Return to Transcripts main page

Ballot Bowl 2008

Campaign Activities Leading Up to the Pennsylvania Primaries

Aired April 05, 2008 - 14:00   ET

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

JIM ACOSTA, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to BALLOT BOWL '08. It's another round of BALLOT BOWL here on CNN. I'm Jim Acosta in Philadelphia. And of course this is BALLOT BOWL where you always here the candidates in their own words. Sometimes the events are live, sometimes they are taped.
And we are monitoring a number of events today. John McCain is in Arizona wrapping up his service to America tour, a tour that was billed by his campaign as a reintroduction of the candidate, across the country. Hillary Clinton is in Oregon today, but she is ending the day in Montana, where she and Barack Obama are headlining a state Democratic Party dinner this evening.

And there's lots coming up today. We should note in case you didn't know, that the Republicans in the Virgin Islands, yes the Virgin Islands, they are voting today and that contest there, that is the only contest happening in the not so distant future, of course, April 22nd is looming large on the calendars of both the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as the Pennsylvania primary weighing heavily on the minds here in the keystone state. And without much more to say on that, I should send it over to my colleague, Suzanne Malveaux, who is joining me today for BALLOT BOWL. She is in Washington looking at the candidates on the Democratic side, and how that race is shaping up. It's been an interesting week hasn't it Suzanne.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Jim, why aren't we in the Virgin Islands? That's all I have to ask. We could have anchored from the Virgin Islands for BALLOT BOWL, you know.

ACOSTA: Yeah, but you were in Hawaii not too long ago. Isn't that right Suzanne?

MALVEAUX: I guess you can't have it all, you know, I guess not.

ACOSTA: I'm not sure you can talk.

MALVEAUX: Well let's take a look at Hillary Clinton, it's an unapologetic Senator Hillary Clinton out on the campaign trail today, now that she and her husband have released their tax returns, here's the quick version of it. The former first couple has made nearly $109 million since leaving the White House. They are paying close to $33 million in taxes, and giving more than $10 million in charity, much of that money coming from the former president's speeches. Senator Clinton says that she has nothing against rich people, and she will also have nothing against those in Oregon, who vote for her in the state's May 20th primaries. Let's hear what she has to say regarding yesterday's commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination 40 years ago, what it means today here on the stump on Friday out of Grand Forks.

(BEGINI VIDEOTAPE)

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You know, sometimes, when the phone rings at 3:00 a.m. in the White House, it's an economic crisis. It seems like Senator McCain would just let that phone ring and ring and ring. Well, we need a president who will not only pick up the phone, but immediately move into action to protect the incomes and the homes and the wealth of the hard-working middle class of this country. So how will we win? Well, we'll win by running a 50-state campaign. That's what I did when I ran in New York. People said, well, you can't run in upstate New York, that's Republican country. That's small town rural New York. I said well I'm running to be the senator for the entire state, not just for some of it. So I intend to run a national campaign, going and talking and listening to people and giving them a chance to vote for a new and better course. I know what it's like to stumble. I know what it means to get knocked down, but I've never stayed down. I never will, and neither will America, if we get ready to win this election in November. Can you imagine if the fighting Sioux had played the gophers to a tie on Sunday and then given up? Well they kept fighting and that's why they're going to the frozen four in Denver next week. And I'm still fighting and if you will stand with me tomorrow, we will fight on to victory.

Now some people seem to think well, we don't really want a fighter again. We don't need a fighter in the White House. Those days are over. We need to get beyond all that fighting. Well, that would certainly be good news for the oil companies and the drug companies and the insurance companies, and certainly for my constituents on Wall Street. They're perfectly happy to have the federal government bail out Bear Stearns to the tune of $30 billion and turn their backs on the millions of homeowners on the brink of foreclosure. We need a fighter back in the White House who sets different priorities, who has different values. Because we're not going to take our country back and chart a new course into the future merely by hoping for it or wishing for it. It takes hard work, and yes, it takes someone willing to roll up her sleeves and get the job done for America.

