him? ♪ go right to the source and ask the horse ♪ ♪ >> hey, wilbur, get a-load of this story. >> reporter: teresa's story has people talking, if not horses. >> and i have it on video you son of a [ bleep ]. >> reporter: jeanne moos, cnn, new york. >> oh, my gosh! that's it for me, thanks very much for watching. i'm wolf blitzer in "the situation room." for our international viewers, "world report" is next. in north america, "john king, usa" starts right now. thanks, wolf, and good evening, everyone. up first tonight a bloodbath on wall stroeet and sharp declines around the world, sparking fears of a major global slowdown and perhaps even another recession. the dow dropped 500 points or 4.3%, the ninth biggest point loss on record. when the closing bell sounded today, 512 points was the exact drop, a decline that wiped all of the gains this calendar year. you find it hard to follow when a currency intervention causes a

domino effects that sends america's blue chips to free fall, but this market lesson is sadly painfully easy to follow. if you have a job, your 401(k) is taking a hit, a big hit. and if you don't have a job, the outlook is bleak, that a government report in the morning will show a stagnant job growth in july and dash the hope that the jobs will begin adding steadily. alison kosik is with us from new york. >> fear really gripped investors today and it really just didn't let go. you know, the worries are that do you know what, we could be headed for a new global recession. and also there are new worries that the euro zone debt problems could spiral out of control. what really set stuff into motion today was when the head of the ecb, that's kind of the equivalent of the federal reserve, the head of the ecb came out and said, do you know what, we're going to go ahead and pump more money into the euro zone economies to shore

them up, remember greece? italy is now worried that it's going to be the next shoe to drop. it's got its own debt problem, so that is really what set stocks into motion. because if we see problems in greece and in italy, they're having debt problems of their own. that could easily certainly filter down to the u.s., because we're all interconnected. and then, of course, besides those issues, you know, we've got our own problems here at home. we have weak economic growth. we got those weak gdp figures from friday, weak manufacturing, weak service sector. it goes on and on, and not to mention housing and jobs as well, john? >> so, alison, what are the markets looking for? what one piece of data or two pieces of data do the markets need to reverse the slide? >> the big jobs report comes out tomorrow, expectations are 50,000 to 75,000 jobs added last month, it's not much, but the market is looking for the number to come out and meet or beat. if it doesn't do either of those, we could see yet another

selloff tomorrow, john. >> a maddening day on wall street, and we'll keep track of it tomorrow, alison kosik, thank you. let's look at what happened today, what's happening more broadly and you what can do it, i'm joined by dave ramsey, the host of the dave ramsey show, and he's a "new york times" best-selling author and ali velshi with us as well. i want to come to you first, ali, down 512 points, 4.3%, a lot of people out there are going to say, whoa, my 401's taking a huge hit. people have been telling me we're going to start to grow soon, it's going to get better soon. what is happening? >> this is the proof, again, that we had in 2008, we have now, that we're connected to the entire world. what happened this morning is a couple of central banks in the world, one in japan and one in europe, attempted to intervene to help out their currencies. in europe it was an effort to help italy, because italiness dire straits and is a pretty big economy. it backfired, instead of reassuring, it triggered a selloff from investors who think

the problems are too big to be contained by the central bank and maybe we're headed for another leg down. they started selling powerfully. the european markets closed, and it wasn't done and it continued in u.s. markets. it has more to do with the global economy and the threat of the slowdown and the challenge of debt than it has to do with u.s. politics right now. it's been a continuous streak for the last ten days and longer of sort bad news somewhere around the world. basically this is the equivalent, john, of global investors taking their money and sticking it in their mattress. >> sticking it in their mattress. dave, it proves that like it or not, we're interconnected, the global economy, if you're invested here, you're affected by what's happening there. there's people talking about total fear in the markets. are these decisions being made based on fear or is this the reality? >> well, i think there's two things going on. the fear is the reality, just to turn a phrase. but always fear drives the market. the market's kind of bipolar if you will. she's either manic and buying

like crazy, almost irrationally or she's depressed irrationally and so the trick, you know, for the viewer at home and ali and i said this a lot back in 2008 or 2009 when the dow slid from 14,000 all the way down to 6500, we were trying to convince people that it's a temporary thing based on temporary conditions. it is not a permanent condition. now, if you think that the entire global economy is going to collapse, then you don't need to be in the stock market in the first place. but these profit taking or this fear-based thing is based on short-term traders, not based on on you and i, regular folks anyway, doing 401(k) investing. >> but, ali, this is a new one for me. the market actually has a gauge of fear. i was not aware of this, it's called the vix, and it surged to 30.5 which means by that it means a high degree of fear. does it become a snowball rolling down the hill? >> it's a short term for volatility index and it's a

