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McCain Sharpening Aim Against Democrats; Satellite Shootdown: Attempt Less Likely to Come Tonight
Aired February 20, 2008 - 10:59 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Good morning again, everyone. You're with CNN. You're informed.
I'm Tony Harris.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Fredricka Whitfield. Heidi is off today.
Developments keep coming in to the CNN NEWSROOM this February 20th.
Here's what's on the rundown.
Barack Obama wins again. Can Hillary Clinton get back in the game? We ask our guest from Politico.com.
HARRIS: The military gears up to shoot down a falling satellite, but will weather call the whole thing off?
WHITFIELD: And big rigs and cars mix it up in an Indiana whiteout.
Crunch time on I-94 -- in the NEWSROOM.
HARRIS: And making news this hour, keeping up their winning ways, Barack Obama makes it 10 -- count 'em, 10 in a row. And John McCain marches toward the Republican nomination. Next, the road to the White House runs through the critical states of Texas and Ohio.
On the Democratic side, Obama won Tuesday's Wisconsin primary and the Hawaii caucuses. He ran well among white women and blue-collar voters. Obama is rallying supporters in one of the next big battlegrounds, Texas.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Houston, this is our moment. This is our time. And if you are willing to vote for me, if you are willing to stand with me, if you are willing to caucus for me, then I truly believe that we will not just win Texas, we will win this nomination.
The change we seek is still months and miles away. And we need the good people of Texas to help us get there.
(APPLAUSE) We will need you to fight for every delegate it takes to win this nomination. And if we win the nomination, if we are blessed and honored to win the nomination, then we're going to need your help to win the election in November.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: And Hillary Clinton showing no signs of surrender. She spoke at a fundraiser in New York just a short time ago. She tried again to position herself as the candidate with experience and solutions.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D-NY), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Americans have a choice to make in this election, and that choice matters. It's about picking a president who relies not just on words but on work, on hard work, to get America back to work, to get America working again for all of our people. We need to make a choice between speeches and solutions, because, while words matter greatly, the best words in the world aren't enough unless you match them with action.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: On the delegate count now, Obama now leads Clinton 1,301 to 1,239. That's according to CNN estimates. It takes 2,025 to win the nomination.
In the Republican race, John McCain widened his delegate lead over Mike Huckabee with wins in Wisconsin and Washington State.
WHITFIELD: All right. John McCain sharpening his aim against Democrats as he rallies Republican supporters this morning.
Dana Bash is with the McCain campaign in Columbus, Ohio -- Dana.
DANA BASH, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Fredricka.
Well, Senator McCain certainly is sharpening his rhetoric against Democrats, but against one in particular, and that Democrat is Barack Obama. And at a press conference right where I'm standing, just a few minutes ago, Senator McCain decided to really zero in on one issue that he thinks could potentially hurt Barack Obama because -- for a couple of reasons.
First of all, the issue is whether or not Senator Obama is going to take public funding or public financing for the general election if he is the nominee. What the McCain campaign says, and what Senator McCain said just moments ago, is that Senator Obama made a pledge to take public funding, and what that means is there will be a cap on spending, and that what he's saying is that Senator Obama is now going back on that, or at least is not making that firm commitment if he is the nominee. Senator McCain says he would make that commitment.
Listen, first of all, to what Senator McCain said about Mr. Obama. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: A year ago, I signed a piece of paper and committed that if I were the nominee of my party, that I would take public financing for the general election campaign. At that time, Senator Obama made that same commitment.
Now, I notice in a column in "USA Today" today he is talking about other outside money, about working out -- look, that's Washington doublespeak. I committed to public financing. He committed to public financing. It is not any more complicated than that. I hope he will keep his commitment to the American people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: Now, what Senator McCain is talking about is an op-ed that Barack Obama wrote in "USA Today" this morning where he is suggesting maybe an agreement, kind of a gentleman's agreement, between the two nominees going into the fall, that there would be kind of a cap on spending for the general election. But what's really going on here, Fredricka, is a couple of things.
