joining us white house reporter darlene summerville.od to see you, we saw that things broke down not too long in fashion, when senator joe manchin announced that he was going to be opposed. since then he and the president spoke and there is renewed optimism that a deal could be reached. what are you hearing from people you talk to in the white house? what's the timetable that we're looking at here for build back better act, perhaps, to come back from the dead? >> happy holidays, jon. well, the new year will bring a sense of optimism to the white house, that they can get build back better over the line in some fashion. i think the timetable the white house will be looking at will be asap. because they need to get something done before midterm election politics start to infect everything the white house wants to get done, legislatively in congress. so, we're looking at more negotiations, more talks with senator manchin and the white house, president biden's aides, to see how they can retool build back better to make that to senator manchi

darlene do the public comment. >> callers. >> before you go further. i am getting a lot of alert notices on the bandwidths. i am seeing a lot of alerts coming on the screen. we might have that. see if our tech people can check to see what is going on. >> in the last few days it is general problem. it affected it. >> exact same thing. last two days. we had it at work as well. >> i turned off everything else in the house to make sure that we had a strong signal. >> we will be taking public comment before 4b. callers if you have not done so press star 3 to be added the queue. are there any callers on the line? >> madam secretary no callers on the line. >> no calls public comment is closed. we will move to 4b. >> thank you. >> you may nowresume the open session. >> take a rollcall please . >> . [rollcall] >> we do have a quorum. >> yes, present. >> you have aquorum . >> president: thank you. can you hear me? >> clerk: yes wecan hear you . >> president: thank you very much. at this time item be is being continued to the end of the calendar so we will now pr

i guess i am i'm sammy's a darlene doll ho, they'll look at the headlines here now. jazeera, the u. i says broken another record for infections with an average of 267000 new cases reported every day this past week. infections there of increased by 60 percent, although deaths and hospital admissions remain low. the chinese city of shan is battling the largest community outbreak. the country has seen this year. it's reported another $155.00 domestically transmitted cases. 13000000 people have been under locked down for 8 days now. in southern china, police have been captured on camera parading for men through the streets. in a public shaming exercise, we've been accused of transporting undocumented migrants while the countries borders remain largely closed. due to coven 19 hong kong chief executive carry lamb has defended the raid on a pro democracy media outlet saying the police acted within the law. 7 current and former journalist from strand news were arrested on wednesday. the damaged boats carrying ro, hangup migrants near indonesia is being towed to shore to both of mostly women

host: gold hill, oregon, darlene, good morning. caller: good morning. the federal government also needs to look at fire insurance in the western united states. many of us here are not able to meet the insurance requirements to have fire insurance in an existing company. when you try to exchange companies, insurers are no longer ensuring areas that have had or may have forest fires. i personally believe the government needs to extend this. from just flood n sures, which mostly takes care of the east coast, to look at what's happening in the western united states. guest: that was actually an inciteful comment. two things maybe i want to say in response to that. we do have flood risk everywhere in the country from the desert southwest to the west coast to the midwest and east coast every state and most all of our communities do have flood risk. but i thought that was a very insightful comment on fire insurance. and kind of going back to one of the earlier questions in terms of foreseeing the need for the federal government to be involved in the nfip. what

darlene, very good to have you with us. what's going on here right now?ghest vacancy rate we've ever had. so we have a 20% overall vacancy rate, and the demand for beds here is at a regular or higher than normal volume. neil: so how are you handling it right now in. [laughter] >> well, with as much of a sense of humor as we possibly can. but we're really working on two fronts. one is to get additional staff in here in any way we can, and the second is to try to decant the hospital and get people out of here into other settings. neil: so is it a lot of it having to do with health care mandates? it depends on the area, i grant you that, but that a lot of health care workers were forced out of their jobs or quit in the face of it? what are you seeing in your area in. >> our nursing shortage in particular started before covid started. we went into covid, 2019 was the nursing shortage, and then it continued to increase. we had record retirements, we had people leaving the industry. we now have an enormous amount of e competition for nurses who want to be trave