measure of how volatile, if you look at the chart of today, it's remarkable to see the ups and downs, we closed a lot lower on the dow and the s&p 500 but there were people getting in there and buying stocks and others selling stocks. remember, this is exactly, and dave writing about it endlessly, this is what as an investor you want to avoid, you want steady and not volatility. it's a basket of stocks, of companies, those companies are actually strangely enough remarkably profitable including here in the united states, they sell most of their goods elsewhere in the world and you are dealing with countries like china, india, continents like africa, all of which are high growth, so, you know, there's a lot of trading and that's what motivated this market. if you're an investor, this was not your day. but investors actually try and moderate their income. i have to tell you that the people who do best overtime are investors as opposed to traders. >> but, dave, if you're watching at home and you're nervous,

maybe the value of your home has dropped, maybe you are underemployed or unemployed or someone you know and here i've lost a lot of money this year, but i'm going to pull it out because do you know what, i'm just getting nervous. help them, help them, you say stay on the roller coaster. why? >> well, again, the dow, let's take it all the way back, the t.a.r.p. mess and all of that was a much more real and bigger crisis than we're facing today. >> yeah. >> it took the dow all the way from 14 down to 6500, where did it go, by april 29th of this year it was almost back to 13,000. >> yep. >> and so if you panicked based on the move then, you lost half or three-quarters of your money. if you panic on this, you're going to lose your money. listen, home depot and mcdonald's and alcoa are not worth considerably less than they were yesterday, today, that's absurd. they are not worth less. translation, you're at kmart and the blue light's on. these things are on sale today! >> these are on sale today, okay, that might be a hard

message to sell but i understand the logic of your point. ali, help us under what stand ft it means for the broader economy, are people more or less likely to hire during the time of high market volatility? >> it makes people hold on to their money and usually you see money going from one asset class to another, if stocks are down you usually see it benefiting somewhere else, maybe commodities or gold, everything was down, commodities down, oil was down substantially, this was one of the examples that everybody pulled out, they're going to put it back in, but we don't know when and we don't know where. for the global economy, uncertainty is the enemy and what we've had for the last month whether it's been greece and the riots in the street or the u.s. debt debacle or what's going on in europe is just messages of uncertainty. that ends at some point, and the problem and what dave was saying is very smart, if you got out of the market in fall of 2008

because everything was going down, you know, you wouldn't have reinvested your money probably between then and march of 2009, but if you were invested at the beginning of march in 2009, you would have had one of the best years in history in the stock market. if you're smart enough to get out, you'd better be smart enough to know when to get back in, otherwise you just lock in your losses. >> as ali, talks, dave, about this will end at some point. how big is a factor, we are talking tonight on the eve. what everyone expects will be an anemic job report, and you shouldn't base it on one jobs report, but we've had a lot of these, the unemployment is high, and we're expecting a stagnant report, should we expect another bad day tomorrow if the report is, as all the experts say, it will be? >> i'm no stock market analysts. i work more with folks' money over long periods of time, but i think it's a fair guess that more bad news in the middle of this is not going to help the market tomorrow. that's probably not rocket science to figure that one out. and i think the good news is

that the consumer at home needs to remember that, for instance, 64% of americans work for businesses that have 500 people or less. small business is the backbone of our economy, it's the backbone of our jobs and it's not affected by the stock market, because the small business isn't publicliied traded. >> two smart guys to help us get us through a volatile market. thank you. let's take a closer look at just what a 500-plus-point drop means. look at that. that's what the day was like. all of the market's gains this year wiped out in one four-plus percent drop on the market. that hardly the birthday president the president wanted on his 50th birthday, it complicates his policy agenda and his re-election strategy. this is what has happened, 2.8% growth, people think we're coming ba, bang, this is where we are right now. here's "the wall street journal" survey of economists. here's what they projected. they were right here. but actual growth half of what top economists predicted, the

prediction is 3.0% for 2012, the presidential election year, the president would like it higher. he'll take it. the question is will we get there? that's one way to look at it. here's another way, this is the projection, 9.5, 9.2, this is actual, i'm sorry. they projected higher here, but they thought we'd be coming down, 8.8% is what is projected in the 2012 election year, not since fdr has an incumbent won above 7.2, not a great birthday president for the president. and jessica yellin is here, the white house has said we don't comment on any one day in the market, however, when they see this continued volatility, both from a policy and now increasingly from a re-election political perspective, they got to be pretty worried. >> worried and you hear them focusing on jobs and the economy. they've made it explicit we're now going to do that. the challenge is there's only so

much a president, as you well know, can do. for the democrat their motivation would be generally to invest as much as possible. there's no political environment in this country for massive investment. you cannot start a jobs program right now. so, what are they pushing for? an extension of this 2% payroll tax cut. an extension of unemployment insurance that gets cashed into the economy. can they get it through the divided congress and some of the other priorities we've heard the president talking about? >> how do you do the messaging, both as a president and a candidate, you can say