Number one, is kind of a symbolic message that the McCain campaign and the senator himself is trying the put out there about Barack Obama. He's trying to go after him on the issue of character and on truthfulness by saying, wait a minute, you signed a pledge, now you're not necessarily sticking to that pledge. So, he's trying to get at one of the fundamental benefits or good qualities that the Barack Obama campaign thinks that their candidate has.
But the second is a lot more practical, Fredricka. And that is that Barack Obama has been raising millions and millions of dollars -- you know, breaking all kinds of records and raising money.
Senator McCain and the Republicans in general have had a fundraising deficit this year. There's no question about that.
And so, the practical reality of this fight that Senator McCain is picking with Barack Obama is that he wants to be able to compete with the Democrats and whomever it is, whether it's Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, in the fall. McCain is doing right now -- today what he's doing is he's having a couple of fundraisers.
They understand that it is going to be very tough to raise money, so that's another reason why they are really going after Barack Obama on this fundraising and spending for the general election right now -- Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: All right. Very interesting. Dana Bash, thank you.
HARRIS: All right. Crucial contest ahead in the race for the White House. The next big showdown, the March 4th primaries in delegate-rich Ohio, Texas, as well as Vermont and Rhode Island. For the Democrats, there are 370 delegates at stake, 256 Republican delegates are up for grabs. And stay with CNN as we have much more on the candidates, a look ahead to the March 4th contest. Join us for CNN "Ballot Bowl" today at noon Eastern.
Remember, CNN equals politics.
WHITFIELD: All right. Happening right now in northern Indiana, that is some pileup right there on Interstate 94. Police say at least 12 tractor-trailers and 10 cars were involved in that chain-reaction crash.
No serious injuries have been reported. That's good.
Westbound lanes are closed right now between Michigan City and LaPorte, Indiana. The roads were snowy and pretty slippery after an overnight storm.
(WEATHER REPORT)
WHITFIELD: All right. Well, how about this? A picture-perfect landing in Florida this morning.
Look at that. You saw it live here just a couple hours ago. The space shuttle Atlantis landing safely after 13 days in space, a more than five million mile journey. The next shuttle mission is scheduled for March 11th, and that will be space shuttle Endeavor.
An interesting note here. The shuttle landed today on the 46th anniversary of John Glenn's launch. That mission put the first American into space.
HARRIS: The Pentagon aiming into space, trying to hit a tumbling spy satellite. But how likely is a direct hit? We will take a closer look next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HARRIS: A problem with the plan. The Pentagon may now have to delay tonight's planned shootdown of a wayward spy satellite.
CNN's Kathleen Koch is at the Pentagon for us this morning.
Kathleen, what's the problem?
KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the problem, Tony, apparently, is rough seas in the Pacific Ocean, west of Hawaii. Now, that's where the USS Eerie is positioned, and the plan had been for it to send a heat-seeking missile up to shoot this faltering spy satellite. And the problem with the satellite is that it's 5,000 pounds, about the size of a school bus. But on board it has 1,000 pounds of toxic Hydrazine propellant, basically rocket fuel.
And the military is worried if that fell on land, that it could disperse potentially toxic, deadly fumes over an area the size of two football fields. So they want to shoot it down, but the conditions have to be perfect. And they say they have a window every day for about the next nine days, a window of a matter of seconds when it will be daylight, when the satellite will be in the right position, when the weather will be perfect. And when the satellite will also -- when the timing will be right such that, over the next four and a half hours, when the small bits of debris fall to Earth, that they'll fall over -- into water, harmlessly, and not onto land.
It's going to be very tricky. Again, you have the rocket heading up at 22,000 miles an hour to hit this satellite, and trying not to just hit the satellite itself, but the three-to-four-foot-long fuel tank. So, it's going to be very dicey, but the military thinks they have a good shot at it -- eventually.
HARRIS: Wow. That's something. All right. We're going to get some expert analysis on this in just a moment.
Kathleen Koch for us at the Pentagon.
Kathleen, thank you.
KOCH: You bet.
WHITFIELD: OK. So you heard it, the Pentagon is trying to make sure everything is perfect before trying to knock out that satellite.
