Economic Worries Sink President's Approval; Thousands Rush for Federal Housing Aid in Atlanta; Bringing Our Heroes Home
KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. It's Thursday. It is August 12th today. Glad you're with us on this AMERICAN MORNING. I'm Kiran Chetry.</s>JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you. I'm John Roberts. Thanks so much for being with us. Lots to talk about this morning. Let's get you right to it. It feels like we just went in reverse. Wall Street waking up in the red for the year. The markets and bad economic news from around the world now becoming a major problem politically for the White House, which may have mistakenly said this was the summer of recovery. Ed Henry has got some brand new poll numbers for us this morning.</s>CHETRY: Ten thousand people were expected. Three times that number turned out, waiting in line for days to sign up for public housing in suburban Atlanta. The crowd surging caused a panic. Dozens of people were injured and police in riot gear had to come to restore order.</s>ROBERTS: And a CNN exclusive, the search for hundreds of Marines lost in battle. Their bodies left behind after a bloody massacre. World War II heroes forgotten until now. We'll take you to a tiny island in the Pacific, Tarawa, where soldiers have returned to the scene of the battle to bring our fallen heroes home.</s>CHETRY: And the amFIX blog is up and running. Join the live conversation. Just go to CNN.com/am</s>FIX. ROBERTS: First, down arrows and bad vibes, a general feeling that we are going in the wrong direction the morning after a dreadful day on Wall Street. The Dow will try to bounce back the day after a 265 point-plunge on Wednesday, a sell-off that put Wall Street in the red for 2010.</s>CHETRY: Yes, the numbers are sinking President Obama's approval rating as well. Still, he is insisting that the worst of the recession is over. Ed Henry is live for us at the White House. The problem for the administration seems to be that many people certainly don't feel that way.</s>ED HENRY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, Kiran. A lot of anxiety all across the country and is reflected in this new NBC/"Wall Street Journal" poll that's got some really bad numbers for the president. You know, they say here that they do not govern by polls but these numbers can hardly be ignored. For example, finding the president's approval rating at just 47 percent, disapproval at 48 percent, pretty much in line with what recent CNN polling has found. But more worrisome for this White House perhaps is that six in 10 Americans, including 83 percent of those all important independent voters that went with Barack Obama in 2008, six in 10 now saying that they are only somewhat or not confident that the president has the policies to improve the economic situation. That's why once again yesterday the president was here at the White House trying to deal with this issue.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So, while we have fought back from the worst of this recession, we've still got a lot of work to do. We've still got a long way to go. And I'm more determined than ever to do every single thing we can to hasten our economic recovery and get our people back to work. So that's why I'm pleased today to sign into law a bill that will strengthen American manufacturing and American jobs.</s>HENRY: But obviously, they're fully aware here at the White House even signing that manufacturing bill into law, it's not going to have necessarily a major impact in the short term that's going to please a lot of Americans. In this NBC/"Wall Street Journal" poll, for example, two-thirds of Americans say the economy has still not hit bottom. That is obviously very worrisome for this White House, John and Kiran.</s>ROBERTS: Sixty percent of respondents also said the country is going in the wrong direction. And when you look at this as traditionally being a time when people start to really firm up their opinions of who they're going to vote for in the November elections, how does that bode for the White House and the Democratic Party?</s>HENRY: Well, it's very difficult. They're trying to get some rays of hope here. When you look at the results from some of Tuesday's primaries, you know, White House advisers keep pointing to Tuesday night's results in Colorado, for example. The Democratic Senate primary there, you had an incumbent in Michael Bennet that a lot of pundits were sort of saying, you know, he's going to lose, he's in bad shape. He had Andrew Romanoff as the challenger in that Democratic primary. Former President Bill Clinton got behind him. President Obama got behind incumbent Michael Bennet. Bennet in the end pulled it out. And White House advisers believe that's because he had the president behind him saying look, the situation is bad but do you want to go back to the policies of the Republicans that they believe led to all this, or do you want to try to move forward. It's going to take time, but dig out of this. In the end, Michael Bennet did win but that's just one of many, many difficult Senate and House battles ahead. And we're just now just a few weeks away from the midterms. You can feel that intensity just getting hotter by the day, John and Kiran.</s>ROBERTS: Ed Henry for us in Washington this morning. Ed, thanks. So what do you think? Is the government doing enough to fix the economy? Join the live conversation going on right now. Just go to CNN.com/am</s>FIX. CHETRY: If there's any ray of hope for the White House is that people seem just as dissatisfied with the GOP as well in the latest polling.</s>ROBERTS: Nobody is getting good numbers these days.</s>CHETRY: Exactly. Well, also this morning, perhaps another sign of lean economic times. Thousands of people waiting days to get on a waiting list for federally subsidized housing in suburban Atlanta. And there you see pictures of the crowd. Calm turned into chaos when far more people than expected showed up. Some 30,000, three times more than officials in East Point, Georgia, had planned for.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They should have let us know something, a time, when to be here. Some people have been here since Sunday morning, Monday morning. This is ridiculous.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This was unorganized, completely unorganized.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't have housing for my kids.