contact with mission control here on earth. >> if you can hear us please keep talking to us. even if you don't hear us you should talk. >> reporter: we will tell you exactly what happened coming up next. a motorcycleist trapped under a burning car speaks out for the first time thanking the bystanders who stepped in to describe his life. he will describe the harrowing moments before his rescue and how he thought he would never make it out alive "early" this friday, september 16th, 2011. captioning funded by cbs good morning. welcome to "the early show" on a friday morning. i'm chris wragge. >> i'm erica hill. good friday. not a day too soon. a new indication of just how frustrated voters are with washington. president obama's job approval rating is reaching all-time low, but he is still miles ahead of congress when you look at the numbers. a cbs news/"the new york times" poll out just morning shows only 12% of americans say congress is doing a good job. that is the worst showing in the history of our polling. joining us now, cbs news chief washington correspondent and host of "face the nation" bob schieffer. we have been watching the numbers go down all year long. were you surprised by that 12%? >> i've never heard of anything like this. this is extraordinary. the folks at the white house have been gloom and doom over there about how the president's approval rating, i think in the latest gallup poll is down to 39%. but my heavens! he is 20 points ahead of the members of congress! only 12% approval rating? i've never heard of anything. i think probably car thieves have higher approval rating in their local community. this has to be a shot across the bough for every elected official. people are fed up. >> they are. it was 17% earlier this year. you wonder when the wake-up call will come through. the polling also asked respondents which party they approved of. taking a look at the numbers you see there, the democrats actually have a slight edge over republicans when it comes to the approval numbers. does that surprise you at all? >> really no. i mean, and i'm not sure there is that much difference. there must be some sort of margin of error there. people are just fed up with all of them and that is what this under $lines. one number i saw only 6% think that members of congress deserve re-election. when you're in that kind of territory, i've never heard of a poll that had a minus in it but we may go below zero here. >> we were joking in the newsroom that may be what we see next a minus figure. taking a look forward. we have been focusing on campaign 2012 that gets into full swing here. look at some of the front runners among the republicans how do you think they would fare especially what we have seen in response to the american people in response to this latest poll? >> one thing we should underline, it is very very early. it is a long way from election day of 2012 but what you're seeing now in the republican party, i mean, republicans have been very dissatisfied with their own field and i think that was reflected by sort of the mediocre rise of rick perry when he got into the race. here you had basically mitt romney who was the front-runner for about two years now. then perry announces and, suddenly he gets 10 points or 15 points ahead of mitt romney. then we saw in the most recent debate, rick perry finding out what it's like to be the front-runner. they cut on him pretty good. the republican race is far from set. i guess you have to say right now that perry and romney are the front runners, but, you know michele bachmann is still in there and the way that race is going i think, frankly, anything could happen there. >> leave it interesting the next few months. bob schieffer in washington thanks. join bob on "face the nation," where his guest will be former president bill clinton and former vice president deck cheney. last night's execution of dwayne buck halted by the u.s. supreme court with a few hours to spare. the case is drawing new attention to presidential contender rick perry for support of the death penalty. cbs news political correspondent jan crawford has more for us from washington. this plays into both of your wheel houses because you covered the supreme court a number of years. gives us the overview of this decision. why is it so important and how did it come about? j my time the justices step in and grant a last-minute reprieve is a dramatic moment. buck attorneys are asking to set aside his death sentence. they say he was more dangerous to society because he was black, they say that violated his constitutional rights and asking for a new sentencing hearing. erica, no question of bucks' guilt. he admitted he murdered his girlfriend and another man in 1995. the only issue here is whether he will live or die. >> we mentioned this is a texas case. the home state of rick perry, now a republican presidential contender. has he spoken out at all on this ruling now from the supreme court? >> reporter: we haven't heard from governor perry yet on this. he, obviously, refused to grant buck a new hearing. it came up in last week's republican debate. not this case but the issue in general, he said he never struggled with the issue of death penalty because he says texas has a thoughtful and clear process in place. then the 11 years he has been governor perry rah presided over 235 executions. obviously, like you said this is getting a lot of attention because he is running for president. but, erica, i just don't see this being an issue in the republican primary. most americans, about 70% of americans support the death penalty and there is no way you're going to have another republican candidate