Alex Fraser is a former U.S. Navy captain. His last command was aboard the USS Cape St. George. That's a guided missile cruiser just like the one being used possibly, whether it's tonight or one of these evenings, where the shootdown attempt will take place. Well, now he's a member of the Turner Broadcasting team.
Good to see you.
CAPT. ALEX FRASER, U.S. NAVY (RET.): Hi, Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: OK. I love the way you kind of described this earlier. This is, you know, tantamount to, like, the first man on the moon. I mean, this is a big deal. It's unprecedented, so it really does have to be done right the first shot.
Yes?
FRASER: It's something that's never been done before. You know, man on the moon, man in space. And to engage a satellite that's falling out. It's 150 miles up, and a closing rate of 22,000 miles an hour. That's a hard thing to do.
And if it works, then what a great success. If it doesn't work, it's not because the system failed. It's because we tried to sort of go beyond the cutting edge.
WHITFIELD: Yes. And it really does need to hit the bull's eye, so to speak, of this satellite. Not a portion, not graze it to cause some damage, but it's got to obliterate it, right, in order to be considered a successful mission?
FRASER: It's got to be able to hit it. And successful launches so far against low altitude, medium altitude ICBMs have scored direct hits.
And it's like a bullet. It's got to hit the -- hit the object. And it has an infrared homer, a heat-seeking homer that in the final phase of the terminal guidance as it's coming in, it's got to be able to detect the heat of the object. ICBM is pretty good, but not so much for a cold satellite.
WHITFIELD: How do you suppose this even came about? I mean, what do you surmise, based on your experience on cruisers, knowing the capabilities of these missiles, that this is so unprecedented, that this was kind of a back-pocket approach of, you know, if we have a failed satellite up there, we know we can count on a Navy missile?
FRASER: Well, why not? I mean, here's a chance that you don't normally have -- its ability to use the most modern weapons systems like we're showing now with the Aegis cruiser and the SM-3 missile going up. It's an opportunity to take a 22,000-mile-an-hour closing rate.
Have I said 22,000 enough?
WHITFIELD: It's remarkable.
FRASER: A phenomenal closing rate. And do something that hasn't been done before. And it's something that has a mission to it. It might be able to puncture that tank, as you're referring to, and spread the gas so it's not a problem.
WHITFIELD: OK. So, what if, we all wanted to, you know, have mission accomplished perfect here, but what if it misses the satellite completely? Where does the missile go? What happens?
Does it just break up as it hits a certain, you know, type of atmosphere? Or what could potentially happen? Do we know?
FRASER: I think we've been showing...
WHITFIELD: I mean, what goes up comes down.
FRASER: ... an area where it could come down, where they've been able to tell airplanes and ships not to go. And so if the missile misses, then it sort of self-explodes.
If that doesn't work, then you can do it from the ship. And if that doesn't work, it will still come down and hit the water someplace. And that's why there's that large area to tell people to stay out of. If it hits, then the debris will burn up in the atmosphere.
WHITFIELD: How exciting is it for you personally, knowing the capability of the Navy?
FRASER: Oh, having been on a ship and being able to stay off Norfolk and watch airplanes from Maine to Florida, to be able to go after a target that's, you know, 150 miles away -- but they'll be able to detect it early. The national reconnaissance organization can tell them exactly where that satellite's going to be...
WHITFIELD: Yes.
FRASER: ... exactly where it comes across the horizon. The Aegis system can detect it. It can track it.
It tracks it several times a second. The radars you see outside the window of an airplane, it's like five seconds. You can check it every five seconds on a radar. This one's doing it many times a seconds, and that's the accuracy you need.
WHITFIELD: So the men and women on the Aegis are feeling like what, do you think, now? Like, they're so pumped up they really can't wait for this to happen, or, oh, gosh, no?
FRASER: They're really pumped up, but they've pumped up because they practice this all the time. Not this fast and not this high, but they've done it before. The Lake Erie and the Decatur that's with them...
WHITFIELD: Yes.
FRASER: ... they have the opportunity to do something they've practiced and they trained to. So this is pretty cool.
WHITFIELD: All right.