We need to keep fighting, because this country is worth fighting for. You know, I started out my career many years ago as a young lawyer for the children's defense fund, fighting for abused and neglected children, children with disabilities, kids who drew the short straw in life, and I'm still fighting for them. As first lady, I went to bat for gulf war veterans who were suffering from undiagnosed illnesses, for families of our military who didn't have the services on the bases or the other kinds of help they needed to stand by and be part of our national defense, and I'm still standing with them. I believe, with all my heart, that we can, as Democrats, stand up to whatever the Republicans send our way. Now, you wish that they would just apologize for the last eight years, and say, we've made such a mess of it, we're just going to let the Democrats have it again. I don't think that will happen. Their attack machine will be on the ready, and one thing I want you to know, that when the Republicans come after our nominee with everything they've got, I've been through it. They've been after me for 15 years, and I'm still standing once again.

(END OF VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX: Senator Clinton has told the story several times on the campaign trail of an uninsured pregnant woman who lost her baby and then died after an Ohio hospital denied care, but the "New York Times" is now raising some questions about the story. It reports the hospital is denying that it actually happened that way, an article in the paper today says, according to hospital administrators, the woman was under the care of a doctor's practice affiliated with the hospital. The hospital admits that she did die but says she was never refused treatment, and further, that the woman was, in fact, insured. It quotes the CEO of Oblis Health System as saying quote, "We implored the Clinton campaign to immediately desist from repeating this story." In her own words now here's how Senator Clinton tells the story.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I was campaigning in Ohio a few weeks ago and I was in southern Ohio, down on the Ohio River, it's part of Appalachia, it was a poor part of the state. I was meeting with a group of people in a mobile home, and a deputy sheriff told me about a young woman from that town who had worked at the local pizza parlor. She worked for minimum wage. She sure didn't have health insurance. She got pregnant. She started having trouble. She went to the nearest hospital, there wasn't one in her county, and the hospital, whom I do not blame, said, we can't take any more charity care, particularly from out of the county. Said, "Before we examine you we've got to have $100." Well you might as well have asked this young woman for $1 million. She went back home. She came back a little while later, still having trouble, they told her the same thing. Next time she went to that hospital was in an ambulance. She came in through the emergency room. The doctors and the nurses tried very hard, but they weren't able to save her baby, and she was so bad off, that they had to have her air-lifted to the nearest big city, Columbus, and taken to the medical center. And for 15 days in the intensive care unit, doctors and nurses worked heroically, but she died. As I was listening to this story being told, I was just aching inside. It is so wrong in this, such a good, great and rich country, that a young woman and her baby would die, because she didn't have health insurance or $100 to get examined.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: In response, a Clinton spokeswoman says candidates frequently re-tell stories relayed to them and they vet them when possible. She says quote, "In this case we did try but were not able to fully vet it. If the hospital claims it did not happen that way, we respect that." I want to go to Bill Schneider out of Los Angeles. Bill, obviously there's this back and forth between the Clinton campaign and the Obama campaign about really who is most truthful, who is most accurate in the statements that they make to the American people, to the voters, what they say behind closed doors when it comes to their policy, and again, it goes to Senator Clinton, whether or not she overstates, oversells or perhaps even exaggerates some of the things that she has presented to voters. That is something the Obama campaign has accused her of. What do you think of this latest example here? Do you think it's going to pose a potential problem for her?

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, it could be a problem, because it comes on the heels of the story that she told leaving a plane in Bosnia under sniper fire, where other witnesses argued that they were there, that it's not exactly what happened. There was some danger but there was no sniper-fire. She told that story and this story in rather great detail, which seemed to testify to the veracity of those stories. Notice the details she used here although she did acknowledge that this story about the woman who died, who lost her child, was relayed to her by a deputy sheriff, apparently it was but the deputy sheriff heard it from relatives of the unfortunate woman, and so it was really a third-hand story she was telling but there's so much detail here that, that seems to suggest that it's been checked out, that it was true. Apparently it isn't true. The hospital says the woman was insured, that she did receive care. It is of course, a tragic story, but the level of detail with which she told both those stories I think leads some people to argue her critics will argue she embellishes and she exaggerates.

