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On Campaign Trail, Both John Kerry and George W. Bush Going After Each Other; The Debate Over Debates

Aired September 13, 2004 - 11:30   ET

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

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


DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Daryn Kagan in Atlanta. Let's check what's happening now in the news for this Monday, September 13th. North Korea says that a blast there last week was demolition work for a new electrical plant. The bush administration says it won't speculate on what caused the huge cloud, said to be two miles wide. The U.S. officials discount a nuclear test.
Top Bush administration officials are on Capitol Hill this hour, a live picture there, discussing reform in the intelligence committee. Homeland security secretary Tom Ridge and secretary of state Colin Powell are testifying.

The Food and Drug administration opened two days of hearings today on the subject of children and antidepressants. Experts will discuss whether labels are necessary to warn of suicide risk.

And check out these pictures from London. An intruder today at Buckingham Palace. These are live pictures. Batman is still at the palace -- a man dressed as Batman, holding police at bay on the balcony outside the queen's residence. A spokesman for the group Fathers for Justice is taking credit for the stunt. You can see Batman's pretty pleased with himself. Members claim that Britain's courts are biased against fathers in custody cases.

(WEATHER REPORT)

KAGAN: We turn to politics now. It is gun control versus health care. On the campaign trail today, both John Kerry and George W. Bush going after each other. Let's get the campaign headlines from CNN's Bob Franken who is in Washington.

Bob, good morning.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Daryn.

You pretty much wrapped it up. John Kerry is not letting the day's expiration of the assault weapons ban pass without an attempt to pin blame on the president, and he's doing it with the help of top gun control advocates, including Sara Brady and the National Association of Police, which endorsed Kerry today. During his remarks here in Washington, Kerry discussed his own $5 billion plan to fight crime, and he accused the president of paying lip service to supporting the decade-long assault weapons ban, while doing nothing to get the extension passed in Congress.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: My friends, George Bush made a choice today, and over these next days, I will be showing how these choices a effect America and Americans. This is what presidential leadership is supposed to be about, but it's also a test of character. It is a test of character. In a secret deal, he chose his powerful friends in the gun lobby over police officers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FRANKEN: Kerry expressed his support for the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, but the Bush camp charges that Kerry fought against those rights during his Senate career.

This hour, President Bush is on a campaign bus tour of Muskegon. Bush is hoping to strengthen his hand in an important battleground state that he narrowly lost to Al Gore in 2000. The polls show the president slightly trailing John Kerry in Michigan.

But today, he's there touting his health care proposals, including plans to limit malpractice suits, in the face of Kerry camp's charges that he's done little to keep down medical costs and get more Americans insured.

Two national polls released over the weekend show President Bush maintaining his convention bounce in one of them, but the race heightening in others. In the new "Time" magazine survey of likely voters, Bush kept his margin from last week with a 52 percent to John Kerry's 41 percent.

But in the broader "Newsweek" survey of registered voters, the president holds a 5-point lead. That's down from an 11-point margin last week. The latest polls show that President Bush is in the lead. So can John Kerry close the gap with 50 days left until Election Day?

Judy Woodruff speaks with top strategists for both presidential campaigns when she goes "INSIDE POLITICS" at a new time today, 3:00 p.m. Eastern.

That's it, and now it's back to Daryn in Atlanta.

KAGAN: All right, Bob, thank you for that.

Now we turn to debate over the debates. Supporters of President Bush and Senator John Kerry are picking through details of their upcoming debates, trying to decide when, where and how many do you have? History shows the verbal sparring matches are more than just a war of words.

More now from CNN's Bill Schneider.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST (voice-over): Debates are a campaign's restart button. For the first time, voters see the candidates face to face, equal and unscripted, which is why a challenger, particularly one who's running behind, is eager to have debates, lots of debates.

SEN. JOHN KERRY, (D), PRES. CANDIDATE: Let's meet every week from now till the election and talk about the real issues facing Americans.