Alec Fraser, thanks so much. It is cool.
FRASER: My pleasure.
WHITFIELD: All right -- Tony.
HARRIS: Wow. All right.
Stunned by a string of defeats, can Hillary Clinton come back? We pose that question to a political insider next in the NEWSROOM.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(NEWSBREAK)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WHITFIELD: Welcome back to the CNN NEWSROOM.
I'm Fredricka Whitfield, in for Heidi Collins today.
HARRIS: Hey, Fred.
WHITFIELD: Hello. Good to see you.
HARRIS: Hi, everybody. Tony Harris.
Welcome back. Making news this morning, John McCain sets his sights on the Democrats, a sharp jab aimed at Barack Obama. McCain blasted what he calls an eloquent but empty call for change. And he questioned Obama's national security credentials.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MCCAIN: We would risk the confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate who once suggested bombing our ally, Pakistan, and suggested sitting down without preconditions or clear purpose with enemies who support terrorists and are intent on destabilizing the world by acquiring nuclear weapons.
I think you know the answer to that question.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: McCain has a commanding lead in the Republican race, but Mike Huckabee refuses to quit. On CNN this morning, he explained why he's staying in the race.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MIKE HUCKABEE (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Not staying in the race hurts the GOP. It makes it like that we're so weak, that we can't even have a debate and a discussion.
If this party is so completely incapable of discussing the issues that matter deeply to Republicans, then I'm not its problem. Its problem is it doesn't have a message that it can run on. And it wants to just sort of circle the wagons and act like that all is well.
Well, it isn't all well. And anyone who thinks it is kidding themselves and is going to get clobbered in November.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: Wow. Huckabee lost Tuesday's contest in Wisconsin and Washington State to McCain.
WHITFIELD: All right. Hillary Clinton counting on Ohio and Texas to stop Barack Obama's momentum. He's won 10 straight. So, what does she have to do to turn it all around?
Jim VandeHei is executive director of Politico. He's joining us now from Arlington, Virginia.
Good to see you, Jim.
JIM VANDEHEI, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, POLITICO: Great to be here.
WHITFIELD: OK. So, if you're Hillary Clinton or Mike Huckabee, you are really counting on Ohio and Texas. But with the streak of winning for McCain and Obama, how do you combat that kind of momentum?
VANDEHEI: I mean, I think Huckabee's a nonfactor. McCain has that nomination, for all practical purposes.
The more interesting one is obviously this Democratic race. And I think Hillary Clinton's in one heck of a hole, and it's really hard to see how she digs herself out of it -- the fact that she's lost 10 in a row, will go 30 days without a victory, and count on winning in Ohio and Texas, when I don't think it's a slam-dunk that she can win in either of those states.
Both of them might be tough demographically for Obama, but that's not even clear anymore. If you look at the Wisconsin results, which ratified the Virginia results, he's now doing well with almost every single demographic group. No longer is she dominating women, no longer is she dominating those workers who make less than $50,000 a year. He's doing very well across the board. Apply that formula to Ohio, which is very similar, demographically speaking, to Wisconsin, and apply it to Texas, and Obama could easily win both of those states. If he wins either of those states, it's over. It's impossible to figure out a route to the nomination for Hillary Clinton without winning both of those, and winning them decisively.
WHITFIELD: And you know Wisconsin. That's your home state.
VANDEHEI: Right.
WHITFIELD: And there have been lots of parallels made between Ohio and Wisconsin. You talked about, you know, all of the demographics, but one of those, one element of that demographic, is, you know, the blue-collar worker. Despite the fact she won the support of union workers it doesn't seem to perhaps make a -- or it didn't make much of a difference for Wisconsin. You see the same playing out for Ohio?
VANDEHEI: Right. It will. I mean, one of the most amazing things about last night's results were not that Obama did very well in the Milwaukee area or in campus towns like Madison; it's that he did tremendously well up in the Fox Valley, where I grew up, in Oshkosh and north of there, which is predominantly blue collar, predominantly white. He did very well. He beat her handily in most of those cities and most of those counties. And it just shows that is appeal seems to be broadening and spreading across all those demographic groups, very similar to Ohio. Ohio, obviously, is different than Wisconsin, but, again, a lot of whites and blue collar.
