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CNN Live Today

Voters in Minnesota Talk Over Race, Other Issues in Presidential Campaign

Aired May 04, 2004 - 11:33   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: We'll get to a little bit more political news here. The candidates are making their case. The voters, though, will have the final say. Political analyst Carlos Watson has been taking the pulse of the people and he's here to tell us what he is hearing. Carlos, good morning.
CARLOS WATSON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Good morning.

KAGAN: Let's...

WATSON: Daryn, we've had a couple really interesting conversations. You remember, a couple weeks ago I was in Florida. This past week, I was in Minnesota as John Kerry is today and the president was just a week or so ago.

And we had a very fresh and different conversation. We didn't go and speak with senators or member of Congress or pundits like myself. But instead we had a conversation with a group you hear a lot about, but you don't hear a lot from. Evangelical Christian voters at Park United Methodist Church in Minneapolis.

They had a number of things to say, including on the issue of race.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WATSON: We hardly ever talk about it out loud. But I want to talk about race, and race in America.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My personal opinion is the more we talk about race, the more it perpetuates racism.

WATSON: You think it flairs up tensions?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I disagree. Race is always an issue. Race, I mean, it's something I always have to deal with. The less we talk about it, the easier it is for folk to think everything's OK. And it's not OK.

WATSON: Georgia (ph), what do you think when you hear about that?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I agree. For me, to talk about race is just hideous, because I don't understand why it's an issue.

WATSON: You mean -- you don't understand about...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: About racism. But for me, that's the cool part about this church. Where I grew up, there was nobody of another race. But, yes, it's a lot of work because as diverse as these opinions are our experiences are equally diverse.

WATSON: So when you hear things like "affirmative action" what comes to mind when you hear that topic come up?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I wish it weren't necessary. But until people choose to do the right thing and treat people equally and fairly, I think it's a necessary evil.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it can accelerate the process of breaking down the racism. How you implement it is really difficult because it creates other inequities. But from a conceptual standpoint, I think that you've got to work at the race problem.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WATSON: Daryn, so as you can see, we had a conversation that you often don't hear. And it's an issue that hasn't quite emerged yet in this campaign. But wouldn't be surprised to see it become quite a topic.

Later on tonight on Paula's show at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, you'll hear us talk about the economy, about the role of faith in politics, and also about the whole controversy around John Kerry's medals and ribbon. A very fascinating conversation.

KAGAN: All right, we look forward to hearing more about that. Carlos Watson, in New York City, thank you for that.

We have more questions. We want to go live now to Capitol Hill. Senator John Warner talking, come out of the Senate Armed Services Committee meeting.

(INTERRUPTED BY LIVE EVENT)

KAGAN: Listening into two senators, John Warner and Carl Levin of Virginia and of Michigan. And also General George Casey, vice chief of the U.S. Army, talking, again, what took place inside this meeting of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

We heard from Senator John McCain a little bit earlier as the senators were briefed on the alleged abuses of Iraqi prisoners taking place at the Abu Ghraib Prison in Baghdad.

More on that ahead. Right now a break and more news after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: A cancer diagnosis is probably not something that most 20 or 30-year-olds worry about. It does happen, though. "Shape" magazine looks at the most common cancers in women under 40, and most importantly, ways you can reduce your risk.

"Shape" magazine's Jacqui Stafford joins us from New York with our "Daily Dose of health news.

Jacqui, good morning. Thanks for being here with us.

JACQUI STAFFORD, "SHAPE" MAGAZINE: Good morning. You're welcome.

KAGAN: First, let's look at what the top five cancers that hit women over the age of 40, and I think we had the list put up there, melanoma, cervical cancer, thyroid cancer, leukemia, and Hodgkin's lymphoma. I want to kind of look at the top two, because those are the ones that people can have the most power in trying to reduce.

First of all, melanoma, just how common is it in women under 40?

STAFFORD: Well, that's a very, very good point, because it's extremely common. Actually melanoma is the most common cancer in women ages 25 to 39, and it's the second most common cancer in women ages 30 to 34, so one thing very important to remember about these types of cancers is that if treated early and detected very early on, they are practically 100 percent treatable and curable. So prevention is key, and early detection is extremely important.

So with melanoma, when you think that healthy tan makes you look healthy, in fact it could be a very deadly tan indeed. It's extremely important to keep out of the sun. So many women think that they're OK if they pop out in the sun. They don't realize how important it is to use a sunscreen of at least SPF 30. Check for regular moles on your body. Go and see and dermatologist twice a year to make sure that you are getting any strange-looking moles, ones that change shape, or size or color on your skin. Get them checked out regularly by a dermatologist so you can detect any changes and really have some early protection.

KAGAN: And let's talk one of those ones you could consider a girlfriend talk. If you're talking cervical cancer, you've to go through the yearly checkup with a gynecologist.