SCHNEIDER: The challenger gets a chance to close the stature gap with the president or the vice president, and to turn the election into an referendum on the incumbent. In 1960, John F. Kennedy played to concerns that the U.S. was losing its competitive edge against the Soviet Union.

PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY: As our strength and prestige rises, the people wanted to be identified with us.

SCHNEIDER: The 1980 race was very much in doubt when challenger Ronald Reagan went into the one and only debate with President Jimmy Carter a week before election day. Reagan's hard-line image frightened many voters. He used the debate to reassure them that he wasn't dangerous, and to frame the election as a referendum on his opponent.

PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: Are you better off than you were four years ago?

SCHNEIDER: Debates often have revealing moments, like in 1976, when President Gerald Ford prematurely liberated Eastern Europe.

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: And the United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union.

SCHNEIDER: Or in 1988, when Michael Dukakis gave a dispassionate response when asked whether he would favor the death penalty for someone who raped and murdered his wife.

MICHAEL DUKAKIS, FMR. PRES. CANDIDATE: ... I've opposed the death penalty during all of my life. I don't see any evidence that it's a deterrent.

SCHNEIDER: In 1992, the first President Bush was criticized for being out of touch with ordinary Americans, a perception reinforced by the debates, particularly when a voter asked a question about the national debt. The incumbent didn't connect. The challenger did.

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: Tell me how it's affected you again?

SCHNEIDER: In 2000, Al Gore may have won more debating points, but the polls showed that voters had a more favorable opinion of George W. Bush, and that's what counted.

(on camera): Debates keep the race open. Many voters say I'm going to hit the restart button, clear the screen, and watch the debates with an open mind, then I'll decide.

Bill Schneider, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE) KAGAN: Coming up next, finding salvation and redemption in prison. One woman's search for her past has become an inspirational journey for a group of children trying to connect with their fathers. That story is coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: It's a maximum security prison in Angola, Louisiana, is one of the nation's most notorious. Most of the 5,000 inmates are there for violent crimes. Some have a softer side. They are fathers.

This weekend, our guests help bring almost 300 of Angola's sons and daughters together with their dads. Scottie Barnes is the founder of "One Day with God" camps. She joins us for our occasional series -- it's called Our Spirit.

It sounds like you're finding yours, and you're helping some kids and some dads get reconnected.

SCOTTIE BARNES, "ONE DAY WITH GOD" CAMPS: Oh, it's awesome, Daryn. I just can't tell you the emotions, the excitement, and I guess the passion that everyone felt on Saturday at Angola.

KAGAN: But first, now, a little bit of your story. You know only too well what it feels like to have a dad -- to grow up having a dad in prison.

BARNES: That's correct. I began visiting prisons when I was four years old. At age 42, my dad died in a federal prison. So, all my life, I was in and out of prisons. I know the stigma it carries. I know the rejection, the embarrassment, and most of all, I know when a father doesn't show you any love how the damage and the anger that grows in your heart.

KAGAN: So now, here you are. You're a nice grandma from North Carolina, and you get this idea that you want to take kids into one of the most -- what is known as one of most violent prisons in the country.

BARNES: It used to be known as that. Now, there's a lot of change. So, the administration of Warden Burl Cain, it's awesome how we've seen a change.

KAGAN: Now, talk about some of the pictures we're seeing. This is Saturday, right? This is kids running to the arms of their dads that are serving time.

BARNES: OK. This is when we first brought the children in to meet their fathers. And they would run to their dads, and their dads would run to them. And some of these children had not seen their dads maybe inasmuch as 10 and 12 years. So, it was very emotional.

And when they saw that dad, there was no incarceration, nothing separating the fatherhood that was there that day.

KAGAN: What are you saying to people who say a prison is no place for a child to be, even for one day.

BARNES: I understand them feeling like that. I understand that. The security level was at the top. We had not one incident.