</s>CHETRY: Well, despite the problems, the East Point Housing Authority says that 13,000 families did receive applications.</s>ROBERTS: Two days after suspended flight attendant Steven Slater had his now legendary on-the-job meltdown, his possibly soon-to-be former employer is showing that it has a sense of humor. JetBlue issued a statement that reads in part, quote, "While this episode may feed your inner office space, we just want to take this space to recognize our 2,300 fantastic, awesome and professional in-flight crew members for delivering the JetBlue experience that you have come to expect of us." The man of the hour is also speaking out, albeit reluctantly.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just what? What do you have to say to all the people that are saying you're a hero?</s>STEVEN SLATER, JETBLUE FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Oh, it's so encouraging and so special, and there's some really great people out there and I'm getting a glimpse of that. It's a surprise because obviously I've been away for a little while. So to come back to that has been really --</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What about your mom? Your mom was so sweet yesterday. She talked to some folks.</s>SLATER: She's a wonderful woman. She's a wonderful woman.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She said that you may have just had a little breakdown.</s>SLATER: I can't go there right now.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. A lot of people --</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you do us a favor, please?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He answered your questions.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.</s>SLATER: That's about as far as I can go.</s>ROBERTS: Right. But another passenger on the flight is telling "The Wall Street Journal" it was Slater who started the confrontation, not the passenger, whose luggage hit Slater in the head.</s>CHETRY: Always nice to hear from him, though.</s>ROBERTS: Yes.</s>CHETRY: Seems so amiable.</s>ROBERTS: This is going to go on for a while longer, I think. New this morning, a memorial service for former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens set for Monday in Anchorage. Investigators still trying to determine why his plane crashed into a mountain on Monday in remote southwest Alaska. An autopsy on Stevens should be completed today. Four people who survived the crash have not been interviewed yet, so it's still not known whether Stevens and four others were killed on impact or if they perished waiting for help to arrive.</s>CHETRY: A manhunt under way in Arkansas this morning for a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde. Law enforcement officials are searching for a couple suspected of robberies after a prison break in Arizona. U.S. Marshals say that John McCluskey and his alleged accomplice, Casslyn Welch, are cousins as well as lovers and that they have likely changed their appearance and are extremely unpredictable.</s>ROBERTS: Some good news from Louisiana. Officials there have made an arrest in the so-called grand dad bandit case. The FBI says their suspect, 52-year-old Michael Francis Mara, was arrested at his home in Baton Rouge after a six-hour standoff and that a tip led to the suspect's several -- led to the suspect's serial bank robber's arrest. He's wanted in at least 25 bank heists in 13 states.</s>CHETRY: And a roofer in New Brunswick, Canada had a close call saved by his safety harness. CBC reporting that the man slipped on some rotted wood, fell and was left dangling about four stories above a paved driveway. Thank goodness for that safety harness. He was hanging there until firefighters were able to come, arrived and get him down safely.</s>ROBERTS: A 70-year-old golf legend Jack Nicklaus opened his newest course on the shores of Lake Michigan yesterday, playing a charity match with Arnold Palmer, Johnny Miller and Tom Watson. Check out Jack on the 10th green showing he's still got it. One more glorious, glorious moment from the golden bear. Watch this.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There you go.</s>ROBERTS: Yes, sir. From 100 feet. Shades of 1986 at Augusta all over again. Afterward, Jack was asked how he managed to sink that long uphill snaking putt. His three-word answer, pure freaking luck. But don't forget, he designed the course, so he knows how the greens are lined (ph). Right?</s>CHETRY: He was also being humble. That was quite a shot. Eight-and-a-half minutes after the hour. Let's get a check of this morning's weather headlines. Rob Marciano, that's all in a day's work for you as well. Right? You can sink that thing.</s>ROB MARCIANO, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Oh, yes.</s>CHETRY: Up to --</s>MARCIANO: Hundred feet -- hit the back of the cup, move it back a couple of feet and then drop it straight down. That's the way we do it, baby. Good morning, guys. A couple of things. You know what? Remember tropical depression number five yesterday, it just completely fizzled. I mean, not completely. There's still some rain showers and some waves, 12-foot waves out there by the well site so it's slowing things down there. The other issue, of course, is the heat and then the amount of water that Iowa has seen over the past couple of months has really done some damage. And we're looking at record-breaking flooding in some parts of that state. Ames, Iowa, has shut down the drinking water for maybe as much as seven days for 50,000 people. People having to move to higher ground there. That's about 30 miles north of Des Moines. And then down river from Maine is in Colfax, folks moving to high ground as well. Not a whole lot of rain expected today but the searing heat as these people wait for the waters to recede there and clean up in their homes. A little bit of relief from the heat in the coming days, but a number of heat advisories and heat warnings out again for the same spots. D.C. almost touched 100 yesterday, guys, so it continues to be a warm summer. We'll talk more weather in about 30 minutes. Back to you.</s>CHETRY: All right.</s>ROBERTS: Thanks, Rob, we'll see you then.</s>MARCIANO: OK, guys.</s>ROBERTS: Coming up, embattled New York Congressman Charlie Rangel facing a bunch of ethics violations but feeling the love at the same time at a combination fund-raiser and 80th birthday party last night. We'll tell you who showed up to celebrate just ahead. Ten minutes now after the hour.