinn gray s lawyers say she was suffering from an untreated, undiagnosed manic phase of bipolar disorder and that in her poor mental state, she believed asmonovich s story, that her husband owed him $50,000. gray s lawyers say osmonovich s claims, including that they had an ongoing relationship are completely false. did you have a sexual relationship? no, i did not. i did note know him. reporter: in his affidavit, he claims he first met gray at her home somewhere around the end of june. gray s lawyers say that s not possible, because at the time, she was in alcohol rehab in minnesota. what do you want to say to your family? do you have an apology to your family? i love you and i hope to see you soon. for now, quinn gray is in a mental health facility in georgia. that s a condition of her release from jail. both lawyers will be in court today, matt, for a pretrial hearing. peter alexander, thank you very much. mark miller and mr. dancha are two of quinn gray s attorneys. gentlemen, nice to have you here. thank you. the prosecution s version of this story and quinn gray s story couldn t be more different. basically, the prosecution says there was no kidnapping, she was not involved in this other than she was having a romantic and sexual relationship with this man. the guy at the hotel said she didn t seem to be under duress and there were chances for her to escape. several occasions she could have taken off. how do you explain that? i think it s important to note now, matt, that the prosecution and the sheriff don t necessarily share the same opinion about what happened that weekend, but the bottom line is, quinn gray on labor day weekend of this year was kidnapped during the midst of a manic phase of her bipolar disorder. her reaction to the kidnapping, it may seem zarre, but it s all explained by her mental illness. does it also explain another piece of evidence that something could become an important piece of evidence there s an audio tape, and that apparently has a recording of sexual relations between these two people, mr. osmonovich and quinn, followed by what seems to be a rehearsal, a discussion of how they re going to cover all this up and explain this. can you tell me about that tape? well, actually, you know, the tape doesn t disose what law enforcement i have not heard the tape. i want to make sure people know that. it s currently being held as evidence, because as mark indicated, the state attorney s office doesn t necessarily hold the same opinion or conclusions as the sheriff. according to the state attorney s office, the matter is still under investigation. they re still unsure, we submit at this point, whether or not quinn gray is actually the victim of an abduction and rape. are you going to fight to stop that tape from being admitted as evidence? absolutely, absolutely. we believe that that tape is an audio recording of a woman who s been kidnapped, abducted and being raped. so you use the rape shield law to get that stricken from evidence? absolutely. let me make sure our viewers understand us. is it quinn gray s assertion that she never met this man before or simply had no relationship romantic or sexual with him prior to this weekend? quinn gray had no relationship with this bosnian, osmanovic, prior to labor day weekend. he came by on two occasions prior to that weekend under the guise of misdelivering a package, and then he came back a few days later so, he was at their case on two occasions. he brought a package and two days later came back saying it was misdelivered. that s how we believe he targeted her. so, you think he was casing the place absolutely. or targeting her. and i would imagine the prosecution might say that s a way to cover two prior visits to her house by this man. but what s more telling is, on the second visit, when he came back to retrieve this package, quinn actually called reed and said, you remember that package that was misdelelered? the person s here to pick it up. where did you put it? so this undiagnosed mental illness, bipolar condition, is there a history of mental illness in quinn gray s family onerside? there is an extensive amount of history, and that s one of the reasons that it was untreated and undiagnosed. quinn has grown up with a stigma against recognizing what she was going through. she self-medicated for much of her adult life with alcohol. that led to an alcohol abuse problem. in the middle of this summer, she went to hazleton, a facility, and was treated for alcoholism. when she came back in middle of july, the next six weeks, she was untreated, undiagnosed and she was no longer self-medicating. she was in a manic phase of her bipolar disorder when she was kidnapped on labor day friday. let me read a quick statement from quinn s husband, reed. this has been an extraordinarily traumatic experience for me and my entire family. i m deeply concerned over how this incident has and will continue to affect our children. i love my family and will do whatever i can to make sure that quinn receives all of the help and sporthat she needs. he is funding her defense, correct? he has been behind her rock solid, 100% from the beginning, yes. and she is right now in a psychiatric facility. how is she doing? she s doing rather well. of course, she s very anxious about what s going on. she s in the middle of her treatment, and she thought it was very important that we disclose and discuss, you know, the problems that she s had and what she s been going through so that other people that have these type of issues or disabilities, you know, it may be recognized. you know, what s telling is, quinn gray may not have reacted the way you or iould react or someone else would have reacted, but she s alive today. and so, however she did react, it was the appropriate thing she did at the time. lots of twists and turns and more to come in this. it is stunning that the sheriff is coming out and saying that he still believes this is a kidnapping. from the day quinn was abducted and released, reid gray has been asking, and they ve been promising, we ll show you they knew each other before september 4th, 2009. eight weeks have passed. not one e-mail, not one text message, not one cell phone record. they have done the computer searches. there is nothing that supports their contention that it s a faked kidnapping. uys, thank you for being here. we re going to follow this story closely. all right. appreciate you having us. and let s get a check of the weher now from mr. roker. thanks a lot, matt. and we ve got sailors and marines from the uss new york. all right. that s right. we re really proud of the job you guysre doing. thank you so much. now let s head to st. louis, where the river walk along the mississippi river flooded. actually, they had beautiful weather, but this is from the previous week s heavy rains, record rains. the good news is, that rain, that flood water is going to finally start to recede today. as we check out what s been going on for the month of november, well, it s looking temperaturewise much above normal for the northern plains, above normal for the western two-thirds of the country, normal in northeast and gulf coast. precipitationwise, drier than normal in the lower mississippi good morning. it s a chilly tuesday morning. we re showing fog over the potomac river and we ve got the sun up and a clear sky. the temperatures will rapidly climb but we have a few isolated spots where we ve got some patchy frost this morning. and it s in the upper 30s in the suburbs. now, highs today, in the low 60s. sunny start and frosty start tomorrow afternoon. that s your latest weather. for a check of weather any time of the day or night, you can go to the weather channel on cable or weather.com online. matt. all right, al, thank you ver much. coming up next, can cereal actually give your child s immunity a boost? the new claim that has parents and the fda a little up in arms. the details on what kellg s has to say about it. back at 7:44, this morning on today s consumer, swine flu and cereal. kellogg s, the nation s largest cereal maker, is coming under fire for this, a claim on the front of cocoa krispies boxes that it now helps support your child s immunity. nbc s tom costello has details. reporter: chances are, you ve seen it in the cereal aisle, cocoa krispies helps support your child s immunity. but wendy wasn t sold. i think it s a gimmick, really. when it comes to cocoa krispies, i don t think that i would accept that it s an immunity-boosting product. reporter: kellogg s added the claim in may after the swine flu first appeared. now the san francisco city attorney has suggested that all kellogg s scientific and consumer research to prove it, writing at a time when parents are increasingly worried about the spread of the h1n1 virus, it is vitally important that parents receive accurate information about what they can do to protect their children s health. kellogg s tells nbc news it s not trying to capitalize on the flu outbreak, that it has increased vitamins a, c and e in its cereal. so, helping support the body s immune system is information that is supported by reliable and competent scientific evidence. but is it? the idea that the cereal you eat in the morning could make that big a deal for you immune system is very flimsy science. reporter: just a week ago, the food industry dropped its smart choices labelling progm after the fda questioned the label s accuracy. now, new research by yale university s food research center has found the least healthy breakfa cereals are most likely to end up on kids plates in the morning. the yale survey found that cereals marketed directly to children have 85% more sugar, 60% more sodium and 65% less fiber than cereals marketed to adults. there s almost complete overlap between a list of cereals with the worst nutrition rankings and those that are marketed most aggressive tleey children. you walk down the aisles in the supermarket, you ll see just this cacothany of different symbols and labels. it s just very confusing. consumers don t like it. reporter: the fda is already working a a new food labelling system based on science. until then, experts suggest parents should read the labels carefully. for today, tom costello, nbc news, washington. madelyn fernstrom is today s diet and nutrition ed tore. good morning to you. good morning, meredith. based on your scientific background, what do you think of this notion that kellogg s says its cereal helps boost a child s immunity? strictly speaking from the science, the body s immune system is complex and we re always building cells to fight infection. the issue is, you need nutrients for that. you d be hard-pressed to find a nutrient or vitamin that doesn t contribute to healthy immune function. it s really a stretch to take a handful of vitamins, put them in cereal and say this is going to be sort of a special fighter, because it s all important. and that s where the confusion really comes in. the fda with the current rulings relies on a manufacturer to say, okay, tell us the evidence, give us the science. the fda, and they don t comment usually on matters that could be under investigation they say the manufacturer, as you point outsi, is responsible for ensuring the accuracy and truthfulness of these claims. they are not pre-approved by the fda but must be truthful and not misleading. so, do you believe these are misleading on the package? it s misleading because on the front of the package, you see a giant word immunity. people aren t reading contributes to it will help with diet, help with a lot of things. but it s confusing to parents because it s a time when we re all worried about this, and parents will think, i m off the hook. i can see a bowl of cereal, immunity. this is going to be helpful. something my kid will eat. sometimes a bowl of cereal is just a bowl of cereal. kellogg s, their response is they did increase vitamins a, c and nenk their rice krispies cereals from 10% to 25% in terms of daily value and this is a quote from them these nutrients have been identified by the institute of medicine and other studies as playing an important role in the body s immune system. is that increase in daily amounts enough, in your estimation, to warrant this? well, you know, the science is a little uneven. because yes, that statement is true, those nutrients do support a healthy immune function, but how often do you have to eat it, how much? is the increase from 10% to 25% which is really a good thing, having more nutrients is always good, but having a variety of nutrients is going to be important. so, it depends upon how much of this you re going to have. remember, it s 25%. you have that other 75% of your requirements to get from other sources as well. so, if you can t do it with the cereal, that won t help fight immunity, what will? it s a three-point plan. it s a well-balanced diet with a lot of colorful fruits and vegetables. it s going to be getting enough sleep, also good hand hygiene, not just hand washing, but teaching children to keep their hands away from their nose and mouth. so it s never just about the food. all right. so don t necessarily believe what you see on the label. and when it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. madelyn fernstrom, thank you. you re welcome. many health plans are changing fast, so how do you know how to pick the right one? just ahead, you can call al a really working stiff. his day as a wax figure. after your local news and weather. a foggy start to the day. there is blue sky up there right now. 44 degrees is the current temperature in washington. good morning. i m barbara harrison. it s 7:56 right now. in the news at this hour, it s election day. when the polls are opened in virginia, republicans will be voting for mcdonald or all 100 seats in the delegates are also up for grabs. polls are opened until 7:00 tonight. today is your chance to sound off on a proposed metro act into the budget that begins next july, even with the increase they have a budget short fall. another forum is scheduled for later this month in largo. we tom is here. can you tell us what to expect from the weather? it s been cold and it s going gradually warm us up. # 4 now in washington. highs should briefly touch low 6 0s by early ternoon. how is weather and traffic, jerry? pretty loaded up from fair oaks and even volume on the westbound side. elsewhere, 395 northbound, but headed through the 14th street bridge. barbara? going green on the vine. how could making wine get al roker and matt lauer. 