But I believe, unless we can bring some healing and restoration, reconciliation in these little children, we're going to keep building juvenile prisons. Because within every child is a desire to know their parent, and to have a piece that their parent loves them and accepts them.

And Daryn, if we don't do something to change the course of these children, we're going to build prisons and prisons and prisons.

KAGAN: What do you think happened on that day, on Saturday, in Angola for the kids?

BARNES: Well, let me share about one little girl.

KAGAN: OK.

BARNES: They came to me and said, "Ms. Barnes, you've got to come. This little girl wants to go home." She had never seen her father in her life. She was 14.

So, I talked to the little girl and told her I knew how she felt, because there was a day I didn't want to be with my daddy. And she began to look at me in big old tears, and she said, "I don't like him." And I said, "Will you give me two hours?" And she said, "I'll stay that long."

And we built a lamp -- let the child and the dad build a lamp. She came running to me with that lamp, and she said, "Ms. Barnes, I don't want to leave my daddy. I want to stay with him all day."

That's a healing process that took place that day.

KAGAN: What's next? How do you build off of this?

BARNES: Well, camps are opening all over the United States. I'm getting calls, and they're going to move. Prisons are inviting me to come in, because they realize nothing's working.

KAGAN: Right.

BARNES: So, we're going to see more and more camps, and we pray that it'll expand all over. I hope there'll be many Burl Cains that will invite us in.

KAGAN: Cain's a warden at...

BARNES: He is the warden.

KAGAN: ... Angola.

BARNES: And he has made such a difference in the prison -- Louisiana State Penitentiary. We're also going to open a children's center inside a visitation room in a maximum security prison in North Carolina -- Alexander Correctional. And where we're going to be able to work with the children, to help them to find some peace and maybe self-worth and direction and -- oh, just so much to change the direction of these children.

KAGAN: Because you're a grandma now, but you know only too well what it feels like to be one those kids.

BARNES: If I had not had someone to guide me at age 13 and 14, I could be in prison today. That's true.

KAGAN: Thank you for the work that you're doing.

BARNES: Thank you for letting me be here.

KAGAN: Good luck.

Scottie Barnes -- one grandma making a lot of difference in a lot of kids' lives.

BARNES: Thank you.

KAGAN: Thank you, and good luck with your future efforts. Appreciate it.

We're going to take a break on that, and we'll be back after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Well, once again, folks in Florida are bracing for the possibility of a dangerous hurricane. In our "Daily Dose" of health news, Dr. Sanjay Gupta takes a look at the emotional and the physical stress from two hurricanes, and now the threat of another.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (on camera): Take your life, as busy as it is right now, and imagine having to add to that boarding up your home and leaving for a couple weeks, or returning to your home and finding a pile of rubble. That's exactly what a lot of Floridians are gearing up for as they prepare for the third hurricane in a row, and the physical and emotional costs are to escalate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a tough decision mentally, but we're exhausted. We're just -- I just don't want to go through it again, and I don't want to put my kids through it again.

GUPTA: Two major health issues facing both adults and children. This is the way they handle it in a sequential sort of fashion. First, emotional numbing. Then, agitation. Finally, depression. And then long term, down the road, acceptance. Left unchecked, these sorts of emotional symptoms can lead to longer-term consequences. Children tend to deal with it a little bit different than adults. For children, they get displaced from their homes, they're put in shelters for a while, they lose things that are important to them, they lose their schools perhaps; sometimes their friends don't show up for a time. You may see symptoms of post-traumatic stress in children. They start to act-out for example, disrupted sleep and nightmares, appetite changes, flashbacks, social withdrawal.

The way that you can try and combat some of these things before they start is to include it in the planning. If you're going to be leaving, include your children in the planning of what's about happen. Plan activities, have calm discussions, and include them in discussions, ask them questions, and listen to their answers. Adults are obviously going to deal with it a little bit differently.

As you see the third hurricane now approaching Florida, they're much more concerned about insurance, are they going to get reimbursed for these sorts of things? Is it going to cover the damage? How are they going to get food? And how are they going to handle the evacuation?