WHITFIELD: But Texas is a whole other ball of wax. Texas is Texas in and of its own. And she and her campus said that she feels very confident about Texas, particular pi because of the Latino vote. You can win one and not the other, talking about Texas and Ohio. Might that help keep her in the competition if she were to clinch a Texas, but perhaps not Ohio?
VANDEHEI: It might keep her in the race, but then it's almost impossible to figure out how she catches up in pledge delegates. And I think if she loses either of those contests, there's going to be an enormous pressure from the party for her to concede for the good of the party, because you will have a situation where Barack Obama will have won significantly more states, done better in the popular vote, done better in pledge delegates and basically looked like he's on a path to the nomination.
In Texas, again, I caution, it's not a slam dunk for Hillary Clinton. Yes, there's a big Hispanic Latino population, but it's not the same Hispanic Latino population you find in other states. There's been a lot of polling in the last couple weeks to suggest Barack Obama's not doing as poorly with that demographic as he was doing before.
And, remember, he has piles and piles of money. He can spend it in very targeted ways in those areas where he might be weaker than he would be in other areas. If he does that, he can probably overcompensate for some of his political deficiencies.
So the latest polling shows it's pretty close, with Hillary Clinton having a short lead. But let's wait a week until there's been a ton of advertising and a ton of focus on those states and see where those things stands. If those trend lines start to move in Obama's favor, which has happened almost every time he spends money and time in state, that's terrible news for Clinton.
WHITFIELD: Well, this looks like it's really kind of underscoring the heightening jockeying of the superdelegate support as well.
VANDEHEI: Absolutely. But, again, I think the superdelegate debate has been kind of a distraction. We're all talking about it. We're all fascinated by it. I don't think it's going to come down to superdelegates. The party doesn't want it to come down to delegates. They want to hear what the voice of the party wants, and then they want to ratify that. Hillary Clinton can say I'm going to peel off superdelegates and I might go after pledge delegates. The party won't allow it unless she has a plausible case to make based on the empirical data, where she could say, look, I'm winning the popular vote, or I'm winning more states or I'm winning the pledge delegates. She's not winning any of those. She has to win at least one of those to make that plausible argument. Otherwise the party will not stand for it.
WHITFIELD: Jim VandeHei, politico.com, thanks so much.
VANDEHEI: Enjoy the day.
WHITFIELD: You, too -- Tony.
HARRIS: The U.S. military today placing tight restrictions on its personnel in Japan. The move comes after widespread anger linked to a rape case.
CNN's Kyung Lah reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yankee go home!
CROWD: Yankee go home! KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): An Anti-American chant from Tokyo, to Okinawa. A rare public show of anger across Japan over the alleged rape of a young girl by a U.S. Marine. Female organizers call this a national day of protest, saying they're fed up, both with crimes committed by the U.S. military and their very presence in Okinawa.
HISAKO MOTOYAMA, ASIA-JAPAN WOMEN'S RESOURCE CTR.: That's enough. So, we -- our protest is against U.S. military forces, as well as Japanese government.
LAH: The protests stem from the arrest of this U.S. Marine, identified by the Okinawa police as 38-year-old Staff Sergeant Tyrone Hadnott. Authorities accuse Hadnott of raping a 14-year-old girl in his car. Police say the Marine denied raping the girl, but admitted forcing her to kiss him. Prosecutors have not yet charged Hadnott. But his arrest, and the arrest of two other Marines accused of drunken driving and trespassing, led Japan's prime minister to explain what is the matter with the U.S. military. Prime Minister Fukuda also promised to discuss the matter with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when she visits Japan next week.
(on camera): This is deja vu for many of these protesters, who stood in the streets of Tokyo and Okinawa more than 12 years ago expressing the very same message. In 1995, Okinawa residents marched through the streets and jammed the front gates of U.S. bases on the island, after three American servicemen were arrested for gang-raping a 12-year-old girl. The three were convicted and sentenced to prison. National calls rang out for the U.S. to draw down the 50,000 troops stationed in Japan, an enduring presence since World War II and resented by many residents of Okinawa, who want the land back in Japanese hands.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're saddened by this incident.
