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CNN Live Today
President & The Polls; Beyond The Numbers; Florida Fires; Crisis In Sudan; Fuel Bank; Head Over Heels
Aired May 09, 2006 - 10:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: We're out of time.
Daryn.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Miles, thank you.
Miles and Soledad, you guys have a great day in New York City.
And we'll go ahead and get started.
We are talking about President Bush, war, national security, gas prices. President Bush taking hits on all sides in the latest polls. But what they show is up to interpretation. There are some low numbers there. In a moment, we're going to look at the present in context with the past. First, though, the polls. Here's our Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): The latest Bush approval numbers, 34 percent in the CNN poll, 31 percent in the Gallup/USA Today poll. Those ratings are statistically compatible since each poll has a 3 percent margin of error. Thirty-one percent is the lowest rating ever reported for this president.
What's the biggest beef with Bush? You might guess gas prices, gas prices, gas prices. But most people who disapprove of the president's performance say the reason is Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, 56 percent. Thirteen percent say it's gas prices. Other issues, 26.
REP. RON PAUL, (R) TEXAS: The sooner we get out of Iraq and allow the Iraqis to solve their own problems the better.
SCHNEIDER: Certainly the better for Republicans like Representative Paul who have to face the voters this November. Americans no longer buy the main argument for going war in Iraq, that it would make the U.S. safer from terrorism. Just after the war ended in 2003, 58 percent of Americans felt safer. A year later, the number was at 50 percent. Now just one-third of Americans believe the war in Iraq has made the U.S. safer. Most people now say Iraq has made the U.S. less safe.
Sure, gas prices are causing financial hardship, nearly two- thirds say so, although that number is down slightly from where it was two weeks ago.
SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY, (R) IOWA: Everyone in Congress is looking for a solution for someone to blame.
SCHNEIDER: Ask a business executive why gas prices went up and you'll hear supply and demand. The public doesn't buy it. Look how fast prices went up. Supply and demand, hell (ph), the public says. We think somebody's up to no good by 61 to 26 percent. And 70 percent say President Bush could do something about gas prices. After all, going after evildoers is supposed to be his thing.
Bill Schneider, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAGAN: And Bill Schneider is breaking down the poll, part of the best political team on television.
Let's go beyond those numbers, though. What does this all mean for the president over the next two and a half years and what does this mean for you? Can Washington get things done or will politicians tread water until there's a new president? Stephen Hess is with the Brookings Institution and he joins me now from Washington.
Stephen, good morning. Good to have you here.
STEPHEN HESS, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: Thank you.
KAGAN: Let's put this in some historical context. A second-term president, how does it compare to other presidents like Clinton and before that?
HESS: Well, whenever a president's ratings go below 50 percent, you usually get some real earthquake results at midterm elections, at least in the House of Representatives.
KAGAN: No, but taking a step back, other -- in current history, previous presidents, would they be this low?
HESS: Well, that would be -- oh, this is very low. The only really useful comparison there would be Lyndon Johnson because there you're talking about war versus war. Obviously as Bill Schneider points out, what's driving George Bush's ratings down is the Iraq War. The same would have been true of Lyndon Johnson's and the Vietnam War.
But the difference is that more people were satisfied with Americans in Vietnam at this point three years in than they are with the Iraq War at about 10 percent there. And, in fact, that reflects the two president's ratings because Lyndon Johnson had a rating in the early 40s and now, as Bill Schneider tells us, you have George Bush in the low 30s. So there's about a 10 percent difference.
It's not a question of American deaths. There were 28,000 Americans killed in Vietnam at that time and we know something about 2,000 now. But clearly there's a sense that Vietnam was connected with American security in a way that the polls show that the American people don't show that Iraq does. So that's the key poll comparison when you look into the past, Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson, Iraq, George W. Bush. KAGAN: Let's talk about getting things done because I think that is one thing that Americans do agree about. They would like to see, as we saw, things done about gas prices, perhaps the war, perhaps immigration. But is this a president that has political clout to get things done?
HESS: Well, the clout will depend on the election in November. Clearly if the president loses even one house of the Congress, we can expect that the next two years are going to be devoted to oversight investigations of this president and you can say probably his legislative program would be toast. So the key thing for this president is somehow to try to improve his ratings between now and November if he's to have any success with the rest of the two years. And also, of course, the lesson in the past with Lyndon Johnson would be the effort to get out of Vietnam. Again, the effort that this president will put into to get out of Iraq.