. >> in 1991, the hometown hero started dating another local standout named darlene weber. dar, as she was known, had a personality as big as her smile. >> the first time i saw her, she was playing softball, of course, and she had on these lime green rec specs, so she looked a little funny. but when she took them off, i thought she was beautiful. >> it was a classic case of opposites attracting. >> i think we both went into the relationship knowing that we really loved spending time with one another. >> tom was the laid-back, easy-going type. dar an elementary school teacher was more type a, and she didn't hide what she was thinking. >> she had opinions, and she'd let those be known. it's one of the reasons i loved her. i still love her today. >> still, when dar's sisters, la donna, lynn and marla learned that dar and tom intended to marry, they were left scratching their heads. >> my famous saying was, there's got to be something wrong with tom for him to stay with dar. >> because you couldn't do it. >> no. >> no. >> you couldn't be around somebody who was, what, that much

darlene, what can we expect to hear from the president? >> thank you. that's right. matter of fact, yesterday, when he was in minnesota on a trip, that he's going to be giving this speech tomorrow to outline a winter strategy for defeating covid. he said it would not include more lockdowns or more shutdowns, but that it would be more about increased vaccinations, encouraging people who aren't vaccinated to get their vaccinations. people who have only had one shot to go ahead and get their second shot. encouraging people to get their booster shots. and that it would have the -- the strategy would have more to do with increased testing to find cases and possibly detect the omicron variant, if it is already here in the united states. >> and your colleague, zeke miller, has new reporting that the white house really looks at covid-19 as the driver of all issues with inflation. businesses struggling to hire. the president's sinking poll numbers. is this going to, do you think, be enough of an explanation for the economy as it carries on this way? how big an issue can omicr

host: gold hill, oregon, darlene, good morning. caller: good morning.government also needs to look at fire insurance in the western united states. many of us here are not able to meet the insurance requirements to have fire insurance with are no longer insuring areas that have had or may have forest fires. i personally believe the government needs to extend this. guest: to the west coast, to the midwest and east coast, every state and most all communities do have flood risk. i thought that was an insightful comment on fire insurance. going back to one of the earlier russians in terms of foreseeing the need for the federal government to be involved in the nfip, what you just heard was how a fully private hazard insurance industry works and in fact there are coverage gaps in areas where insurers choose not to write in particular areas. one of the benefits of nfip is to create the insurance availability and we need to crank up the standards to reduce the risk to keep the tie to the nfip to simultaneously make insurance available and also have good floodpla

carley: merry christmas to larry and darlene from colorado celebrating today with their 18 grandkidsdaughter scarlet and his son dressed up as who is that? that's right, santa. todd: dressing up has 'got to become part of my family tradition. not yet in the cain family tradition. in pennsylvania. what's funny shared that earlier was your extended family your in-laws, brothers and sisters cousins as carley mentioned all getting together. keep sending them in your photos at friends@foxnews.com. the problem, carley and todd with now with getting extended family together is it might be hard because flights are getting canceled all across the united states. off chron, the positive test covid pandemic has hit the airline industry. hit staffing issues with pilots and flight attendants unto over 800 flights that have been canceled today. look at the flight san sell labor relations from the last several days, thursday and then into yesterday. can you see today 841 flights canceled. making it hard, carley, to have that extended family get together for christmas. carley: yeah, that's right. 6:0

darlene love's christmas song. sandy patty, anything she does, but especially bethlehem morning.rachel: wow. >> -- that i was going to mess it up. he's the greatest guy in the world. we miss him, host gone, but his music lives forever. rachel: yeah. his name is synonymous with christmas music for so many people because he is amazing. he and bing crosby are just the classics. pete: and you did the not mess it up at all. [inaudible conversations] will: thank you, governor. we should have known that. [laughter] pete: he delivered. >> thanks, guys. pete: governor, merry christmas. thank you as much. rachel: merry christmas, governor. pete: let's bring in chief meteorologist rick like muth who has -- reichmuth who has an update on how his weather man umbrella is helping folds of honor. rick: we did our give back, you know, our reveal to major dan. take a look and what watch what happened just a few weeks ago. dan, this is for you, $40,000 that has been raised largely because of our amazing viewers right here who have purchased these umbrellas. another $40,000 -- get this, $270,000 in