8:00 now on this tuesday morning, november 3rd, 2009. that, obviously, is al giving people quite a shock as he filled in for his wax figure at madam tumadame tussauds. he s a spitting image of his dummy. let s not call it a dummy. wax figure. i m here with al roker and matt lauer. you don t understand how tiring it is standing in one place holding rock still. and you can t blink or anything. no. your eyes dry out. it s not fun. were you at all nervous that somebody out of pure reaction would like turn around and hit you? i hadn t thought about that, actually. all right, coming up, this is the time of year a lot of people who work for companies get asked if they want to make changes to their health care plan, that open enrollment period. a lot of people say, no, let it ride, roll it over to the next year. well, an expert is going to tell us that this year is not the year to do that, and we ll explain why in a couple minutes. then a little later on, a firstor best-selling author john grisham. after selling 250 million books, he s shaking things up with his latest offering. it s a coloringbook. no. he s going to tell us why and what he s done, coming up a little ter. national league fan, john grisham. oh, you say that with some disdain. with a lot of disdain in my voice, that s right. he seems fine with it. yeah, he s comfortable. of course, he is. first, we re going to get a check of the top stories from ann curry at the news desk. hey, ann. hey, meredith. thanks. good morning once again, everybody. we begin with voters heading to the polls in several states. in the first election since democrats took control of the white house and congress, two states, new jersey and virginia, are electi governors today and the president has stumped hard for democrats in both races. also, 400 cities are electing mayors today, including new york, atlanta and boston. this morning, hamid karzai welcomed his re-election as afghanistan s president a day after the election commission there declared him a winner. karzai promised to end corruption and create an inclusive government by reaching out to his opponents. however, he did not mention his chief political rival, abdullah abdullah, by name. today, german chancellor angel merkel meets with president obama and also presses for a global economic deal on climate change in a press to congress. health officials say they re seeing good results from just one dose of the swine flu vaccination in pregnant women but still say that children under age 9 need two doses. school children, considered one of the highest risk groups, have been getting the vaccine as it s becoming available. rush hour traffic should be much smoother this morning around san francisco now that the bay bridge has reopened after being closed for nearly a week when part of theridge there collapsed. and now, here s brian williams with what s coming up tonight on nbc nightly news. hey, brian. the outpouring of support from our nightly news viewers has been overwhelming. we ll show everyone how they re already making a difference. join us for that follow-up tonight. ann, for now, back to you. all right, thanks a lot, brian. it is now 8:03. let s get another check of the weather from al. and thanks a lot, ann. and somebody has a wiggly tooth. where s your wiggly tooth? let s see. which oh, it s the top one there. wow, all right. there you go. what s your name? shannon. shannon. and i guess this is your brother? your annoying little brother? yeah. or big brother, i should say? very nice. that works out well. apply for the job. you got it. let s check your weather. i was one of those once! honolulu, hawaii. khnl, nbc 8. partly sunny and warm, 87 degrees our high. jet stream today, not much going on, pretty quiet. it s up to the northwest. that s why we ve got those record highs. and as we head on toward thursday, you can see it shifts a little bit to the east, but that s going to keep those much above-normal temperatures through the plain states, down into the southwest. storm track brings it across the great lakes, bringing some snow showers. a little clipper vescross good morning. we ve had dense fog over the rivers, especially over the potomac. but now we ve got the sun up and blue skies. here s the latest weather. we are above freezing and some areas of scattered frost around virginia and west virginia. a bright and sunny day. highs reaching low 60s and then and that s your latest weather. freeze. when we come back, it s alive. al pulls a fast one at madame tussauds. and he didn t flinch. a long-awaited journey in aisle 10? 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what s happening? well, we re going to turn you into a wax figure today. all right. but passing myself off as a realistic fake wouldn t be easy. i began with a visit to nbc s makeup lab,here louie, our crack artist, takes charge. first, he applies a thin layer of silicone all over my face. then he air-brushes my skin with prosthetic paints. pretty convincing, but one wrong blink and i ll blow my cover. booga! oh, let s go have some heart attacks. back at the museum, our surveillance team plants hidden microphones and cameras around wax matt and wax al and outfits me with a special tie cam for anyone who gets a little too friendly. i m looking at you looking at me. i m looking at you looking at me. all right. take a hike. i kick my imposter to the curb, take my position next to a decidedly stand-offish matt. nice to see you. and now it s time to play the dummy. not a stretch. at first, i keep a low profile to see if anyone will sniff out the fraud. a few step in for a second look, but i m good, very good. even this tourist agrees. then it s time to come to life. hi, how are you! hey, how are you? dudes! what s happening? oh, geez. yankees win. how are you doing? yankees win. nice to see you. i almost wet myself. almost wet yourself, wow. that could have been rough. hey, how are you? hey, how are you? al roker looks funny, doesn t he? what do you mean i usually look funny? i usually look funny to you? is that what you said? he s that guy with matt lauer. al roker. yes, you re absolutely correct! yes, you are. it s al roker and matt lauer. you scared me. are you real? no. no, not at all. scared the crap out of me. is matt real, too? no, no. he hasn t said anything this whole time. is that madonna? yeah, it s madonna. hey, how are you? hello. how are you? how s the baby? i thought she was real. she is real! that s matt. that is matt. al, how are you? oh, my god. after holding still for nearly two hours, i m ready to let loose and leave all this standing around to the professionals. well, that was a lot of fun, i ve got to tell you. did you? you re very good. you really had that pose down. you know, when i was a kid, we used to practice our freeze frames at the end of sitcoms. well, he ll be having problems then! see, and all these years later, comes in very handy. useful. once a working stiff, always a working stiff. you bet you. that s great, though. that man said he almost wet his pants, geez. no lawsuits, no no, nobody hit me. where d you stick the camera, the one it was the tie. in the tie? it was in the tie. very cool. very funny. funny. and tomorrow, coming up, ann gets a laugh when she joins an improve group. i understand there s some funny public singing involved. uh-oh. we know how you feel about singing, too, ann. anyway. we ll have much more after this. smile in aisle 14? a long-awaited journey in aisle 10? yeah. because when you save money on the little things, it adds up to life s more amazing things. walmart saves the average family $3,100 a year no matter where you shop. what will you do with your savings? save money. live better. walmart. when you re trying to lose weight, the more options you have, the more likely you are to stay on track. that s why there s 8 delicious kinds of special k cereal. because every girl could use a little variety. special k now in 8 delicious flavors. convincing, isn t it? dove therapy conditioners. research proves dove even repairs. damage at the tips better than the leading pantene conditioner. dove. expertise for damaged hair. the chevy malibu and toyota camry received 5 star crash safety ratings. but only malibu has onstar. big deal. i ll just use my phone. let s say we crashed. whoops, you lost your phone and you re disoriented. i m not disoriented. now you are. onstar automatic crash response can call to see if you re ok. if you don t answer, they can automatically send help i think i ll ride with you. the award-winning malibu. compare it to anyone. and may the best car win. sure. cake or pie? pie. apple or cherry? cherry. oil or cream? oil or cream? cream! (announcer) some use hydrogenated oil. reddi-wip s uses real dairy cam. nothing s more real than reddi-wip. baby back, baby back, baby back your favorite baby back ribs just got even better, slow-smoked in house for hours over pecan wood chips to create a sweeter, smoky flavor and fall-off-the-bone tenderness. then they re triple-basted in one of our three delicious flavors chili s new better-than-ever baby back ribs, part of our three courses, two people $20 deal. or y can share an appetizer, choose two entrees, and share a dessert. i want new baby back ribs for a limited time, only at chili s. this morning on today s health, choosing the right health care plan. as the debate over health care rages in washington, now is typically open enrollment season, when people can elect to make changes in their existing benefits. and this year, it s especially important to know your options. jean chatzky is today s financial editor and author of pay it down. jean, good morning. nice to see you. good morning. you, too. let s jump right off the bat with bad news. we re talking about an increase next year on what individuals pay that could reach 10%. why? by about 10%, because the employers are asking you to kick in more towards your actual insurance premium and you re being asked to pay more for co-pays and prescriptions and things like that. so, they re getting you on both ends. and for the average person, we re talking about almost $4,000, when you add that employee contribution together with the out-of-pocket cost. that s a lot of money. so, if you re one of those people and i think i fall into this category in the past, where you see it s open enrollment season. you say, i m sure it was fine from this year. i m going to let it roll over to next year. you say this isn t the year to do that at all. not at all, because there are a lot of new changes tt are coming into the plans that you will end up paying more money for. so, you need to be conscious of these new trends. what are some of the trends? the first one is that people are being asked to pay a co-insurance rather than a co-pay. so, you might be asked to pay a percentage of the cost of your prescription rather than just a flat $20 or $25, and it may be more. we re also seeing plans being audited. a t of plans have discovered that your dependents, because they ve aged out, or perhaps you re divorced from them, no longer belong on those plans. so they re taking a look. also, if you have a salary that s higher than the other people in your company, you re being asked to pay more. all right. so, what you want people to do right now, quickly, is to make a list, itemize all of their health care costs that they can reasonably estimate now and write that down. for next year, make a list, and then take the different plans that you re being offered and figure out which one will actually cost you more over the course of the year. now, if you can t do it, if you say i have no idea what i m going to spend on health care, use last year s expenses. it will be a fairly good barometer. so, basically, people are asked to choose between high-deductible plans, where you pay a lower monthly premium. right. and a more traditional plan. right. these high-deductible plans are making their way into employer plans across the country, because they save employers 20%, they may save you 20%, but your deductible is going to be $1,200 at a minimum, for a single person, $2,400 for a family. your premiums will be lower, and these are often a better bet for younger, healthier people. employers are also incenting people to go into these plans. they re coupled with health savings accounts, and they re saying, all right, we re going to give you the first $500 or $1,000. so, if you re not a younger, healthier person, if you re an older person who has perhaadpas should go with the more traditional plan? then you have to really run the numbers, because the costs on the traditional plans, despite the fact that they tend to pay out from the first dollar of health care, the costs on those plans in terms of premiums are going way up. that s when the list of the health care that you re likely to need becomes very important. by the way, youe not only shopping for yourself in many situations, you re trying to cover your family as well. right. and it s really important you don t throw everybody in the same basket. look at each person individually and decide, if my spouse has a plan, is it cheaper for her to go with that one and me to stay on mine? where do the kids belong? and should one of us be shopping outside of our employer? there is a robust market for individual health insurance starting at ehealthinsurance.com. you may be able to save yourself a lot of money. people on medicare need to stay on top of this as well. november 15th is the date when their open enrollment begins, and a lot of medicare advantage plans are changing. go to medicare.gov to see if you need to make a change. good stuff, jean. thanks. sure. we appreciate it. it is 8:21. once again, here s meredith. now to one of thmost beautiful cities of the world and the rather unexpected tour guides you will find there. here s nbc s keith miller. reporter: there s an old saying you should see naples before you die because the history, beauty and charm of this ancient italian city can be so overwhelming. there s also a warning to visiting tourists. be on guard, because on average, there are 100 muggings, purse-snatchings and picked pockets a day. now in a unique response to a spike in street crime, the city hired ex-cons to work as tour guides. giovanni advises a german tourist to guard his camera a gets a guarded response. that s true, that s true. i mean, people could think we are in naples, who is this guy? i mean, it s a normal reaction, i think, no? reporter: what is not normal is having 70 former criminals on the city payroll to help visitors avoid being the victims of crime. councilman corado gabrielli admits he s letting the wolf look after the sheep, but this is a job, he says, not a criminal opportunity. i think it is the better way to fight the mafia people in italy. reporter: murders, rapists and armed robbers need not apply, but ask any one of them why they served time. anthony tells me it s a long story. lucio says he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. and arturos claims it was the other guy. the ex-cons are marked by fluorescent vests, but still, some tourists are shocked to be approached by former criminals. once somebody becomes a thief, they ll always be a thief. reporter: david russell from canada is puzzled. if i was approached by an ex-con, i wouldn t really know how to react. reporter: naples has always been a city of saints and sinners. the local mafia, called the kimora, recruits new prisoners from prison. to help combat that, they re paid for a 20-hour workweek. city officials claim street crime has dropped by 85% since the program started. there s no way of verifying that number. you have to take the word of arturo, who says he s grateful for any job that keeps him from a life of crime. still, opponents of the mul multimillion dollar program say it will only give naples a new saying the city of thugs. for today, keith miller, nbc news, naples. well, the question, i guess, is does it work? well, they say it does, right? they say the crime rate is down and people don t end up going back to prison, so, that s a good thing. that s good. by the way, if you go there, keith is looking for his wallet. now, stop. see, now you re just kidding. it s not his wallet. a joke. just a joke. anyway, still ahead, michelle obama s top ten outfits since election day. she s had so many great ones, so the top ten. first, your local news and weather. a beautiful day for boating today. it s 8:26, tuesday, november 3rd, 2009. welcome, everyone. i m barbara harrison. in the news at this hour, it s election day. voters will be choosing between republican bob mcdon nel or creigh deeds. all of the house in the delegates are up for grabs. we ll take a break and come let s see if the sunshine is going to take over. yes, it s getting into the 40s and low 60s by midafternoon. a few clouds by midday and chillier weather moves in after that. jerry, how is a look at the traffic? pretty heavy but all the way okay for 295 to the 11th street bridge. be careful. barbara? thank you. tonight at 5:00, going green on the vine. how can a vine get any greener? 