One thing about anxiety, is that it's contagious. So if you're talking to your friends, talking to your neighbors, examine and discuss stress with them, form a strategy and share the burden. And good luck down in Florida.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: To get your daily dose of health news online, log on to our Web site. You'll find the latest medical news, a health library and information on diet and fitness. The address is CNN.com/health.

Turn now to the Michael Jackson saga: Jackson's child molestation trial won't start until January, but there's a new book about the first abuse allegation against Jackson back in 1993. It's written by the uncle of Jackson's alleged victim, who was 12 at the time. In the book, called "All That Glitters: The Crime and the Coverup," author Raymond Chandler gives details of the alleged incident that ended, and a reported $20 million settlement. Chandler talks about his reaction to a British documentary earlier on CNN.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAYMOND CHANDLER, AUTHOR, "ALL THAT GLITTERS": In 2003, when I saw Michael Jackson on that Martin Bashir piece, with this current little accuser, with his head against Michael's shoulder, holding hands, and Michael talking about how it's good to sleep in bed, there's nothing wrong with sharing your bed, I thought by -- after 1993, no parent would allow their children to be alone with Michael Jackson again. I hope if there's anything that this book accomplishes, it's that, that every parent out there would say, OK, I'm not leaving my kid with this guy anymore.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KAGAN: And there's other word from the world of entertainment. He penned the lyrics to the hit song "New York, New York." Now many are mourning the death of lyricist Fred Ebb. He died of a heart attack over the weekend. Ebb worked on hit Broadway musicals like "Chicago" and "Cabaret," wrote scores for leading ladies like Chita Rivera (ph) and Liza Minnelli. He's believed to have been 76 years old when he died, though friends say he was always sweetly vague about his age.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(STOCK MARKET UPDATE)

KAGAN: That is going to do for me on this Monday morning. I'm Daryn Kagan. See you right back here tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, Wolf Blitzer taking over, and I think we've tracked down Wolf in New York City today.

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


Aired September 13, 2004 - 11:30   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Daryn Kagan in Atlanta. Let's check what's happening now in the news for this Monday, September 13th. North Korea says that a blast there last week was demolition work for a new electrical plant. The bush administration says it won't speculate on what caused the huge cloud, said to be two miles wide. The U.S. officials discount a nuclear test.
Top Bush administration officials are on Capitol Hill this hour, a live picture there, discussing reform in the intelligence committee. Homeland security secretary Tom Ridge and secretary of state Colin Powell are testifying.

The Food and Drug administration opened two days of hearings today on the subject of children and antidepressants. Experts will discuss whether labels are necessary to warn of suicide risk.

And check out these pictures from London. An intruder today at Buckingham Palace. These are live pictures. Batman is still at the palace -- a man dressed as Batman, holding police at bay on the balcony outside the queen's residence. A spokesman for the group Fathers for Justice is taking credit for the stunt. You can see Batman's pretty pleased with himself. Members claim that Britain's courts are biased against fathers in custody cases.

(WEATHER REPORT)

KAGAN: We turn to politics now. It is gun control versus health care. On the campaign trail today, both John Kerry and George W. Bush going after each other. Let's get the campaign headlines from CNN's Bob Franken who is in Washington.

Bob, good morning.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Daryn.

You pretty much wrapped it up. John Kerry is not letting the day's expiration of the assault weapons ban pass without an attempt to pin blame on the president, and he's doing it with the help of top gun control advocates, including Sara Brady and the National Association of Police, which endorsed Kerry today. During his remarks here in Washington, Kerry discussed his own $5 billion plan to fight crime, and he accused the president of paying lip service to supporting the decade-long assault weapons ban, while doing nothing to get the extension passed in Congress.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: My friends, George Bush made a choice today, and over these next days, I will be showing how these choices a effect America and Americans. This is what presidential leadership is supposed to be about, but it's also a test of character. It is a test of character. In a secret deal, he chose his powerful friends in the gun lobby over police officers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FRANKEN: Kerry expressed his support for the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, but the Bush camp charges that Kerry fought against those rights during his Senate career.