MALVEAUX: And Bill, looking at the tax returns, Senator Clinton's tax returns along with her husband, obviously they've made a lot of money, more than $100 million over a six-year period. I know that Senator Clinton, she really has been able to communicate, really get through to working class voters her message resonates with them. Do you think there's going to be a second look at her, if people say well, maybe she doesn't really relate, she doesn't get our issues here, because clearly she's in a totally different stratosphere when it comes to income.

SCHNEIDER: That's reasonably yes, and of course she did have a successful career as an attorney. She and her husband were never known as being fabulously wealthy. He appears to have done very well after leaving the White House. His last year as president, their tax returns showed about $327,000 in income, suddenly $16 million the year after. An ex president, a former president can do extremely well. We are in an unusual situation because we have a presidential candidate married to a former president. What it means is that if she does get elected president, a lot of those business relationships, those patrons that have done him a lot of favors, hired him to give speeches, made him an investment partner, contributed to his wife's campaign, contributed to his library and some other causes, some of those relationships are going to have to be discontinued because it could create some conflicts of interest that are really unique to this situation of being married to a former president.

MALVEAUX: All right, Bill, thank you so much.

It was a tour, it was a time line, John McCain wraps up his biography tour in his home state of Arizona. We'll hear from him, and Senator Barack Obama after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) ACOSTA: Welcome back to BALLOT BOWL '08. I'm Jim Acosta in Philadelphia. We want to switch gears now to Barack Obama, the senator from Illinois in Montana today. He was in Missoula, Montana earlier this morning. He spoke to a crowd, an audience out there and why Montana. Well they have a contest coming up, it's actually the last contest, sharing that day with South Dakota, on June the 3rd. So both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have circled that date on their calendars because this race could come down, yes to Montana and South Dakota and both of the candidates will be attending a dinner tonight in Butte, Montana, the Mansfield Metcalf Dinner, that's what it's called there in Butte, Montana. You can buy tickets to that event for $40. Who says these events aren't accessible to the general public. $40 will get you a seat at that event in Butte, Montana. But we now want to go to Barack Obama, talking to a crowd in Missoula, Montana and it's interesting to note here, he points, he takes aim at John McCain in this sound, as opposed to Hillary Clinton. Both of the Democratic candidates doing that this past week, aiming at John McCain, than at each other. Here's Barack Obama.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SEN. BARACK OBAMA, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: People don't feel like anybody's listening to them. They don't feel like George Bush is spending time worrying about their lives. They don't feel like congress is fighting for them. They have a sense that the insiders, the lobbyists, the fat cats, that they are the ones who are setting the agenda in Washington and you know, I wish I could tell them that they were wrong, but so often, they're not. I mean, think about it. We've been talking about health care reform for decades now, through Democratic and Republican administrations. And yet, and yet year after year, nothing happens. We get presidential candidates coming to you every four years saying we're going to reform health care. People feel rightly cynical about it. It never happens. Why is that? How about this? The drug companies and insurance companies spent $1 billion over the last 10 years preventing reform from happening. Is it any wonder that they're spending $1 billion on lobbyists and campaign contributions and PR that the laws that come out of Washington are very good for them, they're not so good for you.

Energy policy, we've been talking about energy policy since 1973, at least, since Jimmy Carter, since the gas lines. I was 12 years old. And yet decade after decade, nothing happens. Why is that? Well, it helps to understand that, when Bush put Cheney in charge of energy policy, he did, Cheney met with the environmental groups once. He met with the renewable energy groups once. He met with the oil and gas companies 40 times. So is it any wonder then that energy policy made in Washington is very good for Exxon Mobil, not so good for you? That is the -- that's -- that's why this election is so important. It is not enough just to change political parties in the White House. We've got to change how politics is done. We've got to change how business works in Washington. So when I hear people touting their experience in Washington, saying how they know how to play the game better in Washington, I have to remind them, nobody had a longer Washington resume than Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. We don't need somebody who knows how to play the game better in Washington. We need to put an end to the game playing in Washington, and that's why I'm running for president of the United States of America.