8:30 now on a tuesday morning. it is the 3rd day of november 2009. we always like to welcome our servicemen and servicewomen, as well as minnesota viking fans and lenny to the plaza on what is turning out to be a really pretty day. yeah. bright blue sky, although temperatures getting up into the upper 50s, low 60s today. like it. great fall weather. i m matt lauer along with meredith vieira, al roker and ann curry. coming up in this half hour, his name is synonymous with the legal thriller. i m talking about john grisham. wow, what a resume he has. but his newest book is a real departure for him. we ll talk about that and also a story in the headlines that he s kind of in the middle of. also, an artist praised for his bright and exuberant choice of color. his works are in swanky new york galleries and always fetch top dollar. oh, yeah, did i mention, he s a dog? he s painting us a masterpiece this morning. his name is sammy and we re going to watch him work his magic in just a minute. he s in his blue period right now. lovely. that must be you, al. very nice. also coming up, we ll be talking about some cooking. want some country cooking? we re going to have some food done the right way. we ll make some knockout dishes. i don t know what we re making, but it s going to be good. what else? and first lady michelle obama has been quite the fashion displayer. we ve seen so many fashion highlights from her. we ll check out michelle obama s ten most memorable fashion looks. my goodness. not even a full year in office, and i know, that s fantastic. ten months. ten looks for ten months. there you go. that s it. first, you have a check of the weather? i do indeedy do. i do i figure i do. for today, we ve got some afternoon showers, especially as you get up into minnesota, also northern new england. coastal flood advisories along the southeastern mid-atlantic coast, i should say. sunshine through the southwest, where it s going to be hot. the heat continues tomorrow. moremore still quite chilly but we ve got the bright sunshine. low and mid-40s and upper 30s farther to our west where we had scattered frost this morning. lots of sunshine today. highs into the low 60s. mostly clear tonight. frosty cold tomorrow morning. afternoon highs with increasing ouds on wednesday with mid-50s. cool and mostly that s your latest weather. for weather any time of the day or night, check out the weather channel on cable or weather.com online. okay. all righty, al. for the past 25 years, women in need has provided housing help and hope to homeless families here in new york. that s right, and this year, celebrities and designers alike are helping raise awareness and money for the group by creating special mini houses like these. this is actually ours. the parsons school of design helped with ours. some of them, the artists made them themselves. the auction is on charitybuzz.com. that s right. 2,500 people are helped each night, including 1,600 children, sleeping in one of the six women in needs six new york city area shelters every night. i didn t realize about this shelter system in this city, 80% of the people who occupy the shelters are homeless families. yes. talking about thousands and thousands of children. yeah, so it s very exciting. the opening bid for the smaller houses, $150, $200 for the larger homes. great cause. this is jennifer lopez s house, all sparkling. we have lil wayne s. ludacris. whose is this? dylan loren. okay. go to charitybuzz.com and please bid. it s for a very, very worthy cause. up next, best-selling author hn grisham does something he s never done before. he s going to tell us all about it, but first, this is today we re back now at 8:36 with a fist first, excuse me for one of the most successful writers of his generation. john grisham is the master i think you ll agree of the legal thriller. but his latest book, number 23 if you re counting, is something different. it s a selection of short stories called foard county. nice to see you again. always good to be here, matt. and the most fun you ve had writing a book, i understand. it was a lot of fun. the stories sort of piled up over the last 15, 20 years, and they weren t really complete until early this year, and i got busy and wrapped them all up. but the editing, the rewriting was just a whole lot of fun. a lot of humor in the stories. but when you say you wrapped them all up i read that one story took you about two weeks to write. another has been tumbling around in your brain for 20 years. how do you keep a story in ann unfinished mode for that amount of time? well, a lot of ideas. all seven of these stories began as potential novels. the idea was there. and they just weren t big enough weren t long enough. to stretch into 700 pages? they weren t long enough. i couldn t mentally see the entire book. i couldn t work out the you know, you have to have a great beginning, a compelling opening, a finish that s probably unpredictable. in the middle you ve got to sustain the narrative tension for 300 pages, and that s the hard part. one thing i know has got to be easier. if you start writing a short story and you run into a problem and all writers have problems, plot problems, whatever it s got to be easier to fix a short story than to go back in the middle of a novel and try to fix it. far easier. the problem with the trick with a novel is don t have the problem. plan it, outline. think it all the way through before i ve learned that lesson many times the hard way. i outlined an entire book chapter 1, chapter 2, all the way to chapter 40, and that may take several years. so there s no guess work. when you sit down to write the final version, you ve taken a lot of the guesswork out of it. oh, yeah. i know the main plot, the subplots, the characters. it s the outlining is not any fun, but it s crucial. interesting in that you call it foard county, which by the way was featured in your first book time to kill. give me a sense for ford county and what is it about that place that resonates in your writing mind? it s smalltown mississippi, smalltown south, smalltown america. s where i grew up. i practiced law in a town similar to that, lived in a town similar to that. that s my courthouse, my courtroom. seven of the stories four of the seven deal with smalltown lawyers doing crazy things, things i saw, things i thought about. it s a lot of the stuff i lived. some of it s pure fiction. a couple stories have no lawyers, but there s a lot of smalltown color and a lot of humor and some tragedy. let me get away from small towns then for a second and let s talk about big business, shall we? whoa, what was that? i m afraid to look. i know. last week, the american booksellers association asked the justice department to investigate what they call predatory pricing of certain books being sold by amazon, target and walmart. your book is one of ten that is being discounted dramatically. i think the book sells for what, $24? it s a $24 book, and you can buy it at walmart, amazon and now target online for about $9. now if i m a consumer, i would say why buy it for $24 if i can buy it online for $9. and as a author and writer, you say what? truthfully, it doesn t affect me, what i get not individually in the short-term, but it s a disaster in the long-term. the book is worth $24. that enables me to make a royalty, the publisher to make a profit and the book store to make a profit. it s aair price. we ve been paying that for a long time. if a new book is now worth $9, we have seriously devalued that book, and who knows where it s going to go from there? keep in mind, they re losing money. they re paying about $10 or $11 for that book they re selling for $9 they re doing it for a competitive edge, trying to underprice their competition that s why it s a short-term, it s short-sided, short-term, and they re smart people. i can t tell them how to run amazon, but they know what they re doing, i think, but we re going to get to a point if a book is worth $10, okay, whether it s a discounted hardback at amazon or an e-book sold by amazon for the kindle if we re at $10, okay, then suddenly, the whole industry s going to change. you re going to lose public shers, book stores. i m probably going to be all right, but at spirg writers are going to have a very hard time getting published. do you think it s a free market and they can charge what they want, especially if they re taking a loss on it? it s a free market. there s no legal case. i m not issuing to sue amazon or walmart. they ve sold a lot of books, but the future is very uncertain with books. and the deep discount will take care of itself. the uncertainty comes with the e-market. five years from now, how many of us are going to be reading books on kindles, these sony readers, these beautiful gadgets and devices that are going to get better and better and cheaper and cheaper? if it s hatch of us, then you ll wipe out tons of publishers and book stores and we d buy it all online. a story we ll be filing, certainly of interest on you. the new book is ford county. thank you for being with us. you can read an excerpt at todayshow.com. still ahead, something john s sure to love. we re going to head into the kitchen for a lesson in down home southern cooking. like that? what have you done today to make you feel proud this morning on get fit today, a tearful good-bye on nbc s the biggest loser. 34-year-old abbi wright is the latest contestant to be kicked off the ranch. after capturing hearts early on with her story of her tragic loss of her husband and two young children, she has turned tragedy into triumph, losing an impressive 86 pounds. good morning. good morning. you startedt 287, 86 pounds down. you look fantastic. thank you. i feel fantastic. now, when you entered the biggest loser, you said you were shattered and broken, and everybody can understand. you lost your husband and your two young children in a tragic car accident, driver going 100 miles per hour. for those that haven t followed this, tell us what happened? wento the emergency room just to have things checked out. i m sorry, they played a little audio we didn t mean to hear. it was a friday afternoon and my husband was taking macy and caleb with him to go to an open gym, and i wasn t with them because i was in the emergency room getting checked out for what i thought was a heart problem. and when i couldn t get a hold of them, realized that something must be wrong, and then drove up, never saw the cars or anything like that, but drove up on the accident to learn that there had been no survivors found that day. how did your life change after that? oh, i mean, life as i knew it changed completely. every role that i cherished and loved mom life, the whole school family, because rick and i taught together. it was just all, everything that i knew in life was just different. and as anybody could understand, you, like a lot of us, took refuge, and almost in a sense, self-medicated with food. i think that was my only socialization, really, was that s what you did. you would go out to eat with friends. you would grab dessert with friends, things like that. and so, i had been overweight most of my life but then put on about an additional 30 to 40 pounds after the wreck. jillian michaels, your trainer, said that you inspired her, and coming from jillian, that s got to feel pretty good. unbelievable. yeah, i mean, she is there s very emotional moments. were you surprised at how emotional this was? absolutely. when i went into the biggest loser, i went in pretty much with just a pure heart of i just need to feel better, because i ve always felt like my life mattered. i always felt like i made a difference in the world, and i didn t feel like i was doing that anymore. and so, when i went in, i thought, i have to feel better. and so, i was willing to do whatever it took to make that happen. you guys, they decided you you decided for your team when you guys lost the weigh-in that you cod go home and you could continue the weight loss. you gave yourself up basically for the team. well, i did, because my team consisted of two 20-year-olds and then my dear friend shay, and these precious people in my life had never known the success and the joy that i had known. and so, in that moment and in this moment today, i would say the same thing, it was just the right thing to do. well, it seems like it is, because you continue to lose weight at home and you re the covergirl for life magazine. you re going to be on ellen today. what s in the future for you? gosh, it just seems like the whole world is opening up for me. i m looking to get into some motivational speaking, and i would really that s really exciting to think that you can go out and interact with the world again and be received, and hopefully, share a message that you can t control what happens in your life, but you can control how you respond to it, because you have that choice. well, congratulations. you are an inspiration to everybody. abby wright, thank you so much for joining us. thank you. and don t forget, the biggest loser airs tonight at 8:00/7:00 central here on nbc. still ahead, we ll check out the best beauty bars around. this morning on today s kitchen back to basics, the return to deep southern flavors. one of the country s most beloved regional cuisines is atured in a new book by brothers matt and ted lee. it s called simple fresh southern knockout dishes with down-home flavor. how can you not buy that? we re here with matt and ted. good morning, guys. nice