This hour, President Bush is on a campaign bus tour of Muskegon. Bush is hoping to strengthen his hand in an important battleground state that he narrowly lost to Al Gore in 2000. The polls show the president slightly trailing John Kerry in Michigan.

But today, he's there touting his health care proposals, including plans to limit malpractice suits, in the face of Kerry camp's charges that he's done little to keep down medical costs and get more Americans insured.

Two national polls released over the weekend show President Bush maintaining his convention bounce in one of them, but the race heightening in others. In the new "Time" magazine survey of likely voters, Bush kept his margin from last week with a 52 percent to John Kerry's 41 percent.

But in the broader "Newsweek" survey of registered voters, the president holds a 5-point lead. That's down from an 11-point margin last week. The latest polls show that President Bush is in the lead. So can John Kerry close the gap with 50 days left until Election Day?

Judy Woodruff speaks with top strategists for both presidential campaigns when she goes "INSIDE POLITICS" at a new time today, 3:00 p.m. Eastern.

That's it, and now it's back to Daryn in Atlanta.

KAGAN: All right, Bob, thank you for that.

Now we turn to debate over the debates. Supporters of President Bush and Senator John Kerry are picking through details of their upcoming debates, trying to decide when, where and how many do you have? History shows the verbal sparring matches are more than just a war of words.

More now from CNN's Bill Schneider.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST (voice-over): Debates are a campaign's restart button. For the first time, voters see the candidates face to face, equal and unscripted, which is why a challenger, particularly one who's running behind, is eager to have debates, lots of debates.

SEN. JOHN KERRY, (D), PRES. CANDIDATE: Let's meet every week from now till the election and talk about the real issues facing Americans.

SCHNEIDER: The challenger gets a chance to close the stature gap with the president or the vice president, and to turn the election into an referendum on the incumbent. In 1960, John F. Kennedy played to concerns that the U.S. was losing its competitive edge against the Soviet Union.

PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY: As our strength and prestige rises, the people wanted to be identified with us.

SCHNEIDER: The 1980 race was very much in doubt when challenger Ronald Reagan went into the one and only debate with President Jimmy Carter a week before election day. Reagan's hard-line image frightened many voters. He used the debate to reassure them that he wasn't dangerous, and to frame the election as a referendum on his opponent.

PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: Are you better off than you were four years ago?

SCHNEIDER: Debates often have revealing moments, like in 1976, when President Gerald Ford prematurely liberated Eastern Europe.

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: And the United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union.

SCHNEIDER: Or in 1988, when Michael Dukakis gave a dispassionate response when asked whether he would favor the death penalty for someone who raped and murdered his wife.

MICHAEL DUKAKIS, FMR. PRES. CANDIDATE: ... I've opposed the death penalty during all of my life. I don't see any evidence that it's a deterrent.

SCHNEIDER: In 1992, the first President Bush was criticized for being out of touch with ordinary Americans, a perception reinforced by the debates, particularly when a voter asked a question about the national debt. The incumbent didn't connect. The challenger did.

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: Tell me how it's affected you again?

SCHNEIDER: In 2000, Al Gore may have won more debating points, but the polls showed that voters had a more favorable opinion of George W. Bush, and that's what counted.

(on camera): Debates keep the race open. Many voters say I'm going to hit the restart button, clear the screen, and watch the debates with an open mind, then I'll decide.

Bill Schneider, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE) KAGAN: Coming up next, finding salvation and redemption in prison. One woman's search for her past has become an inspirational journey for a group of children trying to connect with their fathers. That story is coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: It's a maximum security prison in Angola, Louisiana, is one of the nation's most notorious. Most of the 5,000 inmates are there for violent crimes. Some have a softer side. They are fathers.

