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Bush, GOP Continue to Sink in Public Opinion Polls; Close Encounter: Asteroid 2004 XP-14 Passes Close to Earth

Aired July 03, 2006 - 07:30   ET

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

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR, AMERICAN MORNING: Happening this morning. Eight injured at a university in western Afghanistan. They were learning English. Police say the bomb was planted by someone who doesn't want women to get an education there.
Firefighters think someone setting off fireworks may have caused a 60-acre wildfire near Portland, Oregon. Fortunately no homes in immediate danger.

Clamping down on young drivers, it appears to be working. A study shows a 20 percent drop in fatal accidents for teens. Limits on young drivers like no driving at night and limiting the passengers, the reasons.

Good morning. I'm Miles O'Brien.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR, AMERICAN MORNING: I'm Carol Costello in for Soledad.

Topping our news this morning, to the president and the polls. The latest numbers from "Time" magazine show President Bush's approval still sinking and news is even worse for Congress. Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider is in Washington this morning to break the numbers down for us.

Good morning.

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: Good morning, Carol.

COSTELLO: OK, let's show the first set of numbers we have from "Time" magazine. You can see the president's approval rating stands at 35 percent. That's down 2 points from March 29 and 30.

Now, you would think with Zarqawi dead and Iraqi government in place, his surprise visit to Iraq and Karl Rove in the clear, that the president's approval ratings would be up and not sinking.

SCHNEIDER: Well, some polls did show them going up a very little bit, in last few weeks, after those events just mentioned, somewhere in the range of 37 to 41 percent. But this is the most recent poll. The only one taken since the Supreme Court's Guantanamo decision, which went against the White House and it shows the president with a low number indeed, 35 percent. So any improvement was very short lived. COSTELLO: Gotcha. OK, let's take a look at the numbers for Congress. There must be more negatives attached to Congress then for Star Jones. Take a look at this, 31 percent. Why so low? I know traditionally the numbers, the approval ratings are low for Congress but this is obscene.

SCHNEIDER: Those are very low numbers. Everyone is down on Congress including Republicans , and it is a Republican controlled Congress, and they are the ones on the ballot this year and not President Bush.

Why are they down on Congress? Well, Congress can't pass an immigration law. They can't do anything about gas prices. They rejected even the beginning of a troop withdraw in Iraq. Instead they talk about flag burning and same-sex marriage amendments and couldn't pass those either. So, a lot of people, including Republicans in this country, say this Congress can't get anything done.

COSTELLO: In light of that, would you think that this next number would be rocking for Democrats, but 47 percent of the people polled said they would now vote for Democrats. I really thought that number would be higher. Should it have been?

SCHNEIDER: Well, 47 to 35, as you can see there, that is a 12- point lead for Democrats. A lot of people aren't sure, obviously, it depends on who is running in their individual district. As you can see the most striking figure is that only 35 percent will vote for Republicans . That means Republicans are very fearful this year about what could happen to them in this election.

COSTELLO: What can they do?

SCHNEIDER: They could paint the Democrats as weak on national security. That worked in the last midterm election, in 2002. Don't know if it will work again. They are trying it. Last week on Thursday the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi said, the Supreme Court's Guantanamo decision, quote, "Affirms the American ideal that all are entitled to basic guarantees of our justice system."

And immediately her counterpart, John Boehner, the Republican leader in the House, said that amounts to advocating, quote, "special privileges for terrorists." Which was a signal that Republicans tend to get pretty aggressive on national security issue.

COSTELLO: You are right. But the big question is should they be? Because isn't that what President Bush is now doing again? It has not helped his approval rating.

SCHNEIDER: That's the problem. Will it work again? It worked in 2002. It worked in 2004. We'll see if it works in 2006.

COSTELLO: OK. I want to talk about the Mexican election. The election in Mexico. Nothing has been decided yet.

SCHNEIDER: Yes.

COSTELLO: Why should Americans care?

SCHNEIDER: Well, immigration is not a big issue in Mexican election. The two candidates who appear to be neck-in-neck at this point, not big difference over immigration, big differences over job creation, which of course has implications for Americans.

One candidate, left wing populous candidate, Lopez Obrador, says he wants to do a massive public works program. The other candidate, Felipe Calderon, the candidate of Vicente Fox's party, says he wants to do it with foreign investment.