KAGAN: One thing that's interesting politically about this presidency is you have a vice president who doesn't intend to run for president. Does that help or hurt President Bush at this point?
HESS: Well it simply means that in his party there are going to be a heap of candidates who would like his job. Just as, of course, there are a heap of Democratic candidates who want to run against him. Which means that his party will be more factualized (ph), more people will be looking to whether they want to support a candidate other than if he had a vice president who was the heir apparent, it would be much more united behind that candidate. That would not be a consideration as it now becomes with the more splintered Republican Party going off in different directions, favoring different successors to George W. Bush.
KAGAN: Stephen Hess from the Brookings Institution, thank you for your time, sir. Good to see you.
HESS: OK.
KAGAN: Military news for you now. Iraq deployment put on hold. The Pentagon says it will not send a Germany-based army brigade to Iraq right now. The Pentagon says a delay will give commanders time to assess the political and security situation and then decide if more troops are need. The military says the mood does not signal the start of a sizable draw-down. We may hear more about this later today. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will talk with reporters this afternoon. CNN will have live coverage beginning at just after 1:00 Eastern on "Live From" with Kyra Phillips.
To Florida now. There's a state of emergency in place this morning because of raging wildfires. Firefighters are tracking about 50 blazes across the state. Right now rain is falling in some areas but it's not expected to help much over the long term. The situation is especially serious in central Florida around New Smyrna Beach. At least three homes have burned there. Heavy smoke has kept sections of busy I-95 shut down for several days. They've reopened now. The National Guard has troops joining firefighters on the front lines. Joining us now Timber Weller with the Florida Division of Forestry. Good morning.
TIMBER WELLER, FLORIDA DIVISION OF FORESTRY: Good morning.
KAGAN: What's the latest you can tell us on conditions there?
WELLER: Well, the rain has helped a little bit. It will help especially with the mop-up of the existing fires. But we're about seven inches below average. So in the long run it's not going to impact the fire danger greatly. I-95 is open now in Brevard, but it will be closed again tomorrow from 5:00 a.m. til 9:00 a.m.
KAGAN: With such a big rain deficit, it sounds like this is going to be an ongoing situation.
Brevard, Yes. Until our rainy season kicks in and we get, you know, widespread rain, it's going to be a problem. Particularly when the first thunderstorms come through, they tend to start a lot of lightning fires. So we're geared up for the long run.
KAGAN: Our Meteorologist Chad Myers has been watching these fires from our Weather Center and wants to joins us.
Chad.
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: It appears, Timer, that we really didn't get a lot of rain up by the New Smyrna Beach area like really we would have hoped up here. But a lot of the rain came down in Hillsdale County, also back to Orlando. There were fires in this area yesterday as well, were there not?
WELLER: Indeed. In the Lakeland area they had a 450-acre fire that forced the road closure of I-75. It actually jumped that highway. Also closed Highway 301 and forced the evacuation of 200 houses.
MYERS: Now an inch or an inch and a half that mother nature can put down over the entire county is so much more relevant than a couple of firefighters with hoses out there. This really has to be looking up for the people there today, right?
WELLER: Certainly. Yes, an inch of rain over one acre is about 24,000 gallons and that's (INAUDIBLE).
MYERS: Could you say that again? We cut out there on the cell phone.
WELLER: An inch of rain over a one-acre area equals about 24,000 gallons of water.
MYERS: Wow. So that's a pretty good -- it takes a while to pump that much water on the fire, wouldn't it?
WELLER: Indeed. The helicopters can carry (INAUDIBLE) that much water. KAGAN: Sounds like we might be losing his call a little bit, Chad, but we did get the good information out of there. That was Timber Weller from the Florida Division of Forestry.
Chad, we let him go or we lost the call before I could ask him, is that your real name, Timber, and you work for the Department of Forestry.
MYERS: I know. I think his nickname is Tim but, yes, it's kind of ironic, is it not?
KAGAN: Yes, Tim. Or his good friends call him twig. I don't know.
MYERS: Or stick.
KAGAN: What other kind of weather information do you have for us today?
(WEATHER REPORT)
KAGAN: As we move ahead, you can build savings at a regular old- fashioned bank. At a fuel bank, you cash in with a withdrawal.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm putting in 8.5 gallons. It cost me $8.41. So that's where I buy gas.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KAGAN: More smiles per gallon ahead on CNN LIVE TODAY.