This weekend, our guests help bring almost 300 of Angola's sons and daughters together with their dads. Scottie Barnes is the founder of "One Day with God" camps. She joins us for our occasional series -- it's called Our Spirit.

It sounds like you're finding yours, and you're helping some kids and some dads get reconnected.

SCOTTIE BARNES, "ONE DAY WITH GOD" CAMPS: Oh, it's awesome, Daryn. I just can't tell you the emotions, the excitement, and I guess the passion that everyone felt on Saturday at Angola.

KAGAN: But first, now, a little bit of your story. You know only too well what it feels like to have a dad -- to grow up having a dad in prison.

BARNES: That's correct. I began visiting prisons when I was four years old. At age 42, my dad died in a federal prison. So, all my life, I was in and out of prisons. I know the stigma it carries. I know the rejection, the embarrassment, and most of all, I know when a father doesn't show you any love how the damage and the anger that grows in your heart.

KAGAN: So now, here you are. You're a nice grandma from North Carolina, and you get this idea that you want to take kids into one of the most -- what is known as one of most violent prisons in the country.

BARNES: It used to be known as that. Now, there's a lot of change. So, the administration of Warden Burl Cain, it's awesome how we've seen a change.

KAGAN: Now, talk about some of the pictures we're seeing. This is Saturday, right? This is kids running to the arms of their dads that are serving time.

BARNES: OK. This is when we first brought the children in to meet their fathers. And they would run to their dads, and their dads would run to them. And some of these children had not seen their dads maybe inasmuch as 10 and 12 years. So, it was very emotional.

And when they saw that dad, there was no incarceration, nothing separating the fatherhood that was there that day.

KAGAN: What are you saying to people who say a prison is no place for a child to be, even for one day.

BARNES: I understand them feeling like that. I understand that. The security level was at the top. We had not one incident.

But I believe, unless we can bring some healing and restoration, reconciliation in these little children, we're going to keep building juvenile prisons. Because within every child is a desire to know their parent, and to have a piece that their parent loves them and accepts them.

And Daryn, if we don't do something to change the course of these children, we're going to build prisons and prisons and prisons.

KAGAN: What do you think happened on that day, on Saturday, in Angola for the kids?

BARNES: Well, let me share about one little girl.

KAGAN: OK.

BARNES: They came to me and said, "Ms. Barnes, you've got to come. This little girl wants to go home." She had never seen her father in her life. She was 14.

So, I talked to the little girl and told her I knew how she felt, because there was a day I didn't want to be with my daddy. And she began to look at me in big old tears, and she said, "I don't like him." And I said, "Will you give me two hours?" And she said, "I'll stay that long."

And we built a lamp -- let the child and the dad build a lamp. She came running to me with that lamp, and she said, "Ms. Barnes, I don't want to leave my daddy. I want to stay with him all day."

That's a healing process that took place that day.

KAGAN: What's next? How do you build off of this?

BARNES: Well, camps are opening all over the United States. I'm getting calls, and they're going to move. Prisons are inviting me to come in, because they realize nothing's working.

KAGAN: Right.

BARNES: So, we're going to see more and more camps, and we pray that it'll expand all over. I hope there'll be many Burl Cains that will invite us in.

KAGAN: Cain's a warden at...

BARNES: He is the warden.

KAGAN: ... Angola.

BARNES: And he has made such a difference in the prison -- Louisiana State Penitentiary. We're also going to open a children's center inside a visitation room in a maximum security prison in North Carolina -- Alexander Correctional. And where we're going to be able to work with the children, to help them to find some peace and maybe self-worth and direction and -- oh, just so much to change the direction of these children.

KAGAN: Because you're a grandma now, but you know only too well what it feels like to be one those kids.

BARNES: If I had not had someone to guide me at age 13 and 14, I could be in prison today. That's true.

KAGAN: Thank you for the work that you're doing.

BARNES: Thank you for letting me be here.