to see you both. good morning. thanks for having us. we re going to make one of the recipes we re making here has knocked traditional macaroni and cheese off its perch. yes. this is a new casserole, and the cheese is a spicy southern cheese spread, very sassy. it s got roasted red pepper and extra sharp cheddar. it s tangy and delicious. sassy. sassy. i m surprised you aren t doing this. this is up to you. we re going to start ours while you two get ready we re going to do a caesar salad with a twist. all right. i like this. first, it takes 10 minutes to prepare, 30 minutes to cook. exactly. so it s a simple recipe. super simple. start stirring that. we ve got a little hot cream in here, and i m going to add some shallot, some reserve juice from jarred red peppers. okay. so, you take the cup take a couple tablespoons out. that gives it a little umph, some flavor. there s some dried red chili and you say stir this until the chili start to stain the concoction? that s exactly true, until it starts staining the concocti concoction what s staining mean? taking on a color. a pink color. the red color comes out of the chili. the flavor sort of blues, i like to say. then we re going to add half of our extra sharp cheddar. extra sharp because you like the clash of flavors? you like the sass. mm-mmm. that smells good. that s the sass? that s the sass. so, stir until that melts. okay. then i m going to be layering the dish here the fundamentals of the dish are yukon gold potatoes sliced a quarter inch thin and jarred roasted red peppers. you could make them yourself, but it s just as easy to use jar. jar s good. okay. jar s okay. so you layered them in a pan, about two each. okay. we ve got some staining taking place. that s good. that s good. keep on doing it. keep on doing it. all right, cool. again, we re going to speed up for television time here. yeah, we re speeding let s say you finish the layering and we pour this over the mixture? i m going to have you pour that right over this. okay. don t burn yourself. okay. right over the center there? go for. it just right over the center. oh. yum. then cheese goes on top of that, goes into the oven, and the top gets nicely broiled and browned. and voila. and that s the end result. this is what it looks like. i m going to taste this while you guys okay, we re doing caesar salad, but replacing chicken with catfish. yeah. and the croutons are the most fun part of the caesar salad, i thought, to me. so why not mix something meaty with the croutons? this is our caesar salad, very classic, with catfish croutons. okay. and buttermilk figes in twice, once here going to be the low-fat buttermilk? of course. of course. not that it s going to matter that much, but yeah, well. so you moisten the catfish. you put it in this dredge here, which is flour and cornmeal and salt and pepper woo! sorry. then it goes into the oil. we use peanut oil, preferentially. peanut oil, okay. and they fry up nicely. how long do you keep them in there? oh, just until they brown, a few minutes. okay. thell sort of toss themselves. you can give them a stir oh, you ve got the thermometer because it needs to be at what temperature? 350. 350, good. and they brown up nicely. mm-mmm, look at that. mm-mmm. smells good in here. oh, gosh, the gang s all here. we re hungry! make a lot. okay, this is romain lettuce. classic, caesar style. yep. the dressing is also classic. mayo, buttermilk. i guess that s a southern type of garlic. garlic. yummy anchovy paste. love that. if you don t like it, use extra salt in the dressing. go ahead and pitch that. some lemon juice. so we ll dress our caesar lightly to start. crowd s getting hungry. okay. toss these on? toss those on. actually, no, wait one second. oh, hold on, vieira! we ll do that on the portion. there we go. oh. use your fingers. i am using my fingers. and then i purelled yesterday, but i purelled perfect. and top it with shaved parmesan. this is a beautiful thing. taking a live look outside, it s chilly but sunny. offly beautiful today. good morning, everyone. i m kimberly. in the news for today, an apparent murder-suicide has claimed the live of two high school stoodents. a father of the victim discovered the body in oakdale. they were found shot to death upstairs. a press could be frens is expected sometime today. some high school area girls are getting quite the mentors thanks to first lady. they will give 11th and 11th great officials seen as life skills and career development. a young man s version of the premier was it s chilly and sunny. yes, highs and lows in the mid-60s and cooler weather on wednesday and into the weekend. how is the traffic, jerry? we aretill jammed. germantown to capital health bay, headed for 393 northbound and to and from the bridge. all travel lanes are opened near the pot tomorrow make. jerry? going green on the vine. how could wine get any greener. we ll see we re back now with more of today on a tuesday morning. it s the 3rd day of november 2009. just a reminder, in some parts of the country, it is election day. so, if that is true in your part of the country, don t forget, after you watch us here this morning, go out and cast your vote. always try to encourage that. t on the plaza, i m matt lauer along with al roker and natalie morales. and we ve got an election right here in new york city. that s right, mayor, mayoral election over across the river, governors race governors race. new jersey. upstate. lots going on around here. meanwhile, something else we re talking about this morning, it s now been 2 1/2 years since madeleine mccann disappeared while her family was vacationing at a resort in portugal. now some photos have been released. these are computer-enhanced to show what madeleine might look like as a 6-year-old. the photos are very different. we re going to explain that difference and ask you to take a look at them in just a little while. just hope for any kind of breakthrough at this point two years later. been a long time. hard to believe. also this morning, talking about breast health. 200,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year. the key to survival, of course, is early detection. we re going to tell you what you need to know to keep your breasts cancer-free. and then, turning the page, of course, since it is election day, it s been a year since the nation elected president obama. and coming up, we re going to take a look back at the year of fashion for the first lady, from her inaugural ball gown to what she wore to meet the queen. michelle obama has certainly created her own signature style over the last year. and this morning s harper bazaar shares her top ten ensembles with us. and she s of course very creative with her fashions. we found another creative person, and perhaps you think you re pretty good with a paintbrush. well, how about this young man? sammy the pooch, he s a service dog. his trainer thought, well, if he can learn to help the disabled there he is doing a portrait of ritchie maybe he d be good with a paintbrush. now he s the picasso of pooches. he hasn t looked at ritchie once. is that his blue period? blue-purple period. yeah. i just want to know who s holding the kibbles and bits right alongside that s right, good boy. all right, a lot to get to. let s go inside. ann s got a check of the headlines. thanks a lot, matt. good morning once again, everybody. in the news, voters in new jersey and virginia are electing governors today and voters in nearly 400 cities are electing mayors, including in new york city, where mayor mike bloomberg is facing democratic city comptroller bill thompson. voters in maine are also deciding if a law that allows same-sex marriage should be repealed. a day after winning the disputed election in afghanistan, afghanistan s president promises to banish corruption from his government. hamid karzai invited people from all parts of the country, including political opponents, to be part of his administration. president obama, who was considering a u.s. troop surge in afghanistan, told karzai it is time to bring more credibility to his government by fighting corruption and the drug trade. and on that point, secretary of state hillary clinton said today that the u.s. will provide greater assistance to help afghanistan root out corruption. she also pressed iran, saying tehran cannot go back on a deal to send its uranium on broad for processing into nuclear fuel. police have launched a new effort to find a british girl who disappeared more than two years ago while vacationing in portugal. nbc s george lewis reports now. reporter: madeleine mccann vanished on may 3rd, 2007, just nine days before her 4th birthday. now police have released new, computer-aged pictures of what she might look like today at age 6 1/2, one with blond hair and a second image showing her with a suntan and darker hair. those pictures splashed all over today s london newspapers. her parents hope the images and this video will go viral on the internet. keeping this information secret only increases the anguish of madeleine s family and friends. reporter: and on british television this morning, they said they re trying to aeal directly to the kidnapper or anyone in the know. we re just trying to prompt them, really. they probably know the right thing to do is to come forward, and we re just trying to prompt them into doing that, really. this is targeted specifically to the abductor and the people that know that person. reporter: there have been persistent rumors that madeleine may have been taken off to somewhere in north africa, one reason for the tan version of her photograph. everybody will remember madeleine as a blond-hair child and she could well be disguised. i mean, that doesn t necessarily have to be a suntan. that could be a fake tan, you know, just like her hair can be dyed. reporter: gerry and kate mccann, who were once named as suspects but later cleared by portuguese police, say they believe madeleine is still alive. they have waged a high-profile campaign to find her, hiring a private detective, meeting with pope benedict, going on oprah. they say their hope for finding madeleine was renewed when they heard about the jaycee dugard case in california, that if jaycee can be found alive after 18 years, then madeleine can also be found alive as well. this as police hope someone who knowshe little girl s whereabouts will come forward. george lewis, nbc news, london. also in the news this morning, glaciers atop mt. kilimanjaro are shrinking and a study out today further confirms the drastic change is taking place. scientists say the ice has decreased 26% in nine years. they haven t determined whether it s due to global warming or a loss of moistu, but they add that 85% of kilimanjaro s icecap has disappeared from nearly a century ago. and in los angeles on monday, it was a watery mess when a huge water pipe ruptured, sending a fountain 30 feet high. it took repair crews some three hours to shut the water off. dramatic images there. it is now five minutes past the hour. let s go back outside to matt and natalie. all right, ann, thanks very much. let s get a check of the weather. it feels very fleiss and crisp out here this morning. mr. roker. it is brisk, almost winter-like. if you look back here woo! we ve got two santas. no waiting. i m not sure why. christmas came a little early for you. yes. yes. marathon runner over there. very nice. let s check your weather, see what s happening. show you for today, quiet day, thank goodness. we re going to have lots of sunshine throughout much of the country, some clouds a little clipper moves across part of the plains, but down to the south, that s where we re talking warm weather. no, forget about, forget about fall. it s summertime! temperatures anywhere from 5 to almost 20 degrees above normal. reno, nevada, today will see a high of 71, we ve had quite a cold start here this morning. scattered frost in many areas, in the rural areas. we re in the 40s to near 50. 50 in washington. it will continue to climb quickly to the low 60s. a few clouds coming through by midday. maybe frost around tomorrow morning and then clouds close in tomorrow afternoon and evening, that s your latest weather. got some sailors and marines from the uss new york here. now let s go inside to ann. al, thanks. this morning on today s health, your guide to healthy breasts. there are at least 2.5 million breast cancer survivors in this country, and every year, roughly 200,000 more women are diagnosed with the disease, but thanks to prevention measures, rates have been declining. dr. raj is editor of health magazi. good morning. good morning. we hear about getting mammograms, which is what you suggest, but people may not think about it. what is the number one way we should best take care of our breasts? i think the first thing we should talk about is getting to know your breasts. so, they re all different. one side might be bigger than the other. they might be pointing in different directions. that s all normal. but you should know your breasts very well. why is this. bause when you do your monthly breast exams, you re the best to know if there s a change, and you can tell your doctor. during our monthly cycle, our breasts change. the best time is after your period and check for any lumps and bumps. always get them checked out. so, this is about being proactive, making sure absolutely. and you also want to make sure you do the self-exams. right. but you also say in a broad view looking at our breasts, there are things we can do that are smart to prevent, for example, the things we don t want to experience when we re in our 60s and 70s and 80s. well, sure. there s even some cosmetic things we worry about with our breasts, just when you think about wrinkles and spots on our face. what can we do? those things happen on our breasts as well. sunscreen, as we recommend for your face, you should be using it on your breast area to prevent unsightly things. and the other thing that happens with aging is the sagging with your breasts. we have ligaments. you can think of them as sort of rubber bands that hold up your breasts, and as we age, they tend to overstretch. there are things you can do to prevent that. when exercising, you don t want your breasts jiggling up and down a lot, because that will put more tension on the ligaments. wear a very tight-fitting bra. and in general, you should be wearing a good fitting bra. most women wear the wrong size. if you re wearing the same size for 20 years, you re probably not wearing the right one, because on average, we change our size six times in a lifetime. so think about that when you re shopping for bras, which isn t always fun. absolutely. and you talk about major weight gain being a major factor for breast cancer. yeah. so, obesity is a major risk factor for breast cancer, and specifically weight gain after the age of 18. if you gain more than 55 pounds, you re 1 1/2 times more likely to develop breast cancer. on the good side, though, if you lose the weight, if you lose