those are today's top stories. thank you so much for watching "state of the union." we want to remind you once again to tune in tomorrow night at 8:00 p.m. eastern for cnn's republican primary debate live from new hampshire and we hope you'll join us next week when our guests will be outgoing defense secretary robert gates. up next for our viewers here in the united states, "fareed zakaria gps."

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this is "gps" the global public square. i'm fareed zakaria. first up we'll take our first look at the 2012 presidential race. we'll analyze the gop field, what are the issues that will dominate the election. then events in pakistan often seem like fiction, the wonderful journalist david ignatius has written a spy novel set in that country. how much of it is true. next up, i'll look deep inside the psyche of the emerging global power china, with the man who perhaps knows it best, dr. henry kissinger, and finally, how does president obama go from heads and shoulders above chancellor merkel to just about even? we'll show you. now here's my take.

those of you who watched the show last week know that i talked about the need to tackle america's unemployment crisis, 24 million americans unemployed or underemployed. well, i'm going to talk about this again, because it really is the crucial problem underlying all others. president obama has proposed a number of specific policies to tackle the jobs crisis but they have gone nowhere because republicans say that their top concern is the deficit and debt. well, those of you worried about the debt, i should say those of us because i would strongly include myself, let's please remember if unemployment doesn't go down fast, the deficit is going to get much worse. if you're serious about deficit reduction the single most important factor that will shrink it is to have working people and paying taxes. i want to focus on one of obama's proposals. it would add little to the deficit, it has some republican supporters and would have an

immediate effect on boosting employment and growth and it's good for the country anyway it. we need a national infrastructure bank to repair and rebuild america's crumbling infrastructure. the house majority leader eric cantor has played down this proposal as more stimulus but if republicans set aside ideology they'd actually see this as an opportunity to push for two of their favorite ideas, privatization and the elimination of earmarks. that's why republicans like kay bailey hutchinson and chuck hagel are in favor of such a bank. the united states builds its infrastructure in a remarkably socialist manner. the government funds builds and operates almost all of american insfra structure. in europe and asia the private sector plays a larger role in finances and operating roads, highways, railroads, airports as well as other public resources. a bank would create a mechanism

by which you could have private sector participation. yes, there would be some public money involved, mostly through issuing bonds but with interest rates at historic lows, this is the time to use those low interest rates to borrow money and rebuild america's insfr instru infrastructures. a national infrastructure bank would address a legitimate complaint of the tea party, earmark spending. one of the reasons federal spending has been inefficient is that congress wants to spread the money around in ways that might make political sense but are economic nonsense. an infrastructure bank would make the decisions using cost benefit analysis in a meritc meritcratic system. let's face it america's infrastructure is in shambles. a decade ago we ranked sixth in

infrastructure in the world according to the world economic forum. today we rank 23rd and dropping. we will not be able to compete with the nations of the world if we cannot fix this problem. is it too much to ask that republicans and democrats find a way to come together on this? that moment of bipartisanship might be the biggest payoff of all. let's get started. election day 2012 is a little more than 500 days away. here to talk about it is global public square panel fulfilling the global part of our mission, british historian and conser conservative andrew roberts author of "the storm of war" just out, krista freeland, eliot

spitzer, cnn's "in the ariia" and former governor of new york state and new to "gps" ann coulter, writer of "demonic." welcome to you all. you'll explain the title later. elliott, you're the only one among us run for dog catcher. is it possible for somebody to enter at this point or is the republican nominee likely to be somebody who has already declared for president? >> if you mean technically declared i include jon huntsman among those characters. if you include huntsman among the names, romney and pawlenty and the lesser candidates who i don't think have a real shot, santorum, palin, gingrich, that is the field, that is probably the universe we'll look at. nobody else has either the name recognition, her man cain will maybe make a dent but nobody else has the name recognition or capacity to launch a campaign. >> giuliani? >> perhaps although i don't

think at the end of the day he does that. i may be wrong about that. >> who do you think? >> someone in the room is not one of those names, chris christie, he could jump in after labor day. part of the reason you don't want to wait too long you lose money. big republican donors, people who want to have influence on the process are already committing generally by this point. they aren't this year because they're hoping chris christie will jump in. if he doesn't declare soon after labor day i suspect early this fall, that money will go to romney. i would predict he will be the nominee if chris christie joins in. >> roll e, if you look at the last 30 years, bush on for the whole 30 years. romney has waited his turn but