LAH: This time, there have been early expressions of regret by the U.S. military and the embassy. The U.S. military also announced this Friday will be a day of reflection emphasizing core military values. But protesters say until the behavior of U.S. servicemen changes, their calls for military removal from Japanese soil will go on.
Kyung Lah, CNN, Tokyo.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WHITFIELD: Still overseas, parts of western Indonesia on edge after a powerful earthquake today. At least three people are dead and more than two dozen hurt. The magnitude 7.5 quake was centered on the island of Simeulue. That's about 195 miles south-southeast of Banda Aceh, where an earthquake-driven earthquake killed tens of thousands of folks in 2004. You remember that. A local tsunami watch issued after today's quake, well, it's been canceled. Still, disaster workers say they're unable to get into the hardest-hit areas.
HARRIS: Ahead, echoes of a lost childhood. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You spend your whole life trying to stop this big hole that's right here, where you feel you were completely abandoned by your society, your country, your parents.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: A journey out of Castro's Cuba, when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HARRIS: Hillary Clinton counting on the Latino vote in Texas to help rescue her campaign. But can she bank on it?
Here's CNN's Soledad O'Brien.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Si se puede is right, yes, we can.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They are among Hillary Clinton's staunchest supporters, lifting her up state after state. The California exit poll said it all. Clinton won 67 percent of Latino votes, Barack Obama, 32 percent. But behind the groundswell, a troubling question: are Latinos rallying for this white woman or against this black man just because he's black?
Luis Jimenez is the Latino Howard Stern, one of the top Spanish language radio hosts in the country.
LUIS JIMENEZ, RADIO SHOW HOST: Right now, if we have a white woman and an African-American person, I think the natural instinct of the Latino would be to go for the white woman.
O'BRIEN: Jimenez argues blacks and Latinos are a competing minority, jockeying for better jobs, higher wages, more political power. The prospect, he says of a President Obama makes many Latinos anxious.
JIMENEZ: He's going to do more for the African-American community, and he may forget about us. I'm not saying that's the truth, but that's the way a lot of us think.
O'BRIEN: Henrik Rehbinder runs the editorial page of "La Opinion," the largest Spanish language newspaper in the country. He acknowledges that while the Latino community is hardly monolithic, a gulf does exist between it and African-Americans.
HENRIK REHBINDER, LA OPINION: Basically, they don't know each other. When we talk a competition, it's more a lack of understanding of each other.
O'BRIEN: "La Opinion" endorsed Obama just before the California primary, but Rehbinder strongly denies racism fuels Clinton's big win. The Clintons have deep roots in the community, he says, and Obama made little effort to reach out.
REHBINDER: The candidate was not really available for Latino media. So, the voters, they did not really have the opportunity to hear the candidate.
O'BRIEN: The endorsement from Rehbinder and "La Opinion" was a big opening to connect with Latinos, and the crew here says Obama blew it.
FAY, RADIO PERSONALITY: To be backed up by someone so great, someone that people listen to, and then kind of like let us slip through your fingers, and not do much of what you have, it's kind of like having Michael Jordan teach you how to play basketball and just forgetting everything.
CROWD: Si se puede!
O'BRIEN: Obama now has a team handling Latino media and an ad in Spanish running on Texas Radio. Too little, too late?
JIMENEZ: He may be the best guy in the world, but we just met. It's not racism. It's who we know and who we trust more.
O'BRIEN: Still, the trust gap might be shrinking. Exit polls show Obama gaining on Clinton among Latinos. He won them outright in Virginia. Now, it's on to Texas.
Soledad O'Brien, CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HARRIS: All right, CNN tomorrow night, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama go head-to-head on CNN live from Austin, Texas. Campbell Brown moderates, our live coverage starting at 8:00 p.m. Eastern on CNN, your home for politics.