arguing, you know, rick perry is too tough on those cold-blooded killers. i don't see it coming up or hurting him in the primary. it may be an issue if he were to win the primary and go on to the general election he has to appeal to a broad base but not at this particular time. >> jan crawford in washington this morning, thanks. check in with jeff glor. he has a check of the other morning headlines for us. >> good morning. battle for libya may be entering its end game. rebel forces on attack two of the last strongholds for troops loyal to moammar gadhafi. elizabeth palmer is in the libyan capital this morning. >> reporter: good morning, jeff. fierce fighting going on in both of those bast i don't knowtowns. sirte, a fight and then the assault by the rebels began slowly last night and picking up this morning with maybe thousands of rebels rushing to the aid of those forces that were already ringing in towns. they have been there for two weeks through periods of sporadic fighting and then some talks to try to negotiate surrender, but this just does look like it may be some kind of final assault. the rebels are meeting enormously fierce resistance from the gadhafi loyalists and using anything from snipers to long-range artillery and nobody knows how much civilians left in the two settlements but guess there may be tens of thousands of them. jeff? >> liz, thank you. a short time ago, we spoke with nato secretary-general anners fogh rasmussen and asked him how important it is to capture gadhafi. >> well, he's not part of our operation. we are in libya to protect the civilian population against any attack. i think we are in the very final phase of that operation, but neither gadhafi nor any other individual are targets of our operation. >> rasmussen said nato will continue its operations in libya as long as necessary. three crew members from the international space station are safe this morning and back on earth after some scary moments as they return in a russian soyuz capsule. the capsule came down on target but russia's mission control had lost communications with the craft prompting serious concerns whether it had been lost during re-entry. >> if you can hear us, please keep talking to us. or even if you don't hear us, you should talk. >> the returning spacemen including one american they are now safe and beginning their recover from six months in weightlessness. a hurricane warning is up this morning for parts of coastal canada. hurricane maria is the third hurricane of the season. it's in the atlantic ocean off new england right now. headed for new foundland. it will not affect the u.s. in ocean city, maryland a funnel cloud possibly a tornado, was spotted yesterday. take a look at this. there was some minor damage to buildings and vehicles. but it did not touch down. there was record flooding in tucson, arizona. heavy rain inundated the streets yesterday as you can see. the city broke a september record for monsoon rainfall with 5 1/2 inches so far. in garland, texas, the extreme drought is being blamed for a crack in a lawn that trapped a 1-month-old puppy. listen to him. rescuers wet the ground to loosen the dirt there. and they got him out. took about 40 minutes but we are told the little guy is safe this morning and his owner may name him lucky. 11 minutes past the hour chances are you've noticed the price of just about everything is on the rise. and along with it foreclosures unemployment also up. >> expectations are down that things will get better any time soon. cbs news economic correspondent rebecca jarvis is here with a look at the latest numbers and hopefully a silver lining somewhere. >> just call me doctor at this point. >> not a lot of good news out there. seems like everything we buy now, prices are on the rise. how much more are we actually paying for everything out there? >> you see how vulnerable the consumer is right now and we talk how important the consumer is because we drive the american economy. prices we pay are rising up 0.4% in august. if you compare this year to last year, the things that you pay for groceries, for gasoline is up 3.8% and this is a difficult thing because the price of things that we need but don't own, is rising. where is the price of things that we own? for example, our homes, our 401(k)s, that is dropping. and it feels like to people out there, you know, anything that i need to get my hands on it's more expensive and anything that i have my hands on is decreasing in value. >> you talk about the decrease on things we own and housing is such a key part of this economic crisis that we are in right now. the mortgage crisis that we saw, foreclosures are on the rise. >> yeah. foreclosures up massively in august, up 33%, a huge number. the reason that we care about foreclosures -- by the way, the biggest gain in four years -- the reason we care so much about foreclosures they are a drag on prices even further. when prices go down it is generally speaking due to two factors. our psychology and jobs and then foreclosures. because foreclosures just drag them down overall. >> front page of "the times" still the interest in the problems in europe. keep making their way here to this country. i think when people see it they think european banks is one thing. at least we are not talking about american banks but we are all in this together right? >> it is such a globalized picture now. the problems you hear about greece and italy facing in terms of their debt problems are ours as well. two reasons. first off you see it reflected in stocks. the headline risk sow there. when they have a bad headline we see it impact our stocks. second of all, their lending. the