weight you reduce that risk. exactly. so you can be proactive. another reason to not be overweight. sure. okay, here s something i didn t know, you say get at least seven hours of sleep, which is hard to do, but you say when we don t have enough sleep, that increases our risk? there was a large study, over 24,000 women in japan. they looked at how many hours they slept and their breast cancer risk. those who slept less than six hours had a greater risk than those who slept more than seven hours. we re not sure why that is. it might be the melatonin when you sleep has something to do with your risk. so, it is important, it s not easy, and this is one study. we still have to look at more studies, but it looks like it could help. that s encouraging, all of us, i think, to sleep a lot more. and radiation, obviously, we know can cause cancer. limit how much you re exposed to. right. nursing can decrease your risk of breast cancer. right. breast-feeding actually decreases the longer you breast-feed, the lower your risk is. breast-feeding is also great for heart disease, as we re now learning. it s great for your baby, you and your breasts. and you want to breast-feed, what, 12 months of your entire nursing career? right. the study that looked it is a career sometimes, but yeah. the study that looked at heart disease is 12 months or more of breast-feeding, but any amount is beneficial for your breast health. all right. there are some over the course of recent years, there have been some reporting about underwire bras and deodorant being a problem, being a cause having some causal factors. has that all been disputed? yeah. these are really myths. the underwire bra myth and there is a myth about if you get hit in the breast or trauma to the breast. these haven t borne out to show any risk of breast cancer. even with deodorants. correct, no risk. the other question we should ask the doctors is are my breasts dense? and what exactly does a dense breast mean? it means you have more muscular tissue than fatty tissue. it s an important factor for two reasons. one is you have an increased risk of breast cancer if you have dense breasts. it s also more difficult to diagnose breast cancer in dense breasts, so the regular mammogram may not pick up things if you have more muscular tissue there. is that the same as the sort of fibro krstic lumps women get? is that a dense breast? that is one form, but you may have a dense breast without lumps. that s why sometimes you need a test other than a mammogram, such as ultrasound or mri. you need to talk to your doctor about do i have dense breasts? what appropriate screening is appropriate for me? what s terrific is b this is we ve gotten to the point where we seem to know so much more than we used to just a short time a. oh, sure. about how to take care of ourselves. dr. roshini raj, thank you for helping us take care of ourselves. get our sleep. yes. coming up next, we ll show you first lady michelle obama s top ten fashion moments, at least according to harpers bazaar. and later, from the city gal s favorite shower cap to how the ladies of las vegas stay clean and fresh, the best beauty secrets. the magic s in the mix. my favorite part? eating it. ney bunches of oats. taste the joy we put in every spoonful. ney bunches of oats. we call the bunches in honey bunches of oats the prize in the box. well, now there s a prize inside the prize. pecans! pecans! baked into crunchy oat bunches. taste the delicious surprise in every spoonful. new honey bunches of oats with pecan bunches. beautiful. it s about getting the quality you deserve. savings like this don t come along every day. custom upholstery at ethan allen. 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(announcer) 28 delicious flavors at around 100 calories each. wednesday marks the one-year anniversary of president obama s election, and over the course of the year, first lady michelle obama has become a fashion icon. this month s harpers bazaar takes a look at the first lady s top ten most memorable fashion moments. avril graham is the fashion editor. good morning. good morning. seems like we ve been spending more than a year talking about her fashion, but let s get to it. exactly. so, she s played with a lot of different looks. what is it about her style that has become so iconic and relatable, too? i think the fact that she s very experimental. she s not the stiff, traditional, boxy suit first lady. she has those moments where she s a little bit more dressed up, obviously, but those downtown times, also, she looks so chic. and she mixes up high end with like j. crew, so well. exactly. like a regular lady. let s look at the top ten list. first, of course, the inaugural gown by jason wu. why was this such an important look for her zlrks well, it s interesting because this is obviously going to go down in history. and traditionally, first ladies are so starchy, full of satiny, silks, and here she comes out with a frothy light look. and at first, everyone s like, is it more bridal, do we like it? but as you see it almost a year on, it stands the test of time. and the trend, one shoulder, right? and she looks so comfortable, too. it s not something you have to stand always to attention. she s comfortable. she went to one million ball after another. so, dancing and looking great. she lood fabulous. certainly made a statement. next, a gorgeous gown she wore at the governors dinner. i love this, because it s so fashion-forward. we see her with an up do, the metallics, layers of necklaces. it s one of the earliest gowns she wore as an evening dress, and i think it stands, again, the test of time, because we re thinking it shows that va voom figure, perfect toned shoulders. very jackie o. in that way, too. beautiful. next, this look she wore at the white house honoring stevie wonder. and this was designed by stevie wonder s designer wife, camilla. oh, right. and again, it shows off the fact that she softens up her hair, the makeup slightly different. great, very flattering neckline. and uses a sort of umpire line as well, which is very chic and a great use of color. the color is gorgeous, okay. she was quite a hit in europe, of course, and she wore this outfit to buckingham palace, the black and white, ever so classic. yeah, it was. and actually, i loved it with the jason wu upper coat. the toledo is the day dress she wore for the inauguration. the monica look, fabulous. i would love to see her wear this gun. she obviously wore it to meet the queen. that s the other thing. she s been known to wear things twice, which is relatable to all of us. i m always saying on this showwe have to shop our wardrobes, but add a little pep. exactly. and she certainly does. classic. she looks so chic and gorgeous. next, the visit to germany, where she met german chancellor angela merkel. this is the day she met angela merkel, who is not known for her fashion prowess, exactly. and she wore a two-piece. and i loved it with the coat off and this use of a modern take on a chic dress. great, sort of shiny fabric. it s modern, elegant, it s chic and it s very her. very black and red, which she also wore on election day, too. okay, now, date night in new york. here she jazzed it up. very chic. yeah. she s wearing sassy. what can i say, that s a fashionista s favorite. wow. it s fabulous. if you re going on a date night, who doesn t want to look like this? va voom gorgeous. she looks chic, beautiful. she s got a great accessory, a handsome husband, too. and just that little pop of color with the little clutch and acres of bangles. she looks fabulous. okay, now, d-day commemorations in france. she wore this beautiful white dress. you know. as a european, i kind of love this, because not only did she wear a light color, a bit princess diana used to do things like that. she used to surprise us at somber moments with like a different hat. she s wearing white to d-day commemorations, and wow, does she not upstage two other nations first ladies? carla bruni from france, sarah brown from england. real standout. she looks amazing. she s upstaged them both with this great white look. okay, then here at the white house, again, back in bright colors. i just wanted to show this, because the modern take, again on a chic dress by moises delaurenta. favorite of laura bush, actually, the father was. and i think this shows that you can be traditional, you can be chic, the makeup works, and the idea of this matching belt. she just looks quite fab. again, the monochromatic look, which works so well. and he s accessorized with that red tie, too. so, they must have a conversation at the closet, i think, perhaps. avril brown, thanks so much for sharing these images with us. appreciate it. my pleasure. the november issue of harpers bazaar is on newsstands now. coming up next, find out what happens when al s wax figure comes to life in the museum. first, these messages. hey, you re supposed to be a vegetable! there s a full serving of vegetables in every manwich. besides, you re a grain anyway. - but i m corn! - yeah, corn s a grain. ( crowd applauds ) announcer: surprise. every manwich has a full serving of wholesome vegetables. manwich. meat your vegetables. the play s called farmer john s vegetable patch, right? exactly. the play s called farmer john s vegetable patch, right? but now there s keurig. keurig s single-cup brewers let you enjoy an individually brewed cup of gourmet coffee in under a minute. with over 200 varieties of coffees and teas from 13 leading brands, you ll always find your favorite cup. keurig is the new way coffee gets made, like it s ground, measured, and brewed just for you because it is. keurig sine-cup brers. choose. brew. enjoy. like 2009 h1n1, wash your hands and get your flu shot. regularly disinfect surfaces. and talk to your friends about doing the same. let s help spread protection against flu viruses like 2009 h1n1. always ready when they hear the call. pancakes! (announcer) it s a job well done. because when it s pancakes, everybody s in it together. bisquick. pancake lovers unite. a long-awaited journey in aisle 10? yeah. because when you save money on the little things, it adds up to life s more amazing things. walmart saves the average family $3,100 a year no matter where you shop. what will you do with your savings? save money. live better. walmart. as we showed you yesterday, meredith got her chance of working a laugh while getting to work at mcdonald s drive-through window. and today, al showed us his best shot playing himself going wax at madame tussauds here in the city. we wanted to giveou another look at how shocked people were as they walked by. hey, how are you! i thought she was real. she is real! oh, my god! no heart attacks were reported. nobody tried to stub me although somebody did point out his ticker, because he was so shocked by you.     sunshine and 50 degrees is the current temperature. it s tuesday, november 3rd. good morning m i m barbara harrison. it s election day in virginia. polls there opened three and a half hours ago. the office of lieutenant governor attorney general and all 10000 seats are up for grab. his lawyers are expected to file an appeal in the u.s. supreme court and they claim he s mentally ill because of the condition worsened because of the gulf war. we ll be back after a short break with a look tomorrow, increasing clouds after a slow start and still chilly on thursday into the weekend and jerry, how is the traffic? the outer loop is still jammed after 95 and headed for downtown, loaded up but we can t find any road work yet. all travel lanes are very heavy. barbara? thank you. tonight at 5:00, going green on the vine. how making wine we love lunch i m eating clam chowder that s ann curry preparing her inner diva, ready to surprise some unsuspecting patrons dining here in new york. it s part of improve everywhere and ann s not shy of getting a laugh. we ll see how she did tomorrow. can you sing? i was really tested, i ll tell you, but this is a group that goes all around you ve seen them on youtube. oh, yes. they do all kinds of crazy things. they were so much fun. that s great. i hope you enjoy it. meanwhile, ahead, we ve goth another performance artist, this one of the canine persuasion. we ve been checking out sammy all morning long. he s a service dog, who [ laughter ] he s been selling his creations. wait until you hear the price tags. really? yeah, unbelievable. what about ritchie s an audio operator who can t hear and can paint. my goodness, we ve gone to the dogs. also ahead, we ve got the best beauty buys across the country from our fashion pages, and we re also going to tell you how to boost your mood with your wardrobe choices, coming up. and also, we need your help, because of course, on monday, we introduced you to our fourth and final group of semifinalists in the search for our today s kid reporter. so, which pint-sized, wanna be journalist will fit on this sofa? well, it s up to you. they ll all fit. in fact, they ll all fit together. that s right. you can logon to todayshow.com to place your vote or text your vote to 622639. press 1 for tyree, 2 for sofia, 3 for jack and 4 for stephen. standard rates apply. you have until 5:00 eastern time today to choose your favorite. so vote early and vote often. you know, we ve met a lot of really cute kids. sweet kids. it will be hard to decide. anyway, you have a check of the weather. it s getting cold. get ready. showers across the northern tier states, sunshine through the southern tier, coastal flood advisories along the northeast and mid-atlantic coastlines, record-setting temperatures down to the southwest. for tomorrow, the heat continues in the southwest. mild weather through the gulf coast. good morning. it s sunny and chilly. a few clouds from early to midafternoon from the west. high temperatures will climb out of the low 50s from where we are now to loi 50s by the midafternoon. frosty tomorrow morning. increasing clouds on wednesday with a high in the mid-50s. chilly on thursday and a slight chance of a sprinkle. then, dry that s your latest weather. all right, al, thanks. coming up next, our artist and resident, sammy the dog showing off his talents. your favorite baby back ribs just got even better, slow-smoked in house for hours over pecan wood chips to create a sweeter, smoky flavor and fall-off-the-bone tenderness. then they re triple-basted in one of our three delicious flavors chili s new better-than-ever baby back ribs, part of our three courses, two people $20 deal. or you can share an appetizer, choose two entrees, and share a dessert. i want new baby back ribs for a limited time, only at chili s. my two gnddaughters are my life. they always ask me, grandma, take me here, grandma, take me there. but with my occasional irregularity i wasn t always up to it. until i discovered activia and everything started to change. announcer: activia is clinically proven to help regulate your digestive system in two weeks when eaten every day. now i enjoy every minute. my grandkids are