And stay with CNN. We have much more on the candidates. As we look ahead to the March 4th contest, join us for the CNN "BALLOT BOWL" today noon Eastern. Remember, CNN equals politics.
WHITFIELD: All right, the surge in rising oil prices isn't the only concern on Wall Street these days. Investors are also worried about a deepening credit crunch.
Susan Liscovicz is at the New York Stock Exchange. Boy, I'm having a hard time talking today, Susan. It's my Monday.
(BUSINESS HEADLINES)
WHITFIELD: All right, well, it's still early in the week.
HARRIS: Yes.
WHITFIELD: That's how we're going to look at it.
SUSAN LISOVICZ, CNN FINANCIAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. WHITFIELD: Things could get better.
LISOVICZ: And last week was a good week ...
WHITFIELD: Yes.
LISOVICZ: ...it really was for the three averages.
WHITFIELD: Good, half glass full.
HARRIS: Yes.
WHITFIELD: All right, thanks, Susan.
LISOVICZ: You're welcome.
HARRIS: You know, his parents sent him away hoping to save him. Decades later, the journey still haunts the Cuban man.
CNN'S Jason Carroll has the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hello, how are you doing?
JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Eduardo Machado is a professor of dramatic writing at New York University ...
EDUARDO MACHADO, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY: We need to get a bigger clue from Ellen.
CARROLL: ...a successful New York playwright ...
E. MACHADO: You know, as an exercise, it's fantastic.
CARROLL: ...with over 40 plays to his name.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you know the real meaning of not having a place in the world ...
CARROLL: Most of his plays have a common theme, that of the country he was forced to leave as a child 47 years ago.
E. MACHADO: When I first started writing, I started writing because I wanted to figure out what had happened.
CARROLL: What had happened was a revolution. Eduardo was born the same year Fidel Castro led the 1953 uprising against the Batista Regime in Cuba, and the fighting continued until Castro took power six years later.
E. MACHADO: I remember my childhood as being very tense. There were bombings in the streets, people trying to overthrow Batista.
CARROLL: Castro was seizing private bank accounts and property, and rumors spread that the children of the upper classes would be sent to Moscow for Marxist training.
GILDA MACHADO, EDUARDO MACHADO'S MOTHER (through translator): People were saying that they were going to take away the right of patria potestad (ph), the parents' legal authority and that the government was going to take the children.
E. MACHADO: My mother and my father were hysterical. Everything they owned had been taken away from them.
CARROLL: In the mayhem and out of the fear of losing their children to the communist regime, Eduardo's parents put him and his brother on a plane to the United States to live with their aunt and uncle.
G. MACHADO (through translator): It was very difficult to say good-bye to them. In thinking about what could happen, we decided it would be better if they went.
E. MACHADO: I was eight-years-old, and my brother was five. And my parents stayed in Cuba. And we didn't see them for a year. And we were very lucky when they got here. Some people never saw their parents again.
CARROLL: Eduardo has been trying to come to terms with that separation most of his life.
E. MACHADO: You never get over it. You spend your whole life trying to stop this big hole that's right here where you feel you were completely abandoned by your society, your country, your parents.
CARROLL: The journey to try to fill that gap took him back to Cuba, to the house he grew up in.
E. MACHADO: The way things are now, the Cuban government would never let me go back to Cuba, and if I went back to Cuba, I couldn't come back to New York.
CARROLL: He lives as a Cuban exile in New York, but he feels both Cuban and American. But it's never been able to bring himself to apply to become a U.S. citizen.
E. MACHADO: It's an integral part of my life. I feel like I did not make the choice to come here, and the one thing I can hold on to is this very horrible passport.
CARROLL: A passport he hopes after 49 years of isolation under Castro's rule represents a free country one day.
Jason Carroll, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WHITFIELD: Here's something to think about and worry about: a falling satellite?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm not having nightmares. I think it'll be all OK. I'm more concerned about the change in meats.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WHITFIELD: All right, the bus-sized satellite and the Pentagon's plans to shoot it down.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HARRIS: You know, it wasn't your typical trip. The plane approached the airport, Fred, and it kept going.
WHITFIELD: And going and going.