But here's the thing, Missoula. I can't -- I just like saying Missoula, by the way. That's a good name, Missoula. It goes with a lot of vowels, just like Obama. Here's the thing, Missoula. I can't do it by myself. I can't do it by myself. One of the things that I've understood very early in this campaign is that the only way we can pull this off is if the American people decide that they want change. I mean when we started, we had no idea how we were going to raise money because we're not taking PAC money, we're not taking money from federal registered lobbyists. Because I wanted to be accountable to you. I didn't know if it would work, but it has, because we have over a million people writing $25, $30, $50 checks. We didn't know whether or not we could compete with organizations that had been built 20 years ago. I mean, all the establishment folks were endorsing other candidates. I didn't know if it was going to work, me coming out here black guy, funny name, you know? Big ears.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: So there is Barack Obama in Missoula, Montana. Barack Obama noting there he likes to say the word Missoula. Mentioning that there are a lot of vowels in Missoula, just like Obama. There you have it, Barack Obama campaigning in Missoula, Montana. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton aren't the only candidates campaigning out west. John McCain is wrapping up his service to America tour across the country. It was what his campaign billed as a reintroduction of the candidate to the American public that took a good portion of last week and is wrapping up now in Prescott, Arizona, so we have some sound now from John McCain in Prescott, Arizona. We should note that that is where Barry Goldwater launched his presidential campaign in 1964 and John McCain likes to say he pretty much uses this joke every time when he's out on the campaign trail that there aren't too many Arizonans, in fact, no Arizonan has risen to the presidency, Barry Goldwater being the last candidate from that state to fail to do so. So here is John McCain, hoping to break the streak, talking about his chances for the White House in Prescott, Arizona.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: -- challenges before our country, both at home and abroad, challenges such as entitlement reform, energy security, health care, the housing crisis, and a global threat from Islamic extremists, to name a few of the most important that requires strict attention to our responsibilities as public servants. And our recognition that we cannot discharge those responsibilities to the satisfaction of the people we serve, unless we work cooperatively across party lines, without compromising our principles. Despite the increasing harshness of our debates and the lack of respect often occasions for each side's good will, I still believe we can and must come together on issues that cannot be addressed without our cooperation. Mo Udal and Barry Goldwater taught me to believe that we are Americans first and partisans second, and I want, and I want to be a president that honors their faith in us. We have our disagreements, we Americans. We contend regularly and enthusiastically over many questions, over the size and purposes of our government, over the social responsibilities we accept in accord with the dictates of our conscience, over our role in the world, and how to defend our security interests and values, in places where they are threatened. These are important questions, worth arguing about. We should contend over them with one another. It's more than appropriate. It is necessary that, even in this crisis, especially in times of crisis, we fight among ourselves for the things we believe in. It's not just our right but our civic and moral obligation. But we deserve more than tolerance from one another.