KAGAN: Good luck.

Scottie Barnes -- one grandma making a lot of difference in a lot of kids' lives.

BARNES: Thank you.

KAGAN: Thank you, and good luck with your future efforts. Appreciate it.

We're going to take a break on that, and we'll be back after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Well, once again, folks in Florida are bracing for the possibility of a dangerous hurricane. In our "Daily Dose" of health news, Dr. Sanjay Gupta takes a look at the emotional and the physical stress from two hurricanes, and now the threat of another.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (on camera): Take your life, as busy as it is right now, and imagine having to add to that boarding up your home and leaving for a couple weeks, or returning to your home and finding a pile of rubble. That's exactly what a lot of Floridians are gearing up for as they prepare for the third hurricane in a row, and the physical and emotional costs are to escalate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a tough decision mentally, but we're exhausted. We're just -- I just don't want to go through it again, and I don't want to put my kids through it again.

GUPTA: Two major health issues facing both adults and children. This is the way they handle it in a sequential sort of fashion. First, emotional numbing. Then, agitation. Finally, depression. And then long term, down the road, acceptance. Left unchecked, these sorts of emotional symptoms can lead to longer-term consequences. Children tend to deal with it a little bit different than adults. For children, they get displaced from their homes, they're put in shelters for a while, they lose things that are important to them, they lose their schools perhaps; sometimes their friends don't show up for a time. You may see symptoms of post-traumatic stress in children. They start to act-out for example, disrupted sleep and nightmares, appetite changes, flashbacks, social withdrawal.

The way that you can try and combat some of these things before they start is to include it in the planning. If you're going to be leaving, include your children in the planning of what's about happen. Plan activities, have calm discussions, and include them in discussions, ask them questions, and listen to their answers. Adults are obviously going to deal with it a little bit differently.

As you see the third hurricane now approaching Florida, they're much more concerned about insurance, are they going to get reimbursed for these sorts of things? Is it going to cover the damage? How are they going to get food? And how are they going to handle the evacuation?

One thing about anxiety, is that it's contagious. So if you're talking to your friends, talking to your neighbors, examine and discuss stress with them, form a strategy and share the burden. And good luck down in Florida.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: To get your daily dose of health news online, log on to our Web site. You'll find the latest medical news, a health library and information on diet and fitness. The address is CNN.com/health.

Turn now to the Michael Jackson saga: Jackson's child molestation trial won't start until January, but there's a new book about the first abuse allegation against Jackson back in 1993. It's written by the uncle of Jackson's alleged victim, who was 12 at the time. In the book, called "All That Glitters: The Crime and the Coverup," author Raymond Chandler gives details of the alleged incident that ended, and a reported $20 million settlement. Chandler talks about his reaction to a British documentary earlier on CNN.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAYMOND CHANDLER, AUTHOR, "ALL THAT GLITTERS": In 2003, when I saw Michael Jackson on that Martin Bashir piece, with this current little accuser, with his head against Michael's shoulder, holding hands, and Michael talking about how it's good to sleep in bed, there's nothing wrong with sharing your bed, I thought by -- after 1993, no parent would allow their children to be alone with Michael Jackson again. I hope if there's anything that this book accomplishes, it's that, that every parent out there would say, OK, I'm not leaving my kid with this guy anymore.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KAGAN: And there's other word from the world of entertainment. He penned the lyrics to the hit song "New York, New York." Now many are mourning the death of lyricist Fred Ebb. He died of a heart attack over the weekend. Ebb worked on hit Broadway musicals like "Chicago" and "Cabaret," wrote scores for leading ladies like Chita Rivera (ph) and Liza Minnelli. He's believed to have been 76 years old when he died, though friends say he was always sweetly vague about his age.

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KAGAN: That is going to do for me on this Monday morning. I'm Daryn Kagan. See you right back here tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, Wolf Blitzer taking over, and I think we've tracked down Wolf in New York City today.

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