HARRIS: Just kept going. And the question: did the pilots fall asleep or something?
Here's Gary Sprinkle with KITV in Hawaii.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GARY SPRINKLE, KITV REPORTER (voice-over): Go flight 1002 took off from Honolulu at 9:20 a.m. last Wednesday. It was scheduled to land in Hilo on the big island at 10:05 a.m., but it didn't. The plane reportedly flew beyond Hilo for several miles and was apparently out of contact with air-traffic controllers for more than 20 minutes.
Did the pilots put the plane on autopilot and fall asleep?
VOICE OF IAN GREGOR, FAA SPOKESMAN: I can confirm that the FAA is investigating whether the pilots and co-pilot of a February 13th Go Airlines flight fell asleep while the aircraft was in the air between Honolulu and Hilo.
SPRINKLE: Go airlines will only say they "are aware of the incident and an internal investigation is underway."
How can a commercial aircraft flying at 21,000 feet completely miss its mark and continue flying out to sea? A pilot told KITV one possibility is the crew could have had a radio problem and were unable to receive their assignment by air-traffic controllers and stayed on the course they were assigned to until communications were restored.
The final straw may well be in the cockpit voice recorder, which will indicate if the pilots were sleeping when they should have been talking.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WHITFIELD: All right, And also in the Hawaiian air space, this issue. The Pentagon may have to delay its plan to take aim at that falling satellite tonight. In the meantime, should we be worried?
CNN's Richard Roth asks around.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RICHARD ROTH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Today's reason not to wake up in the morning is the falling U.S. satellite.
GEN. JAMES CARTWRIGHT, VICE CHMN., JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: We're saying in the modeling somewhere around 2,800 pounds would survive re- entry.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's pretty crazy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Chicken Little, what is it? What's going on?
CHICKEN LITTLE: The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROTH: Make that the spy is falling, an intelligence-gathering satellite that malfunctioned and is tumbling out of control. The Pentagon is aiming to shoot it down with a missile because it's loaded with hazardous toxic gases.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, the Pentagon knows all about toxic gases. I don't know. I mean, I guess if it's going to hit the earth, get rid of it. I mean, does it have reruns of "The Lucy Show" on it? I mean, what does it have?
ROTH: This is no time to be "loosy goosy."
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You never know what the future holds until it hits.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The meteor shower.
ROTH: New York City was hit in the movie "Armageddon" and a measuring stick in "Deep Impact."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MORGAN FREEMAN, ACTOR, "DEEP IMPACT": The larger comet is the size of New York City, 500 billion tons.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROTH: Naturally, New Yorkers and Americans are terrified of the falling satellite.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Not afraid of it at all. Doesn't faze me in the least.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The chances of the satellite hitting one of us is probably in the neighborhood of one in six trillion.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I trust my government. I trust my people. I trust my military. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm not having nightmares. I think it'll be all OK. I'm more concerned about the change in meat that just came out this morning, but ...
ROTH: But this phobia pro warns inner demons can be ignited by the satellite story. Naturally, we took our expert up to the roof to explain.
SEYMOUR SEGNIT, CTRN: PHOBIA CLINIC: A lot of the time we think, oh, stuff falling out of the sky, it just doesn't happen. But this thing's coming, right, the president is going to try and shoot it down, so we know it's real and that gives a phobic, someone who's phobic in this area a real opportunity to get focused.
ROTH: By the way, how many times have you heard this satellite is as big as a school bus?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's scary. Is it really as big as a school bus?
ROTH: Not when amateur astronmer Richard Rosenberg (ph) tracks the satellite rays by.
RICHARD ROSENBERG, AMATEUR ASTRONOMER: We could actually see it, it actually -- magnitude 1.6, which is quite bright. It's like a pretty bright star.
ROTH: And should the worst happen ...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Probably have a good bottle of champagne and call my friends and we'll just say, well, this is the way we're going, whoever thought it.
ROTH: Richard Roth, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WHITFIELD: And with that, the CNN NEWSROOM continues one hour from now.
HARRIS: "BALLOT BOWL" is next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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