And a journey comes to a close. Riders paying tribute to the flight crew members lost on 9/11. It's a ride to remember and we're there for the conclusion. We were there at the beginning. When CNN LIVE TODAY returns.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAGAN: And now to some shocking pictures out of Sudan. We saw these much of the day yesterday here on CNN. Our own reporter, Nic Robertson, was caught in the middle as tensions boiled over into chaos, confusion and fear. It shows how quickly violence can erupt in the region. The people of Sudan's Darfur region have known nothing but bloodshed, brutality and heart ache over the past three years. Here's Nic Robertson's report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): What's happening? What's happening?
It began with a misunderstanding.
What's happening? I don't know. They're suspecting him to be a government spy.
Keep driving! Keep driving!
Rapidly escalating into an all-out attack. An aid agency translator fleeing an angry crowd seeks sanctuary in our vehicle. They want to kill him.
We're escaping from the heart of one of Darfur's oldest and biggest displacement persons camps where tensions have been rising.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Drive! Drive! Drive. Just drive!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!
ROBERTSON: Just keep going!
I don't know exactly what happened back there but suddenly the crowd got very angry with the man sitting next to me in this car now. They came after the car. They came after him with knives. They were beating the car with sticks, throwing rocks at it. The only thing we were able to do was drive out. And we literally drove out through some of the people's houses there.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Welcome, welcome USA!
ROBERTSON: Only moments earlier the situation had been entirely different.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: USA!
ROBERTSON: The U.N.'s top humanitarian relief representative, Jan Egeland, had been touring Kalma (ph) camp to cheers of support for the United States and the international community. And calls they sent troops to protect the people in the camp from their own government.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Really the government just (INAUDIBLE) are making many problems with us.
ROBERTSON: But beneath the surface in this, one of the oldest and largest camps in Darfur, there were tensions. Many of the camp's resident were angry with the new peace deal between the Sudanese government and rebels. They support a rebel leader who has yet to sign on to the deal and don't trust those who have.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Its brought them the money so that you wanted to sell our cases (ph). This case is going to selling. So this is not the way.
JAN EGELAND, U.N. EMERGENCY RELIEF COORDINATOR: I really appeal to you as leaders to work very closely with us as aid organizations to control tensions.
ROBERTSON: When the mood has still been calmed, Egeland appealed to camp leaders to help keep tensions in the wake of the peace deal down. But he was already fighting another battle at the camp. Sudanese government officials had stopped an international aid group from running the camp. Fragmenting the camp's delicate, tribal, political and age-related power balance in a bid, U.N. officials say, to remove rebel influence and run the camp themselves.
For the U.N., convincing the Sudanese government to let the international community run this camp again is a fundamental issue. They say it's important to show there is willingness to cooperate with the international community.
Once the attack happened, though, dealing with those subtleties became secondary. Egeland and his entourage left in a hurry to avoid attack.
On our journey to safety, we debated whether to seek refuge with peacekeepers from the African Union, the AU. We decided to head for the town and the U.N. office. The translator, who had been targeted by the angry crowd, began to calm and tell his story. He says the crowd thought he praised the country's president who they hate.
Back in the security of the U.N. office, Egeland and other journalists traveling with us reviewed the tape to see what happened. Egeland, not surprised, frustrations in the camp had turned to violence.
EGELAND: In Kalma (ph) camp, 90,000 people have been there now, some of them for two or three years. They have lost everything and they are terribly impatient and here is a peace deal and they want an international force on the ground immediately.
ROBERTSON: It wasn't until just before the flight back to the capital Khartoum, Egeland learned the extent of those tensions. An African Union, AU peacekeepers translator, was killed at the same camp just hours after Egeland's aborted visit.
EGELAND: According to the head of the African Union force who came to tell the sad news to me, one of their Sudanese local interpreters being attacked by the mob. This person was killed by the mob.
ROBERTSON: The attackers had wanted blood and they got it.
Nic Robertson, CNN, Kalma Camp, Sudan.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAGAN: Actor George Clooney and his father, Nick Clooney, recently went to Darfur. We're going to be talking with Nick Clooney on "Live From." Kyra Phillips will have the opportunity to do that. So see that at 1:00 p.m. Eastern.
As we move on, these shoes put the pedal to the metal.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Over the sidewalk. She's struck a light pole. CSB (ph) unit's going to pivot now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KAGAN: Shoe thieves make a run for it. Rather the cops run into them. LIVE TODAY keeps rolling on.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAGAN: The markets have been open close to an hour now. Not a lot of movement. You can see the Dow is barely moving. It's down less than a point. The Nasdaq is in negative territory. It is down 9 points. Make that 10.