european banks lend to american companies. those american companies can turn around and hire or not hire if they can get their hands on the money. if those european banks fall and concern they might they have less access. our american companies will have less access to loans from those banks and, as a result of that you could see hiring actually decrease. that was the problem here in the united states in our own credit crisis three years ago when lehman brothers by the way, fell yesterday three years ago. >> the last thing you need is to see a decrease in hiring. we know there isn't a lot of hiring happening right now to begin with. >> exactly. >> dr. june thank you. >> don't check in any time soon. a cruise ship is close to tipping over this morning after a fire killed two crew members and forced 260 people to be evacuated. crews are trying to pump water out of the ship to keep it upright. joining us from norway is mary lou kerm an american passenger who had to be evacuated from the ship. mary lou, good morning. i know this is a wild 24-hour period for you. but at what point when you first found out the captain made the announcement over the loud speaker there was something wrong with the ship at what point did you know something was seriously wrong? >> we had just gone back to our cabin after breakfast. we were hanging my purse up and our jackets and our lights went out. my husband opened the door and black smoke was rolling down the hallway and, at that moment the captain said "everyone leave now." >> did you panic at all? at that point, you know there is a fire on board. was there a sense of panic, not only with you and your husband, but with the rest of the passengers? >> it was unbelievably calm. it was wonderful. i think that helped everyone. we were calm on the deck. we were calm as we were helping each other get our life jackets on. and the crew helped us get into the life boats quite rapidly. it was amazing. i took some pictures of people as we were sitting in the life boat and they were just sitting like they were just talking with their friends. >> yeah. was it a bit surreal to know you're on this pleasure cruise this vacation and, all of a sudden, the ship is on fire and you're being evacuated onto life boats? >> i think it all happens so quickly, that, yes, it was surreal. i'm sure people had lots of mixed emotions, but there was no panic shown. it was -- it was very good. >> got it. now you're a long way from arkansas. any side how you're going to get back home and when you can get back home? >> yes. luckily, we are with a tour. we're not on our own and so that company is going to see to getting us safely back home. >> okay. we wish you the best and thank you for taking a few moments to speak with us. we know it's a crazy 24 hours for you but we're glad you're safe and thank you so much and best to your husband hal as well. mary lou kerm thank you so much. >> good-bye. good to see that they are doing okay. >> it is very good to see they are okay this morning. >> very scary but sounds everybody stayed calm and did what they had to do. still ahead, casey anthony's new troubles. police are now sending her a big bill for the lies she told about the disappearance of her daughter. >> we will take a look at that and how she could actually pay it back. this motorcycle rider caught under a car knows how lucky he is. this video, no matter how many times you see it still grabs you. this morning, you will hear from that man as he says thank you to the many people who helped save his life. this is "the early show" on cbs. 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[ woman speaking italian ] [ male announcer ] in here, everyone speaks the same language. ♪ ♪ in here, cars call mechanics before you do. ♪ ♪ [ radio chatter, siren wails ] pass me to the patient, please. [ male announcer ] in here, doctors see you before you get to the hospital. no, we didn't pass it. yeah, pull up the map. [ male announcer ] in here, friends leave you messages written in the air. that's it right there. ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] it's the at&t network... a network of possibilities... and what's possible in here is almost impossible to say. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [ woman ] we didn't know where to go next with eric's adhd. his stimulant medicine was helping but some symptoms were still in his way. so the doctor kept eric on his current medicine and added nonstimulant intuniv to his treatment plan. [ male announcer ] for some children like eric adding once-daily nonstimulant intuniv to their stimulant has been shown to provide additional adhd symptom improvement. don't take if allergic to intuniv, its ingredients or taking other medicines with guanfacine, like tenex. intuniv may cause serious side effects, such as low blood pressure low heart rate fainting, and sleepiness. intuniv may affect the ability to drive or use machinery. other side effects include nausea, tiredness trouble sleeping, stomach pain, and dizziness. tell the doctor about your child's medicines and medical conditions, including heart, liver or kidney problems. [ woman ] adding intuniv helped eric. [ male announcer ] ask the doctor about once-daily nonstimulant intuniv. 25 past 7:00. a lot of sunshine. also a cool, crisp morning. sharon gibala has the commute for you. marty bass first morning weather. it's about 19 to 21 degrees chillier right now than at this time yesterday. 67 degrees the high. it's going to be a partly sunny day. dinner time temperatures start the weekend off friday night. 60, maybe 59 degrees. let's head over to sharon gibala, wjz 13 traffic control. an