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D.C. fog advisory

Our capital city is literally blanketed in fog this morning. Barely able to see a quarter of a mile ahead, cars slowly inch along. From Virginia, you can't even see Washington across the Potomac. The entire city disappears.

The fog advisory says it's a couple thousand feet thick in the air. There's zero visibility at Dulles airport.

And what timing for a city in a fog of its own making. This morning things are more uncertain than certain.  The political balance of the Senate. The balance of power. The condition of Democratic Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota. What to do in Iraq. The President still seeks advice on his listening tour. As he said yesterday, "our enemy is far from being defeated."

The fog is supposed to lift here around noon today. The political fog? No one knows.

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Breaking news

I was sitting down to write today's post when Tim Russert called with a major piece of news out of Washington: Democratic Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota is hospitalized at George Washington University Hospital (which houses a superb trauma center) having suffered a stroke. Sen. Johnson is a young man, not quite yet 60, known to be in good shape. Given his political contacts with the South Dakota delegation, I called Tom Brokaw and shared the news and we all got working on it.  It goes without saying that our thoughts and prayers are with the senator and his family. That is first and foremost at this hour. There are also obvious political ramifications that play a potential role here: should the senator become incapacitated, the Republican Governor would appoint a successor under South Dakota law. That would put the Senate at 50-50 and tilt effective control to the Republicans under Vice President Cheney's role as tie-breaking vote. This is a big breaking story on so many levels, and we are all working it. Chip Reid is on it in Washington, and Tim Russert will be by my side on the air tonight here in New York. Right now on MSNBC, Bill Press is making a very important point: GWU Hospital has a world-class stroke unit and is full of top-flite professionals... that is what we should emphasize right now, until we learn more. We hope to have much more by airtime. (Editor's note: You can read the latest on Sen. Johnson's health here.)

Tim will also be with us tonight to debut our new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll numbers -- which, while embargoed for release, reach new benchmarks in the President's approve/disapprove category and his handling of the war. And while this breaking news above sends the top of our broadcast into some flux, we'll also cover Iraq, Secretary Rumsfeld, President Bush's comments today, the search in Oregon (and the coming, collosally bad weather there), the front in Afghanistan, today's medical news, and our featured story about a shopping trend this holiday season.

So its back to work, back to the phones and we hope you will join us for our Wednesday night broadcast.

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Remembering Uncle Pete

He seemed to always play the curmudgeon, though he was anything but.  Peter Boyle, who died last night here in New York City at age 71, was not only a marvelous character actor - he was also my uncle.  The acting genes run deep in my family - my mother, Peter's sister, is a tremendously talented stage actress who's still juggling roles at 78. Philadelphians of a certain age might recall my grandfather, who hosted a local children's TV show as "Chuckwagon Pete" in the very early days of television and worked with Ernie Kovacs. His eldest daughter, Lucy, is already an accomplished actress and playwright.

But it was Uncle Pete who had the highest profile career, one he came by somewhat by chance after briefly considering a monastic life with the Christian Brothers.  The first movie I remember him in was Joe, a 1970 film in which he played a bigoted, Archie Bunker type without the charm.  I don't really remember the movie, since I was five and it was deemed unsuitable for impressionable eyes.

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Early Nightly is up

Three stories could lead the broadcast tonight, as Brian explains in today's vlog.

Click here or on the image to watch.

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Castro's Cuba

The top State Department official for Latin America, Thomas Shannon, told reporters today that Fidel Castro is still alive "as far as we know," but "the fact that he didn't show up for his own birthday celebration is significant."

Shannon said there was no doubt that a transfer of power had taken place from Fidel Castro to his brother Raul as far as day-to-day operations go. The U.S. is still uncertain, however, what role, if any, Fidel has in major state decisions.

The U.S. has observed a tightening of the Cuban regime under Raul with the intent of showing "absolute control of the state" after Fidel fell ill. Within the Bush administration, Shannon says, there is "honest disagreement" about how to best approach the Cuban regime. "We're getting all kinds of advice," Shannon laughed.