A bitter fight between left and right. What's at stake? How to create jobs in Mexico that will keep Mexicans in Mexico. Important for the United States, but immigration not a direct issue in the debate.

COSTELLO: Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider. Thank you.

SCHNEIDER: Sure.

COSTELLO: Bill is part of the best political news team on television.

This programming note for you, the president and first lady will sit down for an exclusive interview with Larry King, that will be take place Thursday night at 9:00 Eastern.

O'BRIEN: Nearly a year now since the London terror bombings. You remember them. The horrible attack on commuters in subways and buses. Summed up, in many respects, in a single picture that's etched in our memory. CNN's Paula Newton follows up with more on a masked victim and those who helped her.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAULA NEWTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Could just one picture capture the events of that day in London? Express the terror of it? There are many that come close. Images that are now infamous, but there is only one that has become so unforgettable. It has been dubbed, The Mask.

PAUL DADGE, ASSISTED 7/7 VICTIM: I just grabbed her. I said we need to go, we need to go now. And we literally run from the store. And got to the road and just this line of photographs were there. What I remember vividly there in the middle of a major incident it was deadly silence. All you could hear was the sch-sch-sch, of the shutters going off.

JANE MINGAY, PHOTOGRAPHER: You just click and that's what we did. Suddenly I looks over and I saw this lady, with this sort of mask, and him holding her. And there was no one else like that. They just stood out. From the fact that he was cradling her, looking after -- also, mainly the fact that she had this mask.

NEWTON: The mask was meant to help soothe and heal this woman's burns, but it also made the victim faceless. And the year on, she's chosen to stay that way.

DADGE: She was actually on at train that was attacked by a bomb blast, whereas I wasn't. I think that gets forgotten sometimes. That she wants her privacy. She back at work and just carrying on a normal life, and obviously wants some kind of closure on the event.

NEWTON: Paul Dadge may not have been on the train that was hit by a bomb but on that day, just like now, he was right in the thick of it.

Dadge is a trained firefighter. But for years he's worked as an IT specialist. That's still his day job, but now you can also call him the conscience of 7/7. He's out learning more about his local ambulance service in Staffordshire, north of London. They have the fastest response time in the country and Dadge wants to know why.

Dadge has been honored as a hero for his acts on 7/7, directing hundreds to safety, administering first aid, and getting a burn victim to safety.

MING: It was quite dramatic. Also the way he was holding her -- it was a vision. You know, all of a sudden. It was really the strongest thing that I saw that day.

NEWTON: The image may have made Dadge a celebrity, but he's not complaining. Instead he's using his notoriety to make a statement.

DADGE: For somebody who was actually there on the day to stand up and say I was there, and that's me in the picture. And to say you won't affect us here in London, or Madrid, or New York, or wherever, these blasts may be and we'll carry on as normally, is quite powerful thing to do.

NEWTON: With powerful portrait to match. One that, in Dadge's words, lives up to what he calls Brit grit. Paula Newton, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: Let's get a check of the weather now. Chad Myers at the CNN Center.

(WEATHER REPORT)

O'BRIEN: In Finland this time of year the men aren't so quick to tell their wives to get off their backs. Estonia Sandra Kulus (ph) and Margo Usorge (ph) winning the 11th Annual Wife Carrying Championship on Saturday -- Margo is the man, by the way -- in a blistering 56.9 seconds. They went through that bizarre obstacle course. The race is held in a remote Finnish village, emphasis on remote here.

It commemorates the legend of a robber who apparently made potential gang members carry heavy sacks through a woods as a rite of initiation -- yeah! Each man must carry his wife...

COSTELLO: I don't think I like this.

O'BRIEN: I know. It's kind of odd -- must carry his wife through a series of obstacle, sand, water. The winner gets his weight in beer -- the weight of his wife in beer, I think.

COSTELLO: No, the weight of his wife in beer.

O'BRIEN: And the wife must be at least 108 pounds, by the way.

COSTELLO: Really?

O'BRIEN: Plus, a laptop computer!

COSTELLO: Whew!

O'BRIEN: They're going high tech this year.

Coming up on the program, an asteroid half mile wide has come awfully close to us. It happened last night. We'll check in with Chicken Little. See what he has to say. No! We're going to check in with an expert and ask about this, actually, potentially serious threat some day.