the tea party really doesn't like him because of his health care plan. >> that's true. nonetheless, i agree with ann. chris christie would be a tough challenger for romney. absent christie it's hard not to see romney getting it. romney would be a credible candidate. i agree with you fareed there is a tea party issue. fundamentally there's a flip-flop issue, in a way romney as a governor has been i think a better leader than romney as a candidate. and that is his difficulty, how does he persuade people he is actually authentic when so far he's been running against his record of i think some significant accomplishments. >> i presume you hate his accomplishments. >> no. >> the health care plan? >> obviously it isn't just the tea party. conservatives are never wild about the republican candidate with the exception of ronald reagan, we've had a problem with all of them. romneycare definitely

conservatives don't like. >> at the time it was seen as bob dole's health care plan, it was a newt gingrich enthusiastically supported the individual mandate. something changed where people decided if obama likes it, it must be evil. >> no, no, no, no, do not cite newt gingrich as the voice of the republican party. let's take the first vote and we'll find out how right that is. he is according to the media, not according to us. >> the points are well-taken the most articulate reasoned defense of the individual mandate has come from mitt romney over and over again, even his health care speech a few weeks ago as i was listening to him deliver it, wow, he's not running away from this intellectually, i'm not sure if this is smart politics but he's right, it's a conservative notion of it, i think his accomplishments as governor were not insubstantial. in health care he was smart, he compromised, i think the issue

for the republican party is what is the argument they're going to make. as a ceo he can make an argument. >> sorry, i know you haven't spoken yet. the people who like romney's health plan like you are democrats. he needs to get republicans to vote for him. >> clearly. >> that's his problem. >> nobody's mentioned rick perry. he has said he's been making noises now. we're talking about an election which is going to be very strongly based on jobs and 37% of all net new american jobs since the beginning of the recession have happened in texas, that's not his number, that's the federal reserve in texas number. i think it's impossible to just ignore that he might step in as well. >> the argument is that texas has been a low tax, low regulation business friendly state, without union problems. >> it's got very strong tort reform and as you say no state income tax. this is something that's attractive to people at the moment. >> we'll talk about this and

more when we come back. >> no, no, no ronald reagan wouldn't hold war, not part of his taking a keynesian approach. >> it would be nice if your statement were true. [ male announcer ] megared omega-3 krill oil from schiff.

unlike fish oil, megared softgels are small and easy to swallow with no fishy smell or aftertaste. try megared today. we are back with our star-studded panel, eliot spitzer, krista freeland, andrew roberts and ann coulter, both andrew roberts and ann coulter out with new books. andrew, let me ask you, your book is about leadership, about world war ii. when you look at all this, do you think that it's the moment of terrible crisis in a sense, the economies of the western world are not doing well, are there people who stand out for you as great leaders? do you think david cameron in

your home country is -- >> david cameron is a very impressive man and he has the ability to be a great leader, well in order to be a great leader you pretty much always kneeled a war, it's a terrible thing to have to say but -- >> we've got three of hem, we can give him one. >> we started one and you're coming in slightly late. president roosevelt had depression and a war so in a sense he was lucky in that regard. >> double lucky. >> no, with regard to the great world leaders of the second world war we have roosevelt and churchill, de gaulle stand head and shoulders above the rest. today when one looks around the world it would be easier for the west if you didn't have the looming threat of china coming up to tread on everybody's toes. >> elliott, you write that you wish obama were more rooseveltian in your comments. >> absolutely. >> you need to see a much more

unapologetic defensive government and defensive -- >> i think it worked. i think again, just so it's clear, before ann starts jumping up and down, i actually believe keynes works. something the tea party may not agree with and i think the president needs to defend not just in the context of the auto bailout, easy to point to gn and chrysler and say what we accomplished but the entire economy would have been so much worse, the implosion of both confidence, the financial system, job creation would have been devastated had we not put in place that cushion of the stimulus package. you're arguing counter intuitive, it would have been worse but for, but it's economically beyond question and i think the president now at this moment of intense weakness lack of job creation, needs to bring all of this oratorical says here is what the record shows us. the british economy is not