STAFFORD: That's very important. Cervical cancer can be caused by something like HPV, which is extremely common in women. And when you get over age 30, the HPV virus may be actually more potent, so it is really important to see your gynecologist at least twice a year to get regular pap test and regular pap smears, and to make sure that you are on top of these things so you are looked after. Because once again, this is a disease that is treatable once detected very early. So prevention is extremely important, so make sure you have regular checkups.

KAGAN: Awareness can save your life. A lot more information, both in "Shape" magazine and online at shape.com. Jacqui Stafford, thanks you stopping by. Appreciate that. And for your daily dose on health news, stop by our Web site. You'll find the latest medical news there. There's also head-to-toe health information from CNN and the Mayo Clinic. The address is CNN.com/health. There are worst things that you can get in your e-mail than spam. Up next, the latest on a new computer worm, eating its way around the world. Daniel Sieberg is here with details on what you need to do to protect yourself.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: A sneaky computer worm is snarling PCs worldwide, taking advantage of a flaw in the Windows operating system. Daniel Sieberg is here to talk about Sasser. Which is not sassy, it's just a pain in the hard drive.

DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: In the you know where. It's become a big headache actually, yes. It is known as "Sasser." It's been spreading for about three or four days now, on the Internet. We should make a big distinction here between, say, a worm and virus. This is a worm, know as Sasser. A virus is something that typically spreads through e-mail, is an attachment. You know, you always hear not to open attachments, if you don't know where they're from, really not to open them in general.

But in this case, it's not spreading through an attachment. It's actually spreading over the Internet by itself. It's propagating itself over the Internet at a very, very high rate of speed. It's looking for computers to infect and then saying, great, I can infect this machine. I'm going to keep sending myself out to looking for more computers to infect. So it is very successful that way, spreading itself out.

KAGAN: What happens when you get infected?

SIEBERG: When you get infected, first of all, it is not all that damaging. It did does not delete anything, it's not erasing any information. But it is trying to send itself out. And by doing that, it degrade the performance of your computer.

What that means, it slows it down because it's using up all this bandwidth, all this space, especially if you connect to broadband on the Internet. It's using all of that space to keep sending itself out so it slows your computer down.

It also does open up this back door, sort of an inadvertent back door, which could allow a hacker to come back at a later time and get some information off your computer.

KAGAN: So it should be pretty evident?

SIEBERG: Well, if your computer -- some of the keys to look for is if your computer has this slow performance, if it seems very sluggish today that -- you could be infected.

Also, if it's constantly rebooting, that is another key -- something that it does. At least once, if your computer -- why is my computer rebooting for no reason at all? That could be a part of it.

KAGAN: So what do you do? SIEBERG: What do you do? All right, that's what everybody wants to know.

Well, we've got a computer set up here. I'm going to turn around here and just go to out computer. At the Microsoft Web site, this is a Microsoft vulnerability that effects Windows 2000 and XP users. You can see on the Microsoft homepage here at Microsoft.com. They're saying important information about the Sasser, actions you can take.

Now if you click on that, you can actually get there shorter, Microsoft.com/Sasser. And then it does tell you what some tips you can take. First of all, enabling a fire wall. You can see here step one.

Why is that? Well, your computer, when you're connected to the Internet, it's still vulnerable. And it's still sending this worm out. So by enabling a fire wall, you can at least sort of stop that from happening. It does list on the site here the software infected, the different operating systems. Windows 2000 and XP.

You need to install the patch. A patch really is just like a Band-Aid. You're closing the hole in your computer, this vulnerability. And it's telling you how to do that and where to go to get it.

And then once you've done that, you need to also check and see if you've been infected. It says here, automatically check for and remove Sasser A and Sasser B. There are at least four variants, by the way, Daryn. There are a few different versions already on the Internet. So a whole family of worms.

You can check your PC for infection. You can see this link right here. Actually, I'm going scroll that down just a little bit. Right there, check my PC for infection.

And if it is there, you need to remove it and then update everything and go from there. There is another virus out there called Netskee, which is promising people a fix for Sasser. It's not. It's another virus that's preying on people's fears about Sasser.

Causing problems around the world. At least a million PCs infected.

KAGAN: Just real quickly, I don't understand. If your computer is shutting down, rebooting how are you supposed to keep it on long enough in order to get to the Web site?

SIEBERG: It should only do that a few times and then stop. But if it seem to be rebooting in a very strange way, like you didn't do it, then that's a tipoff.

KAGAN: That somebody stopped in who wasn't invited.