COSTELLO: Get off your asteroids this morning.

(LAUGHTER)

Also, fireworks can be fun on the Fourth of July, but they can be dangerous. We'll have safety tips for you.

(LAUGHTER)

COSTELLO: I'm sorry.

O'BRIEN: The Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy -- there really is a Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy, folks. And you're going to meet him. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: While you were sleeping last night there was close call, in astronomical terms, as the asteroid 2004 XP14, came -- the exact figure is -- 268,624 miles -- from Earth. That's about the distance from here and the moon. Relatively speaking, we call that a close call.

Joining us now from Miami to talk about this whole concept of near Earth objects, objects that cross our orbit, and could one day do a dinosaur act on us, our friend, Jack Horkheimer, who is director of the Miami Planetarium.

Jack, always a pleasure to see you. How are you this morning?

JACK HORKHEIMER, DIRECTOR, MIAMI PLANETARIUM: My pleasure. Good morning.

O'BRIEN: So, in a word we go -- whew! Right? Is that it?

HORKHEIMER: Well, it already passed around 12:25 last night. And amateur astronomers, and professionals astronomers, all around the world were trying to catch a glimpse of this as it went by. It is called potentially hazardous asteroid, an object, because it does cross Earth's orbit. We know of about 800 of these potentially dangerous objects that are large enough to do damage to us.

Now, the interesting part about this asteroid is that whenever these things go by we use a large radar antenna, great radar telescopes, to ping signals off them so that we can determine exactly how far away they are and how fast they are moving. From this we can extrapolate their density and their size. So we really won't know for two or three more days exactly how big this is. And we'll refine it's orbit even more, but it should be about a quarter to half a mile wide.

O'BRIEN: I want to show people just a quick picture here, before get too far down the road, here, Jack. This is kind of hard to make it out. I'll just draw a little bit on here to give you a sense. It is right in there.

The one thing about asteroids, unlike comets, which have that comma or tail, in other words a little expulsion of gas, which is reflected -- comets are dark and hard to get a picture of, aren't they?

HORKHEIMER: Yes, very right. Asteroids are not that easy to photograph. You really have to know what you are looking at. But we have been getting a lot of information on these and finding more and more and more. And hopefully within the next few years NASA hopes to have mapped at least 90 percent of these objects so we can keep track of their orbits. We now think that is -- it braces no potential threat for us for at least the next 100 years. When it was first discovered it was listed as a -- well, maybe it could cause some damage later this century. Be we now know that's not true.

O'BRIEN: Cause some damage. Let's take a look. We're going to go to the NASA JPL site. They have a little animation. Let's put the map in motion, as they say.

Shows the orbit, relative between the two items. The two objects, I should say. And we already blew by last night. I was going to -- back it up, back it up will you. Let's go back to -- so we can see what happened last night. Just hit rewind there. No, hit rewind, right down there. All right, well, I'm having some computer problems. I'm trying to rely on computer help it's not working out so well.

In any case, what this shows is that is the orbit of asteroid and Earth is along this way. It is kind of in a different plane, but there will be other close encounters in the future, correct?

HORKHEIMER: We have a nifty one coming up in 2029, which you actually will be able to see with the naked eye. This object will come as close as 20,000 miles away from us, which is really close.

We did have two years ago, in June of 2004 -- excuse me -- four years ago -- we had an object that came three times closer than the Moon to us. This is about 18,000 miles beyond the furthest point that our Moon is away from us each month.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's take a look at this picture right here. This is an artists' depiction. We don't have any file tape of this, but this is when the so-called KT impact. This was 65 million years ago, which took out the dinosaurs.

More recently, about 11,000 years ago in what we now know as Arizona. Take a look at what happened there. A much smaller asteroid came down and created what call a meteor crater, which is place that people come. Let's zoom in a little closer on there, can we? And we'll take a look at that big hole there, that's worth checking out if you are in that part of the world, not far from Flagstaff.

Over to the left a little more. There we go. We'll give you a highlight. There you go, right in the center there, a meteor crater. It proves that this is a more frequent thing than you might guess. One way to get a sense of how frequently we're struck by objects is to take a look at the moon, right, Jack?