faring terribly well because of the cuts. there is a certain mathematical reality. >> in britain we're trying to deal with the deficits. >> maybe you're doing the wrong thing. >> but he has been elected to try and see this through and he is seeing it through and if he turns out as i believe actually to get away with it, then the anti-keynesian view would turn to be right. this is a classic hierarchyian versus keynesian election. >> every time nothing is done, there is into keynesian spending, the economy recovers and there's a boom, did in the '20s and the '80s. >> did it in the '20s? >> in the '80s, massive increase in defense spending? >> massive cuts in taxes which brought more revenue in. >> keynes was in favor of taxing. never made a particular distinction between government

spending or taxes. his point was you need demand in the economy. stimulate demand. >> no, no, no ronald reagan wouldn't hold war, not part of his taking a keynesian approach to the economy. thank you. >> tax cuts are a keynesian approach. >> your statement would be nice if it were true but it's not. the reality is if you look at the economics and what the impact is of cutting the margin rates, government spending, the incentives to job creation, keynes has been right in terms of understanding, if you sat down and were a business person, making capital aroelections decisions, hiring, you look at the return. right now there's a demand crisis of enormous volume. that's why we need to create demand in the economy to generate things we can buy. >> obama has been following your policy and that's why we have a crisis. >> executives are sitting on $2 trillion of capital. the key to getting that capital back into the economy to hire people is demand for the products being made. there is not a whole lot of

ambiguity in that. >> creating the demand with the stimulus money and oddly enough it hasn't worked. with the businessmen themselves are asking for is release us from taxes. >> the kind of tax cuts mr. pawlenty are talking about are huge tax cuts and indeed cutting back the gdp, the amount spent of gdp from the 24% it is now to the 20% that mr. romney wants or the 18% is going to allow money to come back into the economy through tax cuts. >> explain to me why. people who are sitting on capital right now who are not investing because capital gains rates are 15%, you're saying if you take that 15, they're going to invest when there's no demand for the product? >> there's a lot of money. >> have you ever made, have you been in business? >> not myself no. >> you don't understand how the capital allocation decisions are made. you really don't. >> so how many of president

obama's actual of which he now only has one left, mr. geithner from his original team, they've all moved on, how many actually do business? very 2350u of them, most academics. don't just attack people -- >> what business are you in? you're governor, been in politics your whole like, haranguing us. this is the strangest conversation i've ever seen. >> ann you're making statements completely counter factual. >>. >> there are statements about t that are counter evidence. >> a point of agreement between ann and elliott, i can actually do it. ann's point about the need for the ideologues to keep the party true to its principles is where elliott started talking about barack obama and just for his party and the tragedy for

democrats right now is that barack obama has not been making the strong keynesian democratic case he should be making. >> let me ask, we've got to go but i have to ask ann this, there is a strong case obama has made which is about medicare, and on that issue i want to know whether you think it will work, i know that you wish that he didn't say it and that the democrats took entitlement reform more seriously, i happen to agree with you there. when you ask the american people, are you willing to deal with the budget deficit by cutting medicare, 78% say no. i mean i don't think you get 78% of americans to agree on the time of day. >> it's the utter irresponsibility of former democrats. it's hard to take treats away from people and that's what we've done and democrats set up a ponzi scheme with social security and medicare and it's running out now and yeah, it's hard to take the treats away once you start giving them away which is why it was utterly irresponsible for democrats long

dead and gone to set up systems that could never last. it would be helpful to get democrats to acknowledge the system is about to go bankrupt rather than showing commercials of paul ryan pushing an old lady in a wheelchair off a cliff. >> krista, last word on medicare. >> last word is you are right, this is the single strongest point for the democrats and what it shows actually is that americans don't see successful government programs as "treats" which they are childish for enjoying. they see successful government programs as what the government should be doing. >> a program that's about to go bankrupt is not successful. >> i have also your republican nominee, because i think everyone else here seems to think it will be romney. >> i'm goingor p onow pawlenty. >> i'm christie. >> we have all the bets on the table. we'll have a show to collect. thank you very much. we will be right back. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 absolutely, i mean, these financial services companies