(CROSSTALK)

KAGAN: Daniel Sieberg, thank you so much for that. (MARKET UPDATE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(WEATHER UPDATE)

KAGAN: And that's going to do it for me, Daryn Kagan.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired May 4, 2004 - 11:33   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: We'll get to a little bit more political news here. The candidates are making their case. The voters, though, will have the final say. Political analyst Carlos Watson has been taking the pulse of the people and he's here to tell us what he is hearing. Carlos, good morning.
CARLOS WATSON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Good morning.

KAGAN: Let's...

WATSON: Daryn, we've had a couple really interesting conversations. You remember, a couple weeks ago I was in Florida. This past week, I was in Minnesota as John Kerry is today and the president was just a week or so ago.

And we had a very fresh and different conversation. We didn't go and speak with senators or member of Congress or pundits like myself. But instead we had a conversation with a group you hear a lot about, but you don't hear a lot from. Evangelical Christian voters at Park United Methodist Church in Minneapolis.

They had a number of things to say, including on the issue of race.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WATSON: We hardly ever talk about it out loud. But I want to talk about race, and race in America.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My personal opinion is the more we talk about race, the more it perpetuates racism.

WATSON: You think it flairs up tensions?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I disagree. Race is always an issue. Race, I mean, it's something I always have to deal with. The less we talk about it, the easier it is for folk to think everything's OK. And it's not OK.

WATSON: Georgia (ph), what do you think when you hear about that?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I agree. For me, to talk about race is just hideous, because I don't understand why it's an issue.

WATSON: You mean -- you don't understand about...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: About racism. But for me, that's the cool part about this church. Where I grew up, there was nobody of another race. But, yes, it's a lot of work because as diverse as these opinions are our experiences are equally diverse.

WATSON: So when you hear things like "affirmative action" what comes to mind when you hear that topic come up?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I wish it weren't necessary. But until people choose to do the right thing and treat people equally and fairly, I think it's a necessary evil.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it can accelerate the process of breaking down the racism. How you implement it is really difficult because it creates other inequities. But from a conceptual standpoint, I think that you've got to work at the race problem.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WATSON: Daryn, so as you can see, we had a conversation that you often don't hear. And it's an issue that hasn't quite emerged yet in this campaign. But wouldn't be surprised to see it become quite a topic.

Later on tonight on Paula's show at 8:00 p.m. Eastern, you'll hear us talk about the economy, about the role of faith in politics, and also about the whole controversy around John Kerry's medals and ribbon. A very fascinating conversation.

KAGAN: All right, we look forward to hearing more about that. Carlos Watson, in New York City, thank you for that.

We have more questions. We want to go live now to Capitol Hill. Senator John Warner talking, come out of the Senate Armed Services Committee meeting.

(INTERRUPTED BY LIVE EVENT)

KAGAN: Listening into two senators, John Warner and Carl Levin of Virginia and of Michigan. And also General George Casey, vice chief of the U.S. Army, talking, again, what took place inside this meeting of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

We heard from Senator John McCain a little bit earlier as the senators were briefed on the alleged abuses of Iraqi prisoners taking place at the Abu Ghraib Prison in Baghdad.

More on that ahead. Right now a break and more news after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: A cancer diagnosis is probably not something that most 20 or 30-year-olds worry about. It does happen, though. "Shape" magazine looks at the most common cancers in women under 40, and most importantly, ways you can reduce your risk.

"Shape" magazine's Jacqui Stafford joins us from New York with our "Daily Dose of health news.

Jacqui, good morning. Thanks for being here with us.

JACQUI STAFFORD, "SHAPE" MAGAZINE: Good morning. You're welcome.

KAGAN: First, let's look at what the top five cancers that hit women over the age of 40, and I think we had the list put up there, melanoma, cervical cancer, thyroid cancer, leukemia, and Hodgkin's lymphoma. I want to kind of look at the top two, because those are the ones that people can have the most power in trying to reduce.

First of all, melanoma, just how common is it in women under 40?

STAFFORD: Well, that's a very, very good point, because it's extremely common. Actually melanoma is the most common cancer in women ages 25 to 39, and it's the second most common cancer in women ages 30 to 34, so one thing very important to remember about these types of cancers is that if treated early and detected very early on, they are practically 100 percent treatable and curable. So prevention is key, and early detection is extremely important.

So with melanoma, when you think that healthy tan makes you look healthy, in fact it could be a very deadly tan indeed. It's extremely important to keep out of the sun. So many women think that they're OK if they pop out in the sun. They don't realize how important it is to use a sunscreen of at least SPF 30. Check for regular moles on your body. Go and see and dermatologist twice a year to make sure that you are getting any strange-looking moles, ones that change shape, or size or color on your skin. Get them checked out regularly by a dermatologist so you can detect any changes and really have some early protection.

KAGAN: And let's talk one of those ones you could consider a girlfriend talk. If you're talking cervical cancer, you've to go through the yearly checkup with a gynecologist.