HORKHEIMER: Yes, we can see that the for the 4.5 billion years the Moon has been around, along with us, that it has suffered many impacts. As a matter of fact, if you take a pair of binoculars, any night, and you'll see craters everywhere. All of the planets have crater impacts. We have a lot on crater impacts on our Earth. The only reason we don't show as many because our Earth is so dynamic. These craters on Earth are constantly eroded and so they disappear.

Incidentally, the one that slammed into the Earth 65 million years ago and may have wiped out the dinosaurs was probably about 10 miles wide. The one we're talking about, that passed us last night, maybe quarter to half a mile.

O'BRIEN: Real quick, Jack. If one was coming out way, could we do anything about it, in a nutshell?

HORKHEIMER: Yes. There are several scenarios, if we have enough advance warning. Yes, there are all kinds of new scenarios. We might use solar sales to slightly nudge it out of its orbit. We might use rockets. Not the kind you see in the movie, "Armageddon" and things like that.

O'BRIEN: So, we're not calling Bruce Willis? We're not going to call him.

HORKHEIMER: No, no, no. There are much more sophisticated easier ways you can do this. There is even talk of capturing a small asteroid and then putting it into orbit around earth, and then whenever we need it, we would kind of pool ball, cue it into the asteroid and knock it off course. All you have to do is knock something just slightly off course, and it will miss the Earth by thousands and thousands of miles. So, it is not too big a worry right now.

O'BRIEN: Jack Horkheimer, thank you very much. One day we may have to contend with this in our lifetimes. And as always, give us your custom tailored sign out please. HORKHEIMER: Well, keep looking up, Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right. Because you never know what might clonk you.

(LAUGHTER)

Carol.

COSTELLO: I do feel much better now.

Coming up, we're "Minding Your Business", the head of Toys "R" Us tries to rev up business, and cleanliness may be the key. We'll explain.

If backyard fireworks are part of your Fourth of July plans, be careful. Tips to make sure your holiday is a safe one. That's just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Toys "R" Us is cleaning up, literally. The new strategy to fight Target and Wal-Mart. Ellen McGirt is "Minding Your Business".

And you have this secret strategy?

ELLEN MCGIRT, CNN FINANCIAL CORRESPONDENT: I do. I do -- actually Gerald Storch (ph) has it, who is the new CEO. Also the single largest individual investor, so there is something at stake for him, too. He wants to clean up the place.

They've really gotten trounced in the last few years and his new strategy for Toys "R" Us, are cleaner stores and less cluttered aisles. And my favorite, more helpful employees.

COSTELLO: Get out!

MCGIRT: Yes, they want to make it the destination for anybody who needs a little extra help choosing the perfect toy for their over- privileged child.

COSTELLO: Will they have greeters, too?

MCGIRT: They will probably have greeters. It is going to be great. Of course, he's up on everything. He's been reading all kinds of things, like "People" magazine, to keep up with what's hot, which means of course, I have to send him a subscription to "Fortune" now.

(LAUGHTER)

O'BRIEN: Let me mention this. The deal on Toys "R" Us, what makes it appealing for parents is that, you know, you go in there, you know you are going to find what you need. So that cluttered effect is part of that.

MCGIRT: It is.

O'BRIEN: How do you provide a everything for everybody all the time and not make it look cleaner?

MCGIRT: That's the problem. That's what helpful employees are there for. They can direct you to what you need and also suggest things you may not even know.

COSTELLO: That's a simple strategy is just cleaning up the stores and making happy employees and that will make business boom?

MCGIRT: I guess we'll see if it works or not. But speaking of boom -- boom.

O'BRIEN: Let's talk boom.

MCGIRT: Yes. Thank you.

Personal fireworks it is all the rage. Smaller companies who are doing great things for all kinds of things from weddings to funerals to birthday parties.

O'BRIEN: This would be beyond the personal level -- or not?

MCGIRT: Well, small business. Yes. This would be an example of what you will not get for $1,000.

(LAUGHTER)

O'BRIEN: OK. What you won't get, excellent.

COSTELLO: You'll get a few sparklers.

O'BRIEN: But that's the new thing, huh?

MCGIRT: It is the new thing. And actually some small businesses are doing really well with it. It can be a lot of fun.

COSTELLO: So, Happy Fourth. Yes.

O'BRIEN: All right, thanks a lot.

COSTELLO: All of today's top stories after a short break. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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