We deserve more than tolerance from each other. We deserve each other's respect. Whether we think each other right or wrong in our views, as long as our character and sincerity merit respect, and as long as we share for all our differences, for all the noisy debates that enliven our politics, a mutual devotion to the idea -- a mutual devotion to the sublime idea that this nation was conceived in, that freedom is the inalienable right of mankind, and in accord with the laws of nature, and nature's creator. We have -- we have so much more that unites us than divide us. We need only to look to the enemy, who now threatens us and the benighted ideals to which Islamic extremists pledge allegiance. Their disdain for the rights of man, their contempt for human innocent life, to appreciate how much threatens us and how much unites us.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: So there's John McCain in Prescott, Arizona, touching on a variety of subjects. He was in Memphis yesterday honoring the slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King. It was a tough outing for John McCain but also Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, they also paid tribute to Dr. King, all of that coming up after a break. This is BALLOT BOWL on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: Welcome back to CNN's BALLOT BOWL. I'm Suzanne Malveaux. The presidential campaign took a detour through Memphis, Tennessee yesterday, as Senators John McCain and Hillary Clinton remembered Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on the 40th anniversary of his assassination. Senator Barack Obama also addressed Dr. King's legacy in his speech in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. The common theme among the candidates, looking past Dr. King's death to his dream that has survived and continues to shape the nation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If we think only of the day, that day and that moment, there is no inspiration to be gained. The man we remember was a believer in the power of conscience and goodness to shape events, but this place will always stand as a reminder that cowardice and malevolence lay claim to their own victories. No good cause in this world, however right and principled or pure in heart, was ever advanced without sacrifice, and Dr. King knew this. Dr. King knew this. He knew that men with nightsticks, tear gas and cattle prods were not the worst of what might be lying in wait each day and night. He was a man accustomed to the nearness of danger, and when death came, it found him standing upright, in open air, and unafraid. We see him today from a distance of four decades, more time than the man himself lived on this earth, and it would not be unusual if his stature or reputation had faded with the passing of the years. It happens sometimes, that the judgments of history overrule contemporary opinion. Indifference of the fame and approval of the moment. But this has not been the case, with the firstborn son of Alberta and Martin Luther King Sr. He only seems a bigger man from far away. The quality of his character is more apparent, his good name will be honored for as long as the creed of America is honored, his message will be heard and understood for as long as the message of the gospels is heard and understood.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: On the eve of this day, Dr. King gave a sermon in Memphis about what the movement meant to him and to America. And in tones that would prove eerily prophetic. Dr. King said that despite the threats that he had received, he didn't fear any man, because he had been there when Birmingham aroused this conscience of a nation. He had been there to see the students stand up for freedom by sitting at lunch counters, and he'd been there in Memphis, when it was dark enough to see the stars, to see the community coming together around a common purpose. Dr. King had been to the mountaintop. He had seen the promised land, and while he knew, and while he knew somewhere deep in his bones that he would not get there with us, he knew that we would get there.

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: But he had that kind of impact on millions of people, of all colors, faiths, ages, and walks of life, tells us something about the reach and power of his vision. It was a vision big enough and bold enough and grace- filled enough to embrace every last one of us. And when he came here to Memphis, to speak out on behalf of workers, he wasn't only speaking for those sanitation workers who were denied their rights, who had seen two of their fellow workers die in a cascade of garbage a few weeks before. He was speaking out for all workers everywhere, who were exploited and abused, and denied their basic rights. When Dr. King protested the Vietnam War, he wasn't just speaking on behalf of black soldiers, but all soldiers, and civilians, Vietnamese and American alike. When he worked on behalf of the poor here in America and around the world, he wasn't just speaking for the poor he knew, that he could see with his own eyes, but the poor who knew no boundaries of geography or color. And when he stood against discrimination, he wasn't just seeking to free African-Americans from the shackles of slavery and the past that had been shaped by that abomination. He was seeking to break the shackles of hatred on the hearts of us all.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: And new poll numbers are coming in as we become closer to the Pennsylvania primary. Our Bill Schneider taking a look at those numbers, when BALLOT BOWL continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ACOSTA: Welcome back to BALLOT BOWL '08. I'm Jim Acosta in Philadelphia. With so much attention being paid to the 40th anniversary of the slaying of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King and so many tributes to the civil rights leader, and because of the fact that race has become such an issue in the race for the White House, CNN did some polling on the issue of whether Americans were ready for an African-American president and we want to bring back our CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider to talk about that. Bill, I understand we've got some poll numbers that get to this very issue.

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: That's right, they do. We asked Americans, do you think the country is ready for a black president? The answer was pretty clearly, yes. Three-quarters, a little over three-quarters of Americans said yes, the country's ready. That number has been going up since it was first asked about a year and a half ago as Barack Obama has come across as a viable presidential candidate, right now leading in the Democratic field. Notice, however, that blacks are a little bit more skeptical than whites. 78 percent of whites say the country is ready. 69 percent of blacks. Blacks have always been more skeptical about this because of their own experience with racism but they have come around in large numbers since they saw the success of Barack Obama, particularly after the Iowa caucuses, which he won, and that was an overwhelmingly white electorate. Jim?

