my tv crush john berman joins me live. wait until you see what he found. hi, everyone. i'm brooke baldwin. want to begin with the hottest stories in a flash. we call it rapid fire. roll it. a carnival cruise ship that broke down at sea, now on its way to mobile, alabama. folks on board say the ship, food and water are scarce and the smell of sewage, sickening. listen. >> sewage, raw sewage, pretty bad. when you walk in the hallways, you have to cover your face. we don't have any masks. >> this sewage is apparently running down the walls. and, to make matters worse, the ship is moving very slowly. i'm talking on lawn mower speed. new revelations today about pope benedict's health. did you know he has a pacemaker? this appears to be the first time the vatican has acknowledged that. his spokesman says the device did not have any bearing in the pope's decision to resign. doctors replaced the pacemaker's batteries just a couple of months ago in a routine procedure. meanwhile, take a look at this. just a couple of hours after the pope announced his resignation yesterday, this is the picture seen around the world. lightning appeared in the sky of a st. peters basilica. stunning. he cannot leave yet that does not mean leon panetta cannot say good-bye. and that is precisely what the defense secretary did today in his farewell ceremony. this is just outside the pentagon. he spoke about his challenges his replacement must face. >> you're going to have to continue to deal with rogue states like iran and north korea. we just saw what north korea has done in the last few weeks. a missile test and now a nuclear test. they represent a serious threat to the united states of america. we have got to be prepared to deal with that. >> deal with that, he says. panetta has been leading the pentagon for the last 18 months. but he's been in public service for the last five decades. live this hour, big moment for chuck hagel, the man president obama would like to become the next secretary of defense. the senate armed forces committee holding a vote on hagel's nomination. and while it is likely he will be confirmed, several republicans, they're still putting up a fight. that happens this hour. also, cereal and soda? pepsi introducing a new mountain dew drink for, dare i say, breakfast, calling it kick start. the company says it doesn't consider this an energy drink, even though, yes, it is packed with caffeine. why the new product? mountain dew says customers wanted an alternative to coffee and tea in the morning. and tomorrow is ash wednesday, which means today is fat tuesday. okay, i tweeted this out. this is a colossal waste of time and can't stop watching it. you can watch this on one of the live cams. mardi gras in full swing. we have been hearing trumpets from this live web cam. this is bourbon street. it is new orleans' biggest tourist draw with more than 50 parades. mardi gras is the feast and celebration before lent, a time of fasting for catholics. huge blow, have you heard about this, to one of the world's oldest sports. international olympic committee says it is recommending wrestling be cut from the 2020 summer games. wrestling has been in the olympics ever since 1896. the wrestling federation says it plans to fight this one and officials have to make their case against seven other sports and only one will survive. ♪ >> that is kesha. she's headlining the all-star game, the pregame show. she'll be joining ludacris and bob in houston. you can watch it on tnt sunday night. a big story brewing in washington today. the president's state of the union address. 9:00 p.m. this evening. and major announcement on america's longest war. what you're seeing right there, that, of course, that is the president entering -- this is last year's state of the union. tonight, he will tell the nation more than half of our troops are coming home from afghanistan. folks, we have been there 11 plus years. the president is set to announce he's bringing home 34,000 u.s. troops, 34,000 troops, gone from afghanistan, by this time next year, 2014. that, do the math, cuts the force by a little more than half, so you will have 32,000 u.s. troops still in afghanistan into 2014. stay tuned. because we will hit on this a little later, this major troop withdrawal from afghanistan. i want to talk now about tonight, about the state of the union, about gun control. and, yes, ted nugent. >> if barack obama becomes the president in november, again, i will either be dead or in jail by this time next year. >> that man, ted nugent, says he will come to the speech tonight unarmed, not a bad idea, but here you have prominent gun right supporter, how do i say this, known to be a little excitable? you with me. he'll be right there in that regal house chamber for tonight's state of the union. ted nugent will be the guest of steve stockman, house republican. stockman, from texas, says ted nugent's a patriot. here is more of ted nugent, again, speaking last april. >> our president and attorney general, our vice president, hillary clinton, they're criminals. they're criminals. >> so, you could say interesting. let's talk about this. let me bring in from new york, amy holmes, anchor for the blaze, glenn beck's network. in washington, cnn political analyst and democratic strategist cornell belcher. here in atlanta, patricia murphy, contributor to the dailybeast.com. welcome. the first question i want to ask is should ted nugent be at the speech tonight? amy holmes, what do you think? >> sure, why not? we know citizens are often invited to state of the unions to underscore political points. usually the president has folks sitting alongside the first lady so why not have a congress and bring in ted nugent who will underscore an issue, which, by the way, has bipartisan support when it comes to the second amendment. we talked about it on my show quite a bit that you have six democratic senators up for re-election in red states that mitt romney won. and you're seeing that when it comes to, say, the assault weapons ban, you're ghoeting the type of democratic buy-in that the president sort of suggests. >> maybe on universal background checks, but you're right, in terms of -- >> while the suggestion is that ted nugent is somehow extreme or to the right on this issue, he's actually alongside a lot