happy, and so am i. activia with the new stack n surprise sillytown from fisher price. it s where baby can play peek-a-boo with new friends and find so many silly things to do. like round-the-bend racing, tipsy-turvy tumbling, and when baby gets things moving. this town starts jumping ! there s lots of stack n surprise fun. with the new stack n surprise sillytown. only from fisher price. when lunch rolls around.. eat right at work. 100% lean meat and a full serving of veggies. campbell s chunky sirloin burger soup. m m! m m! good! @work. at walgreens, we re changing the way. people think about their health. by offering the expertise and advice necessary. for everyone to make informed decisions. because sometimes all you need to start living well. is an invitation. join us this month for your. free diabetes testing. to find a testing location near you, go to walgreens.com/findastore. or call 1-877-w-and-you. walgreens. there s a way to find answers. let s go to last night s highlights. there s mom and dad cleaning up. and there s the meatloaf. yuck. look what sometimes happens with the ordinary bag. it slips, oh, bingo, it falls in. mom was mad. mom should have used glad forceflex with the new stretchable drawstring that grips the can and stays in place. plus, it has the stretchable strength of forceflex. that s all today for glad tv. both: don t get mad get glad! we ve been checking in on them all morning long. finally time to meet sammy the service dog, who is also with his trainer, mary stottlebacher calls a doggy da vinci. that s because his pieces sell for up to $1,700. mary is the president of shore service dogs. good morning, mary, and sammy. good morning. sammy is one of the few service dogs that you taught how to paint. how did you come up with this idea? fund-raising. it was one of tse things that it s very difficult to be able to raise funds in these economic times. sure. so i wanted to get something that was, a, fun for the dogs and me, and b, that would have a wide audience. we ve got some examples of sammy s work here. how difficult is it to train a service dog like sammy to paint? actually, because they had the service dog training under their collar, so to speak, it makes it a little bit easier, but it is a very long process to get them to the point of where they re reliable doing it. so, let s see sammy. sammy s starting to paint. now, i know this is a nontoxic paint he uses. yes. tell us about the brush while sammy starts. well, it s a modified brush to be able to make it easier for them to hold. they started out painting with a regular old brush, but they hit the canvases kind of hard, so it ended up getting shoved toward the back of his throat. so i modified it so it s not so much of a problem. are you falling asleep? i have that effect on a lot of my interview subjects. wake up! hey, sammy sammy. good boy. here you go. hey, sammy. there we go. we had six hours of sleep within the last 48 hours, so. obviously, the muse has not hit sammy right now. the inspiration isn t there for sammy. now, what kind of breed is sammy? i don t know. he was a rescue. he came from the pound. he actually was dumped twice. so, i m thinking he s a foxhound/shepherd mix, not a bloodhound sheep dog. sammy s just not feeling like painting right now. well, i haven t given him the command yet. oh, would you please? sammy, paint. sammy, paint. not him! come back. come here, sweetheart. paint. paint, sweetheart. here. canvas. not no, no, no. do you know the ewoks? all right, samuel, focus, paint. come here. you re like the comic from two years ago that got him chasing her around. paint, sweetheart. there you go. come back here. i m going to stand right here, sammy. i ll stand here. paint. there s a good boy. paint, sweetheart. there you go. keep painting. that s it. now, how do you know when he s finished? he goes to me for judgment. as you can kind of tell. i think he s finished. paint, babe. paint. he wants to paint you. i guess he does. he wants to give you a designer treat. my portrait. well, mary, sammy, thank you so much, pal. very nice. and coming up next, the top beauty products women across the country are using. maybe we can get sammy to do their makeup. sounds good. morning kim. morning bob. 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(announcer) taste why maxwell house is good to the last drop. like 2009 h1n1, wash your hands and get your flu shot. regularly disinfect surfaces. and talk to your friends about doing the same. let s help spread protection against flu viruses like 2009 h1n1. g we do let s help spread protection against flu viruses when we come up here is take her out to eat. i love when they come visit and so do my roommates. announcer: try our new four cheese stuffed mezzaluna ravioli with shrimp in white wine cream sauce. or with grilled sausage. starting at $9.95. at olive garden. this morning on today s beauty, scanning the country for products that will cure your beauty woes why you want to know the best restaurant, what do you do? you ask a local. so, when you want to know how to cure dry skin or frizzy hair, maybe you should go to the cities where the women there have no choice but to deal with those dilemmas. beauty expert jen falik is here with her designs. you basically went to places where they suffered the things we have to deal with. in other words, we got knowledge from the locals. exactly. they re the ones that deal with these situations every day. so, if you re dealing with different climates or you want to emulate a signature style of a city, these are some of the best beauty buys that the locals love. so, for example, in miami yes. we have an idea we know there, it s specifically sunny, windy. so you have hair problems, your skin problems. what did you find? this is actually the number one most requested product in south beach. it s a cooling yogurt gel. in greece, kids will put yogurt on her skin for a sun burn because it cools and soothes the skin. in miami, this is the product everyone s requesting. they sell out, get in a new shipment every two weeks. put this on after exposure to the sun. it s instantly cooling, light, refreshing, just a great all-around cooling product. okay, and now moving to denver yes. where it gets very, very cold, your skin gets very dry. cold and dry. denver, it s impossible to maintain a manicure in denver, that s what the women say, and your hands get dry, chapped and uncomfortable. ahava, which is an israeli brand, they sell tons of this hand cream to women in denver. why? smells nice. a, it s very nourishing. it has dead sea mud in there. it s incredibly nourishing and healing, but it also stimulates your hands to create moisture. i like it. it s nice and light. then in a pinch, if you have dry elbows, dry patches on your skin, i rub a little bit thf this in because it melts right into the skin. i like it. good little tip from denver. now from houston yes. what do we have in houston? we have this is stetson fragrance. so, you think it s a stereotype that women love cowboys in houston, you like your men to be like the cowboy type. well, fragrancenet.com, which is a huge retailer. they have thousands of scents. the number one scent they ship to houston is stetson fragrance. for men or for women? for men. women are buying it for their men. men are buying it themselves. also, fragrances smell different on a woman than a man. so if you like a musky scent, this is $11. okay. good beauty buy. in you go. now, from new york city yes. we like to keep our hair really nice. what do we have here? new york women love a good blowout. we even have salons dedicated to blowouts. right. andou want to protect your investment. so, you spend money to get someone to blow out your hair or do it yourself. it will last. this is from blow hair care. what do you do put it on in the shower. it has terry lining. it absorbs it looks gorgeous on you. just gorgeous. and it has a big 360-degree coverage, so your hair stays totally dry. because one wet hair in the shower will ruin the whole bunch. okay. from new york. that s the best-selling item in new york. best-selling item, yeah. now, moving on to las vegas. yes. now, here is a funny thing. in las vegas, a lot of people go there, sometimes they spend all night there stay out all night. they re on the plane the next morning. what is the number one best-selling thing, beauty supply thing? this is consideriinteresting. pond s sell tons of these wet cleansing towelettesn vegas. i think it s because people are out all night and have to do a quick cleanup, or because so many people are in the performance industry, wearing makeup for their jobs every day. this is an incredibly thorough cleanser. so, you don t have time to even go to the bathroom to wash your face. you can just do that, boom. do that, throw it out. super convenient. gets rid of water-proof mascara, all the makeup on your face, and it s nourishing. so if you re dried out, if you re hopping on a plane, you have vitamin eourishment in your dis your skin. and los angeles yes, this is so much fun. you found what? this is studio beauty mix at fred siegel in l.a. i love that store. this gel by dr. sager is the best. for little kids. to get rid of bruises, get rid of the discoloration. this is what this was originally intended for. well, all these gorgeous women were coming in and scooping up this project. so, unless there s all these clutzy women in l.a., there s something else going on. post-botox, this gets rid of bruising, so women will put ts on after botox, collagen. this gets rid of the swelling, the bruising. it has echinacea, very healing. and who knew this homeopathic kids boo-boo gel is now a post-botox essential. who knew? jenn falik, thanks for looking at all these suggestions from all these cities. you re welcome. coming up next, how to change your this morning on today s style, wardrobe wearapy. how many times have you gotten out of bed and wanted to wear an outfit that reflects your mood, tired, bloated, confident? well, from the style network, she s here to help you put together ensembles that will help you look better and feel better as well. good morning. good to have you here. it s great to be with you again. i know. we get to talk fashion! i twittered about it this morning. well, we love to know. the publicity s out there already. so, you came up with this wearapy idea. what do you think about it? every stylist has tricks. i m going to share with you my secret on fashion. it s changetion how you feel based on what you wear. i came in feeling sick and dressing sick. no, you didn t. you look fabulous, please. okay. let s start with our first wardrobe wearapy look. we like to show, first, a lot of us have our lazy days and that lazy outfit in the morning. let s look at this model, monica, that you found for us. and she was wearing, you know, her usual kind of lazy day look. yeah. you know when you re feeling like you don t want to put anything on, so, what do you do? you just throw it . and what does it look like? it looks like you threw it on. yeah. and then you feel like you just threw something on all day. that s the idea with wearapy, you don t want to feel that way all day. you want to get out of that rut. you gave monica this great dress. why the wrap dress? okay, why not the wrap dress? yeah. this is a dress that every woman needs to own. i m serious. if you don t have one right now, you need to run out after your work or day of schedule and get a wrap dress. it s the simple, throw it on, it ver wrinkles, promise you. yeah. i mean, you can like absolutely do anything to it, run it right on. completely. perfect fit. and i love the knee-high boots. if you re not feeling like shaving your legs, get away with the knee-high boot so, if you re really lazy totally. don t want to shave the legs. you re a mom, you know. exactly. she looks so together with the jewelry. it ties together beautifully. another thick about wearapy, it doesn t stop with the wardrobe. hit it up with the lips. yeah. myself today, feeling a little cold, didn t want to do a lot of makeup. throw it on with the lips and you have a great overall finish that makes you look bright and more energetic. you do look bright and energetic and that great smile. monica, thank you very much. next, we ve all gotten up in the morning and we have that unattractive feeling about us, not that we re unattractive, but we just don t feel good about how we look, and mary ellen was wearing her t-shirt and her jeans, like a lot of us put on on the weekends or during the week. and let s see what you did for mary ellen. she s a mom, busy, active, so she needs something that s going to be helpful and useful to her during the day. tell me about what you put her in. okay, first, check out her stems. these legs are put in not her daughter s jeans. these are thebomb.com jeans. they re amazing. i m not even a mom and i threw them on not your daughter s jeans. that s the brand. not your daughter s jeans. and take a cardigan and belt it over. every woman has a waist. every woman, like you said, is totally beautiful. we re built with waists. show it off. find it. cinch it. that s it, it s totally easy. what s great about these jeans is that they are darker, so they really kind of dress up, right? you got. it and another thing to instantly give you that kind of a lift so that you feel slimmer is a heel. you had heh. a little bit of a heel. even an inch makes a difference in your posture. 