ACOSTA: And there's also some polling number about whether the country or Americans feel that the country is ready for a woman president, and the numbers are slightly different, and because of that, perhaps more interesting.

SCHNEIDER: Well, those numbers a little bit lower, 63 percent of Americans as opposed to 76 in the case of a black president. 63 percent say the country's ready for a woman president. Hillary Clinton's unfavorable numbers have always been a little higher than Barack Obama's, so very likely people are responding not to any woman or any black candidate, but this woman, and this African-American candidate, and so when asked is the country ready for a woman president, a lot of people hear that and think are we ready for Hillary Clinton to be president? Of course she does have a lot of critics.

ACOSTA: Bill I'm standing here in Pennsylvania where we know the economy as we like to put it here at CNN, issue number one. The state has been hit hard by manufacturing job losses, some 200,000 jobs lost in the last several years, and so the economy is definitely at the forefront in people's minds as they look at who they're going to select coming up on April 22nd. What do these numbers say about voters' attitudes on the economy?

SCHNEIDER: People think the economy is terrible. Take a look at the comparison between how they feel about the economy now and how they felt back in 1992, the year Bill Clinton first got elected, when the issue was famously the economy, stupid. Right now, 78 percent of Americans say the nation's economy is in bad shape. That is just about the same as it was in October of '92, just before Clinton got elected, when 79 percent said the economy was in bad shape. That's why Democrats are hopeful that 2008 will be a replay of 1992, when they won a sizeable victory.

ACOSTA: But Bill, as we know, 2008 and 1992 will be, in many ways dramatically different elections, because of the fact that, we're going back to the first set of poll numbers that we looked at here, we're looking at on the Democratic side at least, history potentially being made or in the making.

SCHNEIDER: There's an even bigger reason why they might not be comparable. In 1992 the incumbent president, the first President George Bush was running for re-election. This President Bush is not running for re-election. If he were, he'd be sunk, just like his dad was. Normally when a president can't run for re-election, the vice president runs, George Bush, the first George Bush after Ronald Reagan, Al Gore after Bill Clinton, but Dick Cheney is not running. He's breaking that tradition, he's not running to succeed the president. John McCain is the prospective Republican nominee and what's interesting here is McCain, while he's not doing great, he's not doing too badly. Our poll shows when you pit John McCain and Barack Obama against each other, Obama leads McCain by five points. That's within the poll's margin of error. If you pit Hillary Clinton against John McCain, same result, Hillary Clinton leads John McCain by five points. Again, within the poll's margin of error, which means McCain, while he's not doing great, he's not exactly sunk the way you would expect George Bush to be. What this suggests is, with the incumbent president and vice president not running, a lot of voters don't automatically associate McCain with the Bush administration. He was a rival of George Bush in the 2000 election. He's been critical of many of George Bush's policies, so it's up to the Democrats and their campaign to try to get across the argument that a McCain victory would amount to a third term for President Bush.

ACOSTA: And so far, according to those numbers that strategy may not be working right now. Bill Schneider, thanks very much, joining us from Los Angeles, I hope you're enjoying the weather out there in California, Bill. Thanks very much.

Coming up after the break here on BALLOT BOWL on CNN, a quick check of the news and some very troubling storms that are hitting the south, all of that coming up after a break. This is BALLOT BOWL on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello I'm Fredricka Whitfield. We'll get back to the BALLOT BOWL in a moment. But first these headlines. Parts of the south are cleaning up today from another spring storm assault. Heavy rain, hail, strong winds and possible tornadoes were part of a system that hit parts of Arkansas, Mississippi and Georgia. Thousands of homes have been without power.

(WEATHER REPORT)

WHITFIELD: On the issue of travel, hopefully you don't have a flight scheduled on this airline, because another one goes belly-up blaming high fuel prices and a slowing economy. Ohio based SkyBus halted operations today and will file for bankruptcy. ATA and Aloha did the same this week. SkyBus had offered some fares as cheap as $10.