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A theme emerges

A Senior White House official told me earlier today the President's speech to the nation (laying out a new strategy in Iraq) will indeed now likely be in January. While this runs contrary to what I was told just yesterday, and while this official understands a lot could happen between now and then (exposing the President to the risk of having to "react" to external events), this official explained the White House would rather "get it (the speech) right... than just get it OUT." Given the voracity of the Washington press corps for a drumbeat/theme story -- the past few news cycles have been dominated by the President's "listening" to various experts and branches of government prior to whatever pronouncement is coming -- and that will likely continue.  On CNN (where Jack Cafferty just said "the DECIDER has decided not to decide until January..."), they just ran a large graphic headline saying "WAY FORWARD STALLED." And I note that on MSNBC is the on-screen graphic: SHOULD BUSH CONSIDER FORMING A BIPARTISAN WAR COUNCIL?" With Robert Gates now days away from taking over as SecDef, someone at our editorial meeting noted that Rumsfeld has given an interesting interview to Cal Thomas -- specifically his comments about the phrase "War on Terror." 

Our broadcast will likely begin with some combination of the White House and Iraq.  Among our other topics tonight: immigration, the Mt. Hood rescue mission, the "other fronts" in Afghanistan (we have some great reporting from Jim Maceda on top of what the New York Times published from the region yesterday) and as promised, a look at who's watching the various charities during this busy giving season.

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Early Nightly is up

"We would rather get it right than simply get it out." That's how a Bush administration official characterized the president's ongoing deliberations about Iraq to Brian recently. That story is our likely lead tonight, as Brian explains in the vlog.

Click here or on the image to watch.

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Listening tour

The Onion headline a few days ago read: "DISCOURAGED PRESIDENT BUSH BEGINS SEEKING APPROVAL OF OTHER NATIONS." While that's a few steps removed from reality, the President today embarked on a well-choreographed "tour" of several branches of government... starting with the State Department. This afternoon, he's meeting with military and academic types, including not one but two of our colleagues: Retired U.S. Army Generals Barry McCaffrey and Wayne Downing -- both retired 4-stars, both good friends of ours. Gen. Downing was my traveling companion in Iraq at the start of the war. We will talk to both men tonight, though we understand there will be obvious limits on what they can share with us about any counsel they gave the Commander in Chief. Back to the President's "listening tour" -- while a high-placed lawmaker made the point to me today that "it's nothing the President couldn't learn in a phone call," that's not quite the point. It's all part of the very public run-up to the President's pre-Christmas speech, one component in the Iraq Study Group aftermath, and it's in preparation for possible changes in strategy in Iraq. That's IF the news media don't elect Sen. Barack Obama president by acclamation and consensus by then... which brings us to another story we'll cover tonight: the senator's trip to New Hampshire this weekend, which gathered a crowd of 1,500 including 150 accredited members of the news media. Check your calendars. Deep breaths, everyone.

I urge you to look for Andrea Mitchell's reporting on Iran tonight. They're holding a panel on the Holocaust and one of the speakers is someone (an American) we haven't heard much from of late, for good reason. Robert Bazell has a sobering report on early diagnosis of Alzheimer's, and Anne Thompson has a great piece on the icons of the Baby Boomer generation and how they get you to buy.

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Alzheimer's warning signs

Whenever we discuss a story about Alzheimer's, a lot of people around the room ask whether their forgetfulness is the beginning of this horrible disease. This is especially true concerning our story tonight, which is about younger people with the disease, and features a man who was diagnosed at age 45.

There is no simple answer to the question, but the Alzheimer's Association does offer a guide to the warning signs. The association's report on the prevalence of the disease in younger people can be seen here. In fact, the association's general Web site is an enormously helpful resource as is the Web site of the National Institute on Aging.

Editor's note: We also have an extensive collection of Alzheimer's coverage on MSNBC.com, including a special look at "Maintaining your Memory" as you age.

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Knocking down the Diana bug report

Current and former U.S. officials say no U.S. intelligence agency ever targeted Princess Diana for intelligence collection.

Their comments follow stories over the weekend in British papers, reporting that U.S. intelligence agencies were spying on her. Some say her phone calls were being monitored, and some say specifically that it was done by the U.S. Secret Service.  These stories are said to be based on the British report due out later this week on her death.

However, Homeland Security and U.S. Secret Service officials today say it is untrue that the Secret Service ever gathered intel information on Diana. "The Secret Service had nothing to do with it," the official says.

Separately, a former senior U.S. intelligence official says Princess Diana was never targeted for intelligence gathering in any way. But, the former official says, her voice MAY have been picked up while others were targeted. Even so, he says that as far as he knows, there were no intercepts of her in Paris the night she died, contrary to what the British papers are reporting.

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