of democrats. >> cornell, what do you think? do you agree with that? >> that's absolutely ridiculous. ted nugent is an extremist. and who spews forth some of the vilist crazy stuff you ever heard in your life. if you don't believe me, google it. the idea he's mainstream and he should be invited by a member of congress to sit in the state of the union shows you how far we have gone over the deep end and just how far the tea partyism has taken over the republican party. there should be no place for that sort of extremism at the state of the union. it is not for that. it is a time for both parties to try to bring people together. i think you'll hear from the president sort of talk about how to bring people together while at the same time, you know, you got guys inviting ted nugent to the state of the union. it is bad. and it looks bad for republicans. >> patricia, amy is right, though, members of congress, they can bring a plus one if you will sometimes to events like this. what kind of, i don't know, signal, message do you think congressman stockman is trying to do by bringing someone such as a ted nugent? >> i think it is a very in your face message toward the president. i think it is very disrespectful, it is extremely provocative. i think it is actually the exact message that republican leaders don't want to be sending. they have somebody like marco rubio coming up and giving the response to the president. they're trying very hard to rebrand the party to be less extreme, to be more concerned about the everyday issues people are facing and to bring ted nugent really distracts from that message that the larger republican body wants to concentrate on and steve stockman who has a history of being looney tunes on a whole variety of issues, this is par for the course for him. >> he's making other news today. more news today because apparently he'll be live tweeting the state of the union address. so that's making ripples because some folks are saying it is rude. on the other hand, you can say the white house is doing the same. but that will also make the headlines a little later tonight. you did mention marco rubio. we'll get to that, that response and the tea party response. can we give props to dana bash, our chief congressional correspondent. she never stops working. and today she ran down, of all people, the speaker of the house, john boehner. let me play this sound. this is john boehner on tonight's state of the union. >> i hope we hear something new tonight. i hope it is something new about the economy and jobs. and not the same old dribble about higher taxes and more government spending. >> so, boehner says no more of the same old dribble, his words. and these are the words of david gergen, our senior political analyst. the suspicion deepens, writes gergen, that the obama folks have secretly adopted a strategy of making republicans look so extreme that they will be driven from power in 2014, and the president can then govern the country as he chooses in his final two years in office. patricia, let me start with you here. will we know after the speech whether david gergen's suspicion is true, that the president is done with boehner and the republicans? wants to run him out of town? >> we'll have a very good idea. i think the first shot across the bow from the president toward the house republicans was his inaugural address. it was something i think most people expected him to reach out -- to reach a hand out to house republicans, to sort of say, okay, the fights are over, let's start to work together. he didn't do that at all. and house republicans were really quite livid, very surprised and he marched forward with an agenda that was quite liberal with gun control, with gay rights, with talking a whole bunch about climate change. these are very near and dear issues to democrats not republicans. they don't want to work with him on it. they think that we'll know tonight if he's going to stick with that agenda, which is about his goals and what are near and dear to him, or is he going to tack more to the center to get things done, particularly on the budget. that's the elephant in the room, the biggest problem for the country and is he go heing to reach reach a hand across and try to work with him on it. >> i will be listening tonight for if the president is giving a state of the union that is about governing, as patricia suggested, working with republicans to try to get legislation passed, or if it is going to be a speech as was suggested in the washington post yesterday, about circumventing congress through executive action. that would be a very brazen sort of message to deliver. >> if he does? >> -- 535 elected officials to tell them i plan to ram through my agenda through executive order, basically, an imperial presidency and announcing that tonight that would be pretty shocking, and i think that you would have a pretty vigorous republican response. >> cornell, weigh in. let me get to this first. this is something else we want to talk about. tonight we'll have not just one but two republican responses. one from florida senator marco rubio, the official republican response. and the other one from rand paul, and i guess you call this the tea party response. cornell, what do you think of all that? both of these people? >> well, first of all, let me get back to the point earlier. it is hilarious to me that a republican congress that has an approval -- disapproval rating of 72%, 72% disapproval of a republican congress, you know, somehow the president needs to be coming to them and the president has literally doubled at the approval rating -- the president has got to keep bending over backward to come to republicans. that doesn't make any sense. i think it is problematic for republicans the duelling speeches because it shows the world there is a divide in the republican -- with republicans nationally, with the tea party and more establishment republicans. i mean, it is not at all helpful for americans to see sort of how divided the republicans are. the understanding that this divide among the republicans is part of the problem with washington and why nothing is moving. >> cornell belcher, amy holmes, patricia murphy, thank you for weighing in. we'll be watching tonight. do not forget to catch cnn's special coverage tonight begins at 7:00 eastern, right here live on cnn. it felt like an earthquake, but something just as powerful has rattled the world here. north korea detonating a nuclear bomb. so what does this latest act of defiance mean to americans? 