The state of Texas is scrambling to find homes for dozens of girls removed from a compound established by the break-away Mormon polygamist Warren Jeffs. Welfare officials removed 52 girls, up to 17 years of age, after a 16-year-old complained of abuse. Authorities are looking for a 50-year-old man they think married and fathered a child with a 16-year-old girl.

Shifting gears quite a bit, get ready to be impressed with the next generation of GPS technology, that's upon us. Cnet.com's Brian Cooley just took Jacqui Jeras for a test drive.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: If you're one of the thousands and thousands of people who got a new GPS in the last year it's probably your new best friend. But believe it or not, technology is already changing. Brian Cooley with cnet.com is here to tell us about the new technology.

BRIAN COOLEY, EDITOR AT LARGE, CNET.COM: Jacqui, it's all about connected navigation now. So these new GPS models like this connect to the internet over the cellular network so you can do free form search to find what you want and then tell the unit to take you there.

JERAS: Why is that better than the information I have in my current system?

COOLEY: The stuff in the GPS unit today is pretty stale and limited. Watch this, if I go on this dash express unit here and I do a search, I'll type in, let's say, pizza, I'm going to search nearby, and then I look for results. You see there's a star rating on the side, that's how users have rated all those pizza parlors, you can see the distance to them. When I select one, it will then take me there like a regular GPS but I didn't have to give it the address. It searched for it.

JERAS: All right, a lot more information. What about traffic, this is really new and exciting?

COOLEY: Right, the dash units, all of them are traffic probes so each one that is sold is reporting traffic conditions back to headquarters which are then relayed out to the other units so they all become a little army of robotic traffic reporters, if you will, giving them greater real time accuracy on traffic. Of course the key is they have to sell a lot of these for that to be effective.

JERAS: All right, some great new exciting changes, Brian Cooley with cnet.com. Thank you.

WHITFIELD: More BALLOT BOWL right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ACOSTA: Welcome back to BALLOT BOWL '08", I'm Jim Acosta in Philadelphia, and we're almost at the end of our first hour of four hours of BALLOT BOWL today, if you're counting here at home. You want to stay with us, there's much more politics coming up. We want to get back to John McCain, who is wrapping up a reintroduction tour, his campaign has been billing this as a reintroducing of the senator from Arizona to the American public. They called it service to America, and the senator's been highlighting some of his accomplishments in the armed services, and service to country in politics over the last several days. He spent some time in Annapolis, wrapping up his stay and as we mentioned earlier, Prescott, Arizona. It was earlier this week in Alexandria, Virginia, where he visited a high school, a high school Episcopal high school in Alexandria, Virginia, where apparently a student there started heckling the senator, and John McCain then had to respond. So here's John McCain responding to what appears to be a student heckler earlier this week in Alexandria, Virginia.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We can see that this isn't completely absent political motivation, isn't completely absent, yet we were told that this isn't a political event, so what exactly is your purpose in being here, not that I don't appreciate the opportunity, but I'd just like some clarification.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I knew I should have cut this thing off. This meeting is over. This is an opportunity and part of a series of visits that I'm paying, started in Mississippi, where my family's roots are, back to the middle of the 19th century to here. We're going from here to Pensacola, Florida, and to Jacksonville, Florida, and a couple other places, where we're going to Annapolis, where I obviously attended the naval academy. And it's sort of a tour, where we try to not only emphasize the values and principles that guided me and I think, a lot of this country in the past, but also portray a vision of how I think we need to address the challenges of the future. And a lot of that is, in retrospect, but a lot of that is also advocacy and addressing certain challenges that face the nation. I hope that attendance here was not compulsory.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: So there you have it, John McCain who is no stranger to incoming fire, able to handle the heckler there in Alexandria, Virginia. That wraps up this first hour of BALLOT BOWL here on CNN but there's much more to come. Stay with us. This is BALLOT BOWL on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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