Such a deal. How would you like to gas up for just a buck or two a gallon? Well, you could if you thought ahead and saved at the fuel bank. And some would tell you it's not too late to cash in before the next surge. Here now is reporter Boyd Huppert of KARE Television in Minnesota.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NORM HANNAN (ph): $1,300, yeah, I wrote out a check.
BOYD HUPPERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): Norm Hannan can still remember the chill last fall when he informed his wife he purchased $1,300 worth of gasoline.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE, NORM HANNAN'S WIFE: The only problem I had was that we didn't discuss it first.
NORM HANNAN: And I said, honey, you know, I just know gas prices are going to go up.
HUPPERT: Today Norm's pumping his gas for $1.68 while everyone else pays a dollar more.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And now I have to admit he really did a great job.
JIM FENEIS, FIRST FUEL BANKS: Gasoline is up a penny 49.
HUPPERT: Jim Feneis isn't exactly in the business of saving marriages, but he has to admit he's making a lot of people happy these days.
FENEIS: It sure feels good. It certainly does.
HUPPERT: His St. Cloud based First Fuel Banks allows customers to buy gasoline on the futures market, pumping it at yesterday's prices today.
JOHN MCDOWELL (ph): And people are really smart. Well, especially when you're save something dollars.
HUPPERT: With a fleet of 50 trucks, John McDowell bought 50,000 gallons of gas at First Fuel Banks in the spring. That $1.96 a gallon purchase is now saving his roof and heating and air conditioning company $3,000 a month.
MCDOWELL: That's at today's prices. And if they keep going up, we'll just save all that much more.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I called in yesterday for $100 worth on my account.
HUPPERT: Based on brisk recent sales, customers are convinced gas prices aren't done going up. The fact is, more people are buying First Fuel Bank futures at today's price of $2.54 a gallon than they were at $1.54.
FENEIS: But people are funny. They want to buy it after it goes up.
HUPPERT: People are funny, but Larry Baron (ph) is the one doing the laughing.
LARRY BARON: Probably bought, oh, three years ago. Something like that. I put in about $3,000 worth into it and I bought it for 98 cents a gallon.
HUPPERT: With half that gas still left, imagine the pleasure Larry gets showing his receipts to his friends.
BARON: So I put in 8.5 gallons. It cost me $8.41. So that's where I buy gas.
HUPPERT: Larry Baron, laughing all of the way to the fuel bank.
BARON: Yes. Like it! Best interest I ever got on my money.
HUPPERT: Boyd Huppert, KARE 11 News, St. Cloud.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAGAN: They are smiling indeed. Then there's this reaction. A protest with horsepower.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is Texas. I ride my horse if I have to.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KAGAN: This Texan accepts higher tax price, not with a whimper, but with a whinny, ahead on CNN's LIVE TODAY.
But first you're going to meet a couple of shoppers who are head over heels and in a hurry to make tracks. Police say a pair of San Diego area women took some hot Italian shoes for a ride and along the way police cruiser had to dodge spiked heels flying at their windshields. Phil Blower from our affiliate KFMB has the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) PHIL BLOWER, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): Police say 31- year-old Jennifer Glosia (ph) walked into the Rangoni shoe store on Sunday to exchange a $160 pair of shoes and a $200 purse for cash. Those items had been stolen from a vehicle parked in the store's lot last week. Glosia also managed to try on a pair of $140 Anne Cline (ph) shoes while she waited. Alert employees called police. An officer held her car keys as she retrieved her I.D. from her Honda Civic. Instead, Glosia locked the car, pull out a spare key and sped off with 35-year-old Angela Perreaulta (ph) in the passenger seat.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just relax, fellas, she's not going to get away.
BLOWER: A 20-minute pursuit began from La Jolla to El Cajon before both women were taken into custody.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) device. Did she throw something out of the vehicle? Throwing looks like paperwork or something out of the vehicle.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, it was a shoes out the window (INAUDIBLE).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) go back and look for the shoe.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She actually did take this exit.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have a (INAUDIBLE) is taking Greenfield (ph) exit.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. Over the sidewalk. She's struck a light pole. CHP units going to pivot now.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. (INAUDIBLE).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. CHP unit has pivot at Greenfield.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wow, that was fast.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAGAN: Whoa. All right. Well reporters asked one police officer if the spiked heals were stilettos. Throw something at a windshield at 60 or 70 miles an hour, he says it doesn't really matter. They are gone.
Ahead, a crazed attacker with an ax.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What was going through my mind at that point is, we are -- this is a single individual, a psycho, who is murdering us in this campground.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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