STAFFORD: That's very important. Cervical cancer can be caused by something like HPV, which is extremely common in women. And when you get over age 30, the HPV virus may be actually more potent, so it is really important to see your gynecologist at least twice a year to get regular pap test and regular pap smears, and to make sure that you are on top of these things so you are looked after. Because once again, this is a disease that is treatable once detected very early. So prevention is extremely important, so make sure you have regular checkups.

KAGAN: Awareness can save your life. A lot more information, both in "Shape" magazine and online at shape.com. Jacqui Stafford, thanks you stopping by. Appreciate that. And for your daily dose on health news, stop by our Web site. You'll find the latest medical news there. There's also head-to-toe health information from CNN and the Mayo Clinic. The address is CNN.com/health. There are worst things that you can get in your e-mail than spam. Up next, the latest on a new computer worm, eating its way around the world. Daniel Sieberg is here with details on what you need to do to protect yourself.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: A sneaky computer worm is snarling PCs worldwide, taking advantage of a flaw in the Windows operating system. Daniel Sieberg is here to talk about Sasser. Which is not sassy, it's just a pain in the hard drive.

DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: In the you know where. It's become a big headache actually, yes. It is known as "Sasser." It's been spreading for about three or four days now, on the Internet. We should make a big distinction here between, say, a worm and virus. This is a worm, know as Sasser. A virus is something that typically spreads through e-mail, is an attachment. You know, you always hear not to open attachments, if you don't know where they're from, really not to open them in general.

But in this case, it's not spreading through an attachment. It's actually spreading over the Internet by itself. It's propagating itself over the Internet at a very, very high rate of speed. It's looking for computers to infect and then saying, great, I can infect this machine. I'm going to keep sending myself out to looking for more computers to infect. So it is very successful that way, spreading itself out.

KAGAN: What happens when you get infected?

SIEBERG: When you get infected, first of all, it is not all that damaging. It did does not delete anything, it's not erasing any information. But it is trying to send itself out. And by doing that, it degrade the performance of your computer.

What that means, it slows it down because it's using up all this bandwidth, all this space, especially if you connect to broadband on the Internet. It's using all of that space to keep sending itself out so it slows your computer down.

It also does open up this back door, sort of an inadvertent back door, which could allow a hacker to come back at a later time and get some information off your computer.

KAGAN: So it should be pretty evident?

SIEBERG: Well, if your computer -- some of the keys to look for is if your computer has this slow performance, if it seems very sluggish today that -- you could be infected.

Also, if it's constantly rebooting, that is another key -- something that it does. At least once, if your computer -- why is my computer rebooting for no reason at all? That could be a part of it.

KAGAN: So what do you do? SIEBERG: What do you do? All right, that's what everybody wants to know.

Well, we've got a computer set up here. I'm going to turn around here and just go to out computer. At the Microsoft Web site, this is a Microsoft vulnerability that effects Windows 2000 and XP users. You can see on the Microsoft homepage here at Microsoft.com. They're saying important information about the Sasser, actions you can take.

Now if you click on that, you can actually get there shorter, Microsoft.com/Sasser. And then it does tell you what some tips you can take. First of all, enabling a fire wall. You can see here step one.

Why is that? Well, your computer, when you're connected to the Internet, it's still vulnerable. And it's still sending this worm out. So by enabling a fire wall, you can at least sort of stop that from happening. It does list on the site here the software infected, the different operating systems. Windows 2000 and XP.

You need to install the patch. A patch really is just like a Band-Aid. You're closing the hole in your computer, this vulnerability. And it's telling you how to do that and where to go to get it.

And then once you've done that, you need to also check and see if you've been infected. It says here, automatically check for and remove Sasser A and Sasser B. There are at least four variants, by the way, Daryn. There are a few different versions already on the Internet. So a whole family of worms.

You can check your PC for infection. You can see this link right here. Actually, I'm going scroll that down just a little bit. Right there, check my PC for infection.

And if it is there, you need to remove it and then update everything and go from there. There is another virus out there called Netskee, which is promising people a fix for Sasser. It's not. It's another virus that's preying on people's fears about Sasser.

Causing problems around the world. At least a million PCs infected.

KAGAN: Just real quickly, I don't understand. If your computer is shutting down, rebooting how are you supposed to keep it on long enough in order to get to the Web site?

SIEBERG: It should only do that a few times and then stop. But if it seem to be rebooting in a very strange way, like you didn't do it, then that's a tipoff.

KAGAN: That somebody stopped in who wasn't invited.

(CROSSTALK)

KAGAN: Daniel Sieberg, thank you so much for that. (MARKET UPDATE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(WEATHER UPDATE)

KAGAN: And that's going to do it for me, Daryn Kagan.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com