20% of your posture is based on the wa 20% of your weight is based on your posture. so, if you kick in a heel, it lifts it all all, and sometimes 20 pounds off. make you look 20 pounds thinner. oh, yeah. thank you so much, mary ellen. next, erica woke up. she said she was feeling a little unconfident, but let s take a look so, this was her before. yeah. i think she looks fine, but she says she was not feeling so great about herself. right. so, what did you end up giving her? okay, this is a case we see all the time on the show how do i look? women who don t feel confident basically come out with outfits and suits. and women today getting ready for work are probably wearing a suit just to wear a suit. here s erica now wearing this gorgeous tailored suit. and you ve got to wear this, not the suit wearing you. this is definitely fitting her more appropriately. and look at the pop of green. instantly, i mean, 9:00 to 5:00, who wants to look at a sea of gray, right? she looks great. immediately. beautiful with the complexion. ladies, come on out for one last look here. fantastic. thank you so much. jeannie my, good to have you here on the show with us. definitely. come on back any time. ladies, thank you. by the way, we want to mention, if you re interested in sammy the painting dog s paintings, go to our website at todayshow.com. tell you where you can get those. for a good cause, absolutely. still to come, we have a star from growing pains, allen thick. cool. plus, answers to your questions about sleep and sex, after your local news and weather. have you voted yet? you have to be on this side of the river to do it, not that beautiful side. good morning. the time is 9:55 in the news for today. it s election day and pls are opened in virginia. voter also be choosing either bob mcdon nel or deeds to be the next governor. all of the house delegate seats in the house are opened up for grabs. and whether a gorgeous day to show off the fall colors. and, folks, too, the commonwealth of virginia and into the mountains in acrs maryland and the district, we have bright sunshine. there s the old post office. low 60s and bright sunshine and just a few clouds coming in early to midafternoon. clear tonight and frosty cold tomorrow. increasing clouds on wednesday with high 50. still generally cold on friday. dry friday into the weekend. jerry how is the traffic? dealing with an accident, live pictures up at university boulevard, be careful. it s tied up all the way around. elsewhere, headed to points 66, road work is up in gainesville and it s backed up. top side is looking good. kimberly? tonight at news at 5:00, going back to the captions paid for by nbc-universal television hey, evybody. it s tuesday, november 3rd. good to see you. thank you for being with us today. this is my little godchild kendall jenner that s from the jenner household? yes, it is. love you. bad. how are you? i know people are bleary-eyed this morning because they watched the world series. i m not one of them, are you? it starts so late. i mean, for us. and it doesn t end until very late. the phillies won and now it s the yankees have three and the phillies have two and back in new york wednesday. tomorrow night. it s big. 23 emilian people watched the world series. somebody jumped the gun a little bit. in the philadelphia enquirer there was an ad, congratulations, phillies. back-to-back championships. it was a macy s ad. that was a little premature. hopeful. hopeful. it may end up being right, we don t know, but it just, just don t think so. i don t think so. i don t think it is going to be right. i m just going out on a limb. i am not following it. three for the yankees and two for the phillies. should we bet? what should we bet? you know f i say philadelphia i will not be able to walk around the streets here so you take philadelphia and hello? no, i can t. we love philadelphia, a lot. that s what frank always said when he was playing for the giants and they would get in the huddle and they d pray and then the other team would be in a huddle and they d pray and a father dudley who used to be the priest of the team and frank said, father dudley, what do you think of god thinks of that one, when that team s praying and this one s praying and he always had these big capes with the ice cubes and, yes, and he would walk and he d tinkle. not tinkle but make noises. he is walking around and said, frank, i have found that providence usually favors the team with the best personnel. that s who we favor, the team with the best personnel. speaking a little booze. i wasn t. you kind of did. there is this guy in russia who is in a lot of trouble. he was driving a forklift and he worked in a plant that made vodka and cognac. look at him. that s a wrong turn. vodka and cognac. it just all keeps talk about a domino effect. that is the worst possible place you could hit. and good-bye. this happened in russia. $100,000 plus of vodka and cognac. did they do a blood alcohol test on him? he has a minor leg injury. he has minor injuries. minor. he probably didn t even feel it. how much damage? $100,000 and some people are saying upwards of $200,000. is that in rubles? i don t know, i don t know what it s in. al roker is so funny. he is hysterical. we have been doing this today gets a laugh and we showed you meredith at the mcdonald s drive through and today al went to the wax museum and replaced his wax figure with himself. he was just out there to freak people out and scare them. it worked. let s take a look. how s the baby? dudes, what s happening? nice to meet you. i almost wet myself. almost wet yourself, wow. who shat guy with matt lauer. al roker. you re absolutely correct. it s al roker and matt lauer. al roke looks sweaty. i usually look funny, i usually look funny. that is so funny. wouldn t it be awful if you re standing there and somebody walks along and says there s that hoda and kathie e lee, i can t stand them. what do you say? me either. once regis and i were performing in vegas and we re going up the escalator and there s this huge, huge, huge thing says reejs and kathie lee at bally s, sold out and this couple right in front of us. regis and kathie lee, i wouldn t spend good money to to them. and i went like this and i said, me either. so, we had them come to the show. we made fans out of them. we re going to make fun of ourselves coming up on friday. ours is, how would we describe ours? stupid. we went to ellen starlight diner over here where a lot of young actresses and actors who hope to have broadway careers while they re waitressing and waitering, waiting on tables, how is that? they also perform it s not pretty. all hell breaks loose over there hoda. that s my bracelet. the funny thing about this bracelet, it doesn t stay on. i like it, but it doesn t stay on. i saw it. this is not the first time this happened. god does not want you to wear it. it s not comfortable. go like this. it s totally fine. i ll take it. can chewing gum help you lose weight? hoda says no and i say yes. chewing sugar free gum may help you lose weight by eating fewer calories and increasing energy output. because you re chewing instead of just sitting there. a slab of meat you re chewing then, too. subjects who chew gum for one hour before lunch consumed 67 fewer calories at lunch than the subjects that did not chew gum. i disagree with the whole thing. whenever i chew something sweet whether it s sugar free, i crave sweets. it doesn t even matter. if you d nibble on me, you d want some more. is that what you re saying? no. f i don t have sweets and i m cold turkey on sweets, i don t crave them. if i have anything that tastes like sweets. if i have a craving for sweets and i have a little bit of the sugar free, it satisfies the craving. i immediately want a margarita and chips. i m a salty girl and you re a sweet girl. did you know that diet cokes and diet pepsis and sodas and not to point out one or the other may be hard on your kidneys. that s what they re saying at this new study. if you drink two or more sodas a day, it will double your risk of kidney function decline. that s the issue. here s the other thing, too what are you doing? fixing you my darling friend. they say, leslie, you know, you stopped drijing diet cokes and you ended up losing weight. we did that backstage diet and leslie lost over 20 pounds. 20 plus. there are no calories in diet cokes like no calories in sugar free gum. it s salt. sodium. and you maintained beautifully, may i say? we have to talk about the race for the cu. yes, we do. all month long we re in november and out of october, but we had to put this in. at the great pyramids of giza the women from susan g. komen went. by the way, those pyramids, unbelievable. if you ve never been and you have an opportunity hoda, take me to egypt. you ve got i ll take you to israel, you take me to egypt. one of the blocks of the pyramid is as tall as you standing. when you think of one on each of other. hi. talk to miss sara who is in lavender today and looking lovely. thank you very much and we re talking about the diet soda. if you have soda, have the fully loaded, the asper tain is not good for you. some of the sweeteners are the issue. we also get to vote for our man panelists at the end of the show. four finalists. down to four and they ll join us next thursday, i believe. you ll vote today and see their videos and have four choices and join our panel. alan thicke is in the house. he has a very informative, funny new book out. that after these messages. he s hosted game shows and talk shows and alan thicke is probably best known for his role as dad, jasonceiver on the hit series growing pains. with three sons of his own, alan has put many years of parenting with off screen and good use. how to raise kids who won t hate you bringing up rock stars and other forms of children. the book iss good as t title. how you doing, big guy? i m doing just fine, just fine. we were talking just before about my son, robin, who you have been complimenting on the show before you did so well with him. we don t know the other two, but that one i could see grandparenting coming. i could see th part of my life and i wanted to kind of memorialize how me and the boys did it, the good and the bad. your son there with his wife. there they are. there s paula. pregnant with their first child. very exciting. and the thing that we all wish most for our kids is that they have kids like we did. you know, that they have the loving relationship that i have enjoyed with my kids. i wish for my children and their kids. he is so polite. he treats everybody beautifully. did you start that from when he was a little, little boy? i used to slap him around? did you? as hillary clinton says it takes a village and what this book seeks to do is identify the villagers. who should be in their circle and where they ged advice from and where we need to get our intel from and there s robin minutes old. i have been a grandfather now for about a year and a half, my son, brennan pulled the trigger first. pulled the trigger, so to speak. you re on your third marriage. let s put it out there. to be mathematical about it. so is frank gifford, by the way. i have a 12-year-old, carter, and two men from a previous litigation. yes. but that s not easy raising children when you re also divorced parents. how did you and gloria do that? a lot deals with step parenting and how important that is in our society because so many of us had to do it. i have been tickled with what my wife, tonya, has been able to contribute to young carter s life. we ve been together since he was 2. can we see a picture of her from the book? she is gorgeous. plenty of shots of her. that s her with carter. you say it s okay to snoop around your kids stuff. how else are you going to find out stuff? that s what he says, tell us why. explain. what they re telling us now is that we have all known that communication and talking is the important way to parent, but now they re telling us if you wait until you re talking to a hormone, ten years too late. the kids are really now feeling us at the age of 6 months and we have to be age appropriate all along the way and now so much to deal with through internet and twitter that we have to be ahead of the curve. we have to teach them now and talk about recession and terrorism and kardashian sisters and there s a lot of it. you have a lot of explaining to do. you have to be the loudest voice because your kids are inundated with everything. you have to be heard. it s kind of, it s called forensic parenting and what that means is we need intel and boots on the ground and insiders. what do you mean? i agree with you, but what about the lying thing hoda just brought up? spying, well, lying in the sense when they come and have questions for you that you don t want to answer, you know, you want the truth from them, but god forbid. like what? mom, you ever smoked weed? what were you and dad doing making all that noise last night. what were you doing? we were wrestling and there was a lot of sweating. frank once said to cody, i m waking mommy up. so that s not a lie, though. the intel the intel is important, it seems, because our kids are different people depending on who they re around. peer group and little different with the parents down the street when they do a sleepover. little different with us. so, yeah, important to know everything we can and, if you have to, anything, frankly, it s okay. we wish you good luck with your book, alan. thank you so, so much. best of luck with the new baby. thank you. how to get more sleep and have better sex, right after this. okay. so prevepgz magazine asked its readers to come up with questions on all kinds of topics. they turned to the experts for answers. today we are focusing everything bed related from sleep to sex. here with the answers is courtney smith. hello, courtney, how are you? hello, guys. you look lovely. thank you, you, too. you have a ton of questions from all kinds of people. we invited readers to submit their questions and then we said we re going to run them by a ton of experts, a total of 65 so we could get a consensus on what to do so that we could end confusion. some of these are age-old questions. what do you do when you sleep next to a sloudly snoring spouse? i couldn t believe how many women asked this question. the consensus, unfortunately, wow, this isn t an easy one to solve. go to bed 15 to 20 minutes earlier than your spouse and see if you can drop off first. get a head start. that just makes me more angry because you re in a sound sleep, not that i m talking about anybody in particular. what you can do it then is white noise. you can buy a white noise machine, cds with ocean sounds, turn on a fan. what about earplugs. you can try also. but if you have small children, you want to be able to hear. the white noise you could still hear but it creates a consistent sound and it s the inconsistency of the snoring that wakes us up. what exercise can i do before bed to help me sleep? yoga and tia chi both help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer and people who do tia chi get an extra hour of sleep a night. you can find routines at prevention.com/relax. any time i do any kind of that stupid bracelet. any time i do exercise like that. an hour or two before bed, i can t sleep. like anything. that s too late in the day. you re correct. for cardio and intense exercises it raises your co temperature and that does make it harder to fall asleep. these are gentler and easy breathing. how do i increase my lubedo or decrease my husband s? no expert gave advice on how to decrease the husband s. for women, one thing they can do is 20 minutes of intense exercise, a university of washington study found one 20-minute bike ride boosted woman s sexual arousal 169%. because there s another statistic in there about women, after the age of 50, isn t it like very high percentage say that they have decreased lubedo. yes, definitely hormonal issues and even younger women. 