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time now for our "what in the world" segment. what caught my eye this week was an interesting twist in the story we all keep reading about, the rise of china. but this time it's not about china's growing power and confidence but of a china that

realized it might have overplayed its hand and correcting itself. it all played out at a small conference in singapore's fancy shangri-la hotel. first let's go back to 2010 last year. beijing had emerged relatively unscathed from the financial crisis. it had put on the greatest show on earth, the beijing olympics. countries from around the world were courting it like never before. ♪ and then china's confidence turned into overconfidence, even arrogance. in quick succession, beijing picked separate fights around the south china seas with vietnam, the philippines and japan. china angered south korea by not condemning aggression from the north from pyongyang which sunk a south korean ship. all these asian countries have been relatively sanguine about the rise of china. suddenly they began to realize it presented not just economic opportunities a big market for them but challenges, even

threats. so they spoke out against what they saw as chinese bullying and aggression. and they became far more solicitous of america, far more friendly to washington. now this could not have pleased china. this was not the peaceful rise strategy that beijing had long talked about. but chinese officials said little about all this publicly so no one knew if they believed they had overplayed their hand. after all, they could just as easily taken the view that the world was envious and was ganging up on them and that would just bide their time which brings us back to that hotel in singapore. after year for the last ten years the shangri-la dialogue is the place where defense representatives where they meet. it gent liang li.

he said they are purely defensive in nature. we constructed a word cloud around his speech. the words that appear most are biggest. he focused on cooperation, peace and security. the speech was a clear afirms of the peaceful rise strategy. but to hear it from the military which is far more hawkish was something quite new. chinas neighbors were still nervous, at the same summit the defense secretaries from the philippines and vietnam both said they were worried about maritime challenges from other countries. of course, they meant china and their words were bolstered by rare anti-china demonstrations in hanoi and ho chi minh city. u.s. defense secretary robert gates also attended the shangri-la dialogue. the american speech was one of reassurance to china's neighbors. look at gates' word cloud. it shows a focus on commitment,

relationships and talk of a presence in the region. so china pushed too hard, and then drew back. the united states signaled to other asian countries it was not going anywhere. the great game of asian geopolitics has just begun. i have a feeling we're all going to be watching these moves and counter moves for years to come. and we will be right back. >> it's been the case that most cia officers sought what was called official covers and the cia representatives, other official international organizations, that was acceptable when the target you were chasing was soviet diplomats, meet them at cocktail parties, spot them, try to develop them but the targets are so different now. can be taught. ♪ machines have a voice. ♪ medical history follows you. it's the at&t network -- a network of possibilities... committed to delivering

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♪ at great clips, quality and value have never looked more atractive. relax. you're at great clips. hello, i'm deborah feyerick in atlanta with a check of our top stories. the first photos of congresswoman gabrielle giffords taken since her shooting in january were released this morning. there are two of them and they appear on giffords facebook page. the pictures were taken may 17th, the day after the launch of "endeavour" and a day before she had surgery on her skull. we learned today that giffords will leave her rehabilitation facility by the end of this month and begin her outpatient

therapy. delaware police closed their investigation into twitter communications between congressman anthony weiner and a 17-year-old girl. a police spokesman says investigators found nothing to pursue. weiner remains under fire for sending lewd messages to several adult women. tomorrow cnn hosts the new hampshire republican presidential debates at 8:00 p.m. on cnn. join me for more news at the top of the hour. stay with us. spy agencies are the stuff of fantasy and fiction, so it is fitting that one of our best journalists on the spooky world of foreign affairs has used his vast travels and knowledge to write a nafl. "the washington post" columnist david ignatius has followed up his book "body of lies" turned into a hollywood blockbuster with a new offering called "blood money" spans the cia's operations here and the murky world of pakistan's powerful

interservices intelligence. the key really is figuring out where the facts end and where the fiction begins. david ignatius joins me now. i loved this book and i did by the way the other book "the increment" about iran's nuclear program. you really choose these topics, the jump off the front pages. when one's reading it because i know how much you know about the cia and how much time you spent talking to people, i have to believe lots of it is true. >> i don't want to play games with you, my friend, or the reader. i am painting on a canvas of fiction with the colors of life. i have spent lots of time with the isi. i've traveled with them to south waziristan, i've met with their director-general, general pasha, as i said in "time" magazine, i have e-mail correspondence with isi officers so i do know the

life subject and i tried in "blood money" to tell the crazy story about the isi and the cia, often mutually destructive two scorpions in a bottle kind of relationship that they have. that said i do have to say this is a novel. it wouldn't be fun to read if it wasn't reinvented, if it wasn't real life reinvented in the mind of the author. >> let's start with the cia. you've got a cia operation and you have these guys often on their own, often in businesses as fronts. i always thought cia offices were at the embassy, you didn't know who they were you could make againsts about them. is it true there are lots of cia offices around who have covers in private business and trading companies and things like that all over the world? >> it's increasingly true. when you and i were getting started as journalists and the past decades it's been the case