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[ male announcer ] with no blackout dates, you can use your citi thankyou points to travel whenever you want. visit citi.com/thankyoucards to apply. then you're going to love this. right now they're only $14.95! wow-a grt deal just got a whole lot better. hurry. $14.95 won't last. the u.n. calling an emergency meeting issuing a strong condemnation and promising to do more. the reason, north korea detonated a nuclear bomb overnight. keep in mind this is the north's third underground test, and really it is the most powerful yet. we're talking about roughly half the strength of the bomb that dropped on hiroshima in world war ii. >> translator: this nuclear test was conducted as a realistic response to protecting the safety and sovereignty of our country against the intrusion of the united states' atrocious hostile activity, opposing our country's right to launch a legitimate peaceful satellite. >> a warning for the u.s., the test inciting anger and condemnation from the white house, all the way to beijing. let me explain. this was a test. i want to just emphasize that. south korea broadcasting this animation here. this is what they saw, showing the series of tunnels here in north korea's underground test site. this is how we know they did it. so while you were sleeping, this blast here was felt all throughout asia. what's north korea's goal, you ask? to figure out a way to miniaturize a warhead and strap it to a rocket. two people i want to bring in. pentagon correspondent barbara starr and cnn executive editor mr. lister, tim lister. barbara, let me begin with you. we saw this animation video from north korea last week, shows, you know, a launch in a burning american city. i want you to just explain to me north korea's capability, lack thereof of dropping a nuclear bomb on a city like new york. >> well, look, brooke, the real concern right at this minute is whether or not north korea really did what they say they did, which is detonate a device underground that was miniaturized and yet more powerful. miniaturization, making a smaller device with maximum lethality is the key to putting a nuclear weapon on the front end of a missile, a long range ballistic missile, that can then travel thousands of miles and potentially, potentially strike the united states. they did a missile test in december. they did put something up into space, they were successful with that. they have now claimed they have succeeded in miniaturization. if they put those two things together, this, analysts say, moves north korea potentially have being just a rogue nation of bad actors into being a potential strategic threat. >> miniaturization, a word we're learning today to maximize the damage. tim lister, i want to bring you in. on the flip side, on our end of things in the united states, we know there have been hundreds of underground bunker tests. in fact, a bit of an incident in nevada. how dangerous are these here? >> they're a lot safer than doing it above ground or underwater. and those sort of tests were banned in the '60s. the last underground test before north korea started its underground tests were india and pakistan. look at this picture. >> what are we doing? >> this is not north korea. this is not the south pacific this is nevada, 1970. the test side where it all went wrong because there was too much dampness underground. the geological formations hadn't been particularly well worked out. you had this radioactive dust cloud erupting to 10,000 feet above the nevada desert. >> wow. >> and several dozen men were contaminated by this. and in fact there were lawsuits that went on for quite some time claiming that leukemia had been generated by this cloud. so it is not particularly safe, and you've got to wonder the north koreans have carried out three tests. what is happening to the geology there? it wouldn't affect the united states so much as it would their immediate neighbors, obviously. >> who is helping north korea here? is it china? >> you know this is now the dilemma for the intelligence community. it is like, think of it as "csi" north korea but you can't go to the crime scene to investigate. they're going to look at the test results and work their way backwards at the cia, trying to figure out, okay, if this was the test, how did they get there? do they really have the expertise to do it themselves or did they get help and perhaps maybe not china, maybe iran, maybe pakistan, a lot of concern that iranian scientists have traveled to north korea and that they are sharing their expertise and that, of course, takes this nuclear threat right back to iran, potentially. >> barbara starr, tim lister, thank you, both, very much. i appreciate it. up next, this fantastic story, this homeless man finds something shiny in a cup carrying loose change. and what happens next means the world to one woman. a kansas city woman's good deed nearly broke her heart. she accidentally dropped her engagement ring into this cup, this homeless man was holding when she was giving him loose change. she thought she would never see the ring again. she was wrong. betsy webster from cnn affiliate kctv has this amazing story. >> spare change today, sir. god bless. spare some change today, sir? thank you. god bless you. >> reporter: billy ray harris got that change and then some. >> the ring was so big. i knew if it was real, it was expensive. >> reporter: he didn't notice it until after an hour. >> my rings were bothering me. i put them in my coin purse. >> reporter: sarah didn't realize what she had done until the next day. >> i was so incredibly upset because, i mean, more than just the value of the ring, it had sentimental value. >> reporter: it was her engagement ring. >> spare the change today, sir. >> reporter: billy ray didn't know that but he knew how sentiment matters more than money. >> she squatted down like you did right there and says do you remember me? and i was, like, i don't know. i see a lot of people. she said, i might have gave you something very valuable? i said was it a ri