40% of young women report low labido. except for kim cattrall. you want to go to your doctor because she may have a lot of medical solutions, but sometimes it s psychological and boredom. after exercise is a great way to mix it up because your nervous system is fired up and you have indorfns going. mix it up. how can i have more energy during a jam-packed day? again, a 20-minute exercise routine, a 20-minute walk and boost your energy for 12 hours, according to recent research. also music. workers who can listen to musewalk headphones are 10% more productive. unfortunately, they don t hear other sirens and oncoming traffic. but if you re at work when you do it. it s good. finally, you can t replace sleep. you can t fool yourself into thinking that six hours is fine. i do just fine without sex or sleep. look, i have more energy than anybody around here. thanks, courtney. still to come, what s up, hoda? how dieting can make you fat. coming up today at midday it s election day. we ll check on the candidates, including both men running for governor in virginia. plus, a look at how voter turnout has been so far this morning. good morning, everyone. i m kimberly and children and stress, more school age children say that they are stressed out. what parents should be looking for. news 4 midday begins in just a we are back on this tuesday with get fit today and how your knowledge about dieting could be backfiring on you. if you re wondering why despite your best efforts you can t drop a pound, the diet advice you are following could make you fat. amy brightfield and madeline is today s diet and nutrition editor and ivillage contributor. hello, ladies. i m so glad you re going to clear this up, becau who knew this was an issue. i think we all suspect, though. whole grains. they always tell us whole grains are good except a lot of products like chips, say they re made with whole grains, so they might have whole grains in them, but too many calories and fat, as well. a lot of mislabeling. when we see something like whole grain, fiber, this is good for us and we tend to overeat and have large portions. the flip side, we re not reading the labels that say 100% whole wheat to get that flavor. but you re going to be fuller if you have a high-fiber food. we use the excuse of saying, it must have a lot of fiber, it must be good for me. manage your portions. make sure it says whole wheat, 100% whole grain. does anything there have 100% whole grain? this is all the good stuff. this is all good? this one is a little big, but you could cut in half. they say that home cooked meals are the way to go because at least you know what you re putting in your body. you have to follow the recipe and make sure you re not putting too much fat, sugar, salt into it and a lot of recipes, you have to look carefully at the nutritional content. the downside, you re a lousy cook. here you make a big tub of something like chili and you are just steps away from getting more food. put this big tub away and fill up with other vegetables because even if you get rid of the hidden sugar and fat, you re still going to have that regular food there. you re going tot to all night long. forget his snoring. that s worse. portions, portions, portions. the advice that you think is good is to say no to seconds, but, actually, if you think you re not able to get second, you can keep a ton of food on your plate and try to preeat. what should you do instead? start with a smaller plate because you get this big plate and we all tend to fill it up, it doesn t look like much when you take a smaller plate and put exactly the same amount of food and put it there, you are actually tricking your mind a little bit siking yourself out. you can only fill this plate up so much. this will take double the amount. this is all healthy stuff. still, you don t want to overeat unhealthy food. just takes 100 extraalories a day to gain ten pounds a year. 100 extra calories a day gives you ten pounds a year. you know those 100 calorie snack packs. those are terrible because you eat three. i can t eat one. you re choosing the wrong kind. we ll get to that. hold that thought. what are we doing here? you are supposed to saver your food, but the studies have found that if you eat long dinner with friend, you ll take in more calories. so, good thing is, make sure that you pay atteion to the way that you re eating and if everyone is having dessert, get a cappuccino with nonfat milk. here s the problem. takes 20 minutes to get that signal from your stomach to your brain f we don t have a lot of time, we rush, rush, gobble everything down. better to get a meal replacement kashi go lean snack bars along with some fruit and you can eat on the go in a calorie-controlled way. if you linger too long, you eat too much. saver life a little bit, people. you should keep some sweets in the house. no. something like this. something that s not a trigger. maybe you can have something frozen but you want something that is a treat but doesn t trigger. thanks, ladies. up next, money saving advice no one wants travelers to know, that s right, right after this. we re back with our scial series, things they do not want you to know and today we re talking about what the travel professionals are not telling you. there are hidden secrets everywhe everywhere. nina, editor and chief of budget travel is here to reveal. good to see you. good to see you, too. let s start off with rental cars. why wouldn t we? that s the way to go if you ned a car. one area of the travel industry where you cannot get a break this year. why? airlines have dropped their prices and car rental prices have doubled this year. why? well, the fact is they have been able to respond and cut the number of cars they have and there s a premium on those cars. one great tip is to rent from a car dealer. i bet you didn t know, 70% of all toyota dealers and one-third of all ford dealers rent cars from their lots. i never heard of that. prices are low. when you re renting, though, if you rent from one of the regular places, should you get car insurance? they always tell you have the option. if you have a car of your own already and you re traveling for leisure, you do not need car rental insurance. this can save you $10 to $30 per day to not get it. but if itser for business, you have to. yes. overweight bags. they charge you for your bag that is too heavy. if your bag istoo heavy you can pay $39 per bag extra and the fact is that there was a study done by the department of consumer affairs at jfk, 14% of all scales were not calibrated correctly. what should you do? weigh your bag at home. find out what the weight limit is and if you get there and seems like the luggage scale isn t right, ask for a reweigh. i just heard the other day that doctor s scales are the only ones calibrated right. yours might be lying to you at home. you re five pounds heavier than yours at home says. booking travel online. when i go online sometimes you see a rate and then a few hours later it s different and the next day it s different. there is this thing called cookies. they mark you on your computer so if you go and you go back and you re looking for the same thing they will identify you as a repeat customer and say this woman wants this flight i ll hike the price. so, the thing to do here change computers if you re looking at work, look at home or go to your browser and clear the cookies and that way you can make sure you re getting a fresh search each time. they do that? that is sneaky and not nice at all. the tickets are, you know, i paid a lot for a ticket recently, i wonder if it s because the cookies. you have to get your cookies in order. traveling aprbroad. you say use cash. use cash or a capital one card and the reason is that other credit cards charge foreign transaction fees which add 2% to 3% to each price and they charge currency conversion fees that are not the standard market rate. so, unless you re using cash, capital one card is the way to go. you have that for out of the country. what if you don t have capital one card and you don t want to carry cash around. what else should you do? you could use traveler checks. it s just pesky to have to do that in addition to the other things. on to hotels when it comes to cleanliness. this is disturbing. this is a little dirty secret of the travel industry. sometimes in some hotels the maids do not do a proper job scrubbing the tub. if you get to your hotel and it s questionable at all, take a shower. i always take showers. who would lay in a tub there. call housekeeping. you can do that. i want to have my tub cleans again, i want to make sure, i d love a bath. just real quick, you always said it is nice to be nice to check in at a clerk because they re taking notes on you. they ve got your cookies. exactly. they do pay attention and people talk. so, it s always a great idea to be gracious and be a good customer because if you treat somebody at the desk not well they talk to each other and they keep a log. could be 2:00 a.m. and you want an extra pillow. they ll take forever to get there. it s always a good idea. you re just a wealth of informaon. thanks, nina. what s up next? oh, my doctor s in. dr. wexler s in the house. she ll tell you how to age proof your skin. right after this. we re back with today s health and to age proof your skin. takes three simple steps to achieve that radiating look from head to toe and patricia wexler is here to show you how it s done. about to be a grandma in two days. yes, yes. very exciting. we re starting off with exfoliating and getting rid of all the dead stuff. the three steps, exfoliating and getting rid of old stuff and then preventing in the future. so, let s begin. let s start. you can exfoliate with granules and you can use gicolic peels and shugser something you can do at home. it s a little grainy. it s a little grainy but you can dissolve it in a nice moisturizer and you can do it in the shower. hear that s happening with the strips, they make a wonderful exfoliant that is sugar based with shea butter and they also add white tea. good for all types of skin? always test an area. if it feels a little grainy, test an area on your leg and see if you get irritated. my leg doesn t get irritated, but my face does. > that s for body. this is body we need face. this is face. the second one is biggilo and that also has sugar and ginger and peppermint. and these are the ones with the sugar are great to do in the shower because you get sticky and then you rinse it off. got it. this is the elizabeth arden product and this has alphihydrolic acid. this works the top layer and bottom layer and this is fun to play with. you put a thin layer on your face and then you have to let it sit for 25 minutes and then peel it off. do you leave your eyes? you don t go near the eyes. you peel it off. what does it reveal? it reveals brighter, more even, glowier, nicer-looking skin. how often should you exfoliate? it always says on the jar what this particular product recommends. some are daily, some are once or twice a week, some are, you know, some are once a month. so, you have to read the ingredients. let s rejuvenate. most people have damaged themselves in one way or another. you know who you are. this is what i called a pad product because you like to pad it around your eyes. this is the neutrogena restorative line. when you restore your skin you like to look for products with peptides and inhibiters and anything to give you new collagen growth. are these reasonably priced? i think they re all reasonably priced. all under $25. except for the tanner. this is an led light like we do in the office. what does it do? you turn it on and you have a green light. this is giving you, this is inhibiting your mmps in the skin which break down collagen. you re actually growing new collagen. should you put that on your face? you should put this on your face with goggles. it s an 18-minute treatment and you can do that daily. we just have 30 seconds for the end. you have your vaseline intensive care. this is a new line from vaseline. this is the age defining body and hand and takes away the look of brown spots. now, for prevention, you re looking for anti-oxidants and looking for things that say botonicals. sunscreen number one way to get prevention of sun damage in the future. got your new and the garnier product. she also has her own line. very good. fantastic. coming up next, we have these guys that you re going to be voting on to be part of our guys tell all panel. you ll vote after this. okay. so, if you haven t heard, we have been asking you to send us videos of a guy who you think is the perfect addition to our all-guy panel. we want to thank all four of you. one who can dish out relationship advice with the wit our regular guys and we got a great response. and had the tough job of narrowing it down to the four men that you sent us. before you tell us how to vote, the first one, contestant one justin, he s single and he does have a girlfriend and he lives in new york city. hi, my name is justin and i think i d be a great fit for your guys tell all panel because i m an honest, down to earth person who listens. a lot of guys don t listen. and it s hard to be able to give an opinion on something and be able to share your thoughts when you re not listening. i m just in awe about how many people i see walking around with women who have these faces on because they re uncomfortable or they re not sure of themselves with their women. i would really like to just communicate with people and understand why people are thinking the way they re thinking. he s very cute. we like him. next contestant number two 4year-old ron hunt from mitchellville, maryland, where my church was when i was growing up. ron has been married for 22 years and has a child in college. listen to ron. the reason i want to be on the show, i understand women. i have been married 22 years and come december i would have been with my wife 26 years. the three main things you re supposed to do, always keep your word, be spontaneous and tell her you love her every day. two key words that you use that sometimes mean other things that you can always use. ron, can you come here, please. yes, dear. what s the problem? no problem. i ll talk to you soon. very cute. good sense of humor, like him. contestant number three is james a 48-year-old man from lakewood, washington, and he is single, again. why do i think i would be a goodandidate for the guys tell all? well, i ve been married, three times. i m currently a bachelor. i am dating a wonderful girl. i also was in a rock band, fairly popular rock band at the time in the early 80s in the bay area so i had my experience with several women. and i m embarrassed to say. i think you should choose me because i m old and experienced. he s only 40. golly. oh, oh, no the nex guy is 40. is that me. finally, contestant number 4 is steve a 40-year-old single dad from tacoma, washington. let s take a look. my name is steve from tacoma, washington. i am a single father of a great 14-year-old boy, trent. i think i d be a perfect candidate for one of the guys who tells all. why? well, i ve dated too young, i ve dated too old and i ve been with women i shouldn t have been with at all but thought it would work out and i ve been dumped and i ve dumped. through it all, i ve seen the ups and downs of relationships and i finally found myself in a wonderful relationship. i hope i make it as a finalist for your program and if you don t do it for me, do it for my son, trent. justin is number one. okay. mber two is ron, three is james and four is steve. get voting. the vote starts at 11:00 a.m.