most cia officers sought what was called official covers and the representatives and other international organizations. that was acceptable when the target was soviet diplomats, cocktail parties, spot them, try to develop them but the targets are so different now and so there's a feeling that you need genuinely clandestine platforms. there's been a lot of experimentation in the areas that i'm imagining in my book, in the book i invent this goofy entertainment company based in studio city, california, called the hit parade, a platform for cia officers to do completely secret operations overseas. are they doing that kind of thing? not to the extent that i write in my book but i'm sure they're experimenting with what they call nonofficial cover or noc operations. the problem is they're hard to manage and expensive so there's a big ka gray of naysayers at

langley who say don't do this. >> now pakistan. you paint a picture of the interservices intelligence directorate that from what i can tell is very true to life. in this particular sense, they have lots of connections with all these militant groups, always had them. at some level they don't deny they have them. they say these are elements of pakistani society and yet they are quite reluctant to do anything about them, to shut them off in any way. do you think that that part of the book that you describe is true to life? >> yes. i think that the tragedy of the iss -- isi and arguably of pakistan as a whole is that it's caught in a web that it's spun, with our help, it must be said, that it now can't escape from. it's a web first of connections with jihadi organizations. the isi is, above all, a

paramilitary organization. it doesn't do all that much collection of intelligence. it's not a very good spy agency but it's good as running covert action. >> the general framework of the book is that the cia and the isi are cooperating but the cia is running effectively covert ops with the isi and the isi is allowing the jihadi groups to attack and infill rate the cia and that spider's web seems very well. >> that is drawn from life. the truth is these intelligence services operate against each other. that happens more in real life not just with pakistan. we have a complicated intelligence relationship with france. we have a complicated intelligence relationship with other allies, but there's a way in which the cia and isi both absolutely need each other, and absolutely don't trust each other, and it's been a particularly volatile combination, because they're

always marching in tandem. imagine the situation where one guy is sort of tripping the other, nudging him or up to some kind of horseplay. that's what it's like and i used to think that these two should get a marriage counselor and figure it out. i've given up on that. the reality is intelligence services lie. that's what their job is. these guys will keep lying to each other. they need political control to get them going in the same direction for the national interest is of both countries and if they can do that, i'd have some hope the story will turn out acceptably. >> somebody you know well, general petraeus will move over from the military to head the cia. what would he bring to the agency? what is going on, particularly on the covert operation side? in a sense that will be the most critical part of the mission. running covert operations in pakistan and afghanistan to a lesser extent the yemen. >> interestingly, the pakistanis are afraid of petraeus.

they don't like him. they feel he has a harsher edge than general mcchrystal did. so his appointment was seen as bad news in islamabad. general petraeus has a stronger force of will than any military officer i think i've ever encountered. we saw this in a iraq. he really bent that story around his determination and president bush's. he has had less success frankly in afghanistan. one thing that petraeus is very good at, i've seen this over many years of traveling with him, is using often unlikely back channels. he's good at finding people who can get him access to people in places that are important to him as a commander. it's a skill that's quite unusual and in truth it's a skill that is not found widely in this administration, so i think the ability to be operational, to head out on quiet missions, to meet with

heads of state, heads of other intelligence services, to get business done on that level, i think general petraeus will be quite good at. >> david ignatius, thank you so much, great pook. i thoroughly enjoyed it. >> thank you fareed. >> we will be right back. when you went to china 40 years ago could you have imagined that this nation that you were helping bring in from peasant backwardness would be the principal competitor to the united states? >> it would have been inconseervel. [ artis brown ] america is facing some tough challenges right now. two of the most important are energy security and economic growth. north america actually has one of the largest oil reserves in the world. a large part of that is oil sands. this resource has the ability to create hundreds of thousands of jobs. at our kearl project in canada, we'll be able to produce these oil sands with the same emissions as many other oils and that's a huge breakthrough.

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america's relationship to china can be traced directly back to the work of one man, that man is henry kissinger. almost exactly 40 years ago, kissinger, then the national security adviser, made a secret trip to confer with the chinese. this paved the way for the normalization of relations between communist beijing and washington. so how did we get from there to here? that is the subject of dr. kissinger's new book "on china" and joins me to talk about that nation and much more.

so when you went to china 40 years ago, could you have imagined that you would, that this nation that you were helping bring in from peasant backwardness would be the principal competitor to the united states economically, technologic technologically, about to become the most powerful nation? >> it would have been inconceivable. nobody had any such perception or expectation. >> now, since you opened the door, the relations between the united states and china have been strikingly stable. i mean, we've had lots of variation in almost every other part of the world but if you look at president after president from both parties, and the chinese have also had a pretty stable relationship, which has been basically to try and get america's help in modernizing their economy, tacitly supporting a lot of

american foreign policy. there are lots of people who believe this is all changing now, that the chinese have become powerful, that they are now feeling the confidence, particularly in the wake of the financial crisis, and that you're going to see a new chapter in chinese foreign policy. what do you think? >> there are elements in china who particularly after the financial crisis feel there has been a fundamental shift in the balance of power and that the international conduct of china and the results of its conduct should reflect this, but one shouldn't think that all this is america's fault, because the chinese -- we have been dominant in the last 50 years. they've been dominant in 1,800 of the last 2,000 years and you know, i think america is entering a world in which we are

neither dominant nor can we withdraw but we are still the most powerful country, so how to conduct ourselves in such a world is a huge, it's a huge task for us, and china is the most proximate country in terms of power and one with such a complex history. it's a big challenge. on the other hand, if one conceives of it as if it were a cold war, which is what it domestic debates encourage, with winners and losers all the time, it would lead to confrontations over an extended period of time, that would be draining to both societies and draining to the countries that have to deal with both societies. >> you think president obama's approach to china is

fundamentally correct? >> i think it's fundamentally correct, yes. what we fundamentally need with the chinese is to come to an understanding of where we both think we're going. and i believe the best thing that nixon did, we nixon did, t the nixon administration, was not that we were super skillful on practical problems, but we were willing to spend many hours explaining how we taught , and o was the chinese. >> so kind of a meeting of the minds? >> it didn't help in daily conversation, but when something came up, you could have some feeling that the other side, when it was reported to them, would have a framework with which to interpret it. this is still not adequately

done. >> people have been trying to get you to criticize china more publicly on human rights for 40 years. do you feel that not criticizing china on human rights actually allows for more progress, or why are you reluctant? i know that you -- >> i'm not reluctant at all. and i insist on affirming my preference for democracy. and my objection of autocratic and dictatorial institutions. at the same time, a number of people, very few, who have, over a period of decades, established the confidence of chinese leadership, and we think that we are in a better position to bring about the achievement of these objectives by using

influence in such a way that it's no demonstrated winner or loser. i engage myself in china as i do periodically on individual cases. i do not do it in a public confrontation, but in a personal dialogue. but that is really the nature of the disagreement, it is not the disagreement as to the importance of the objective. >> final question. there are a number of people who say that obama's policy, his world view, is somewhat realist. someone who says that is george bush, sr. he spoke about the nixon/kissinger diplomacy.

>> my feeling about obama is he would like to believe that you can sweep the world by the power of ideas, and that the ideas alone will dominate the world and that you can ignore the e equilibrium part of the equation and you can do it with rhetoric. that's what he would like to believe. but he's also a good mind, and so he looks at the world and sees exactly what's happening. so when he speaks, he often sounds as if he were in the world of ideas alone. when he acts, he is very

conscious of reality. i think he's basically very closed to putting actions together to the objectives that i have outlined. >> i don't know if he would look at that as a compliment or not. >> he may view it as a private compliment, but he will not want to advertise it. >> henry kissinger, a pleasure to have you on. [ male announcer ] you can never have too much expertise. that's why northern trust offers a full team of experts who work to understand your goals and help you achieve them. as one of the nation's largest wealth managers, northern trust's goals-based investment strategies

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for your free information kit today. the risk is real. take the next step. call today. our question this week in the gps challenge is saudi arabia's king abdullah donated a million what to yemen this week?

is it ammunition rounds, bars of gold, barrels of oil or bushels of wheat? go to my web site and you can take the gps challenge. also follow us on facebook and twitter. this week's book of the week is provocative and immensely intelligent. i won't tell you what i think about it, though, because it's my book. the 2.0 edition of "the post-american world" is out in paper book. i'm a little biased, but i think this would be the perfect father's day gift. if you all buy it, i will stop pesterring you about it. now the height of heads of state. you would be surprised the importance given to physical stature when it comes to international affairs. take a look at these revealing photographs we found from the state visit to the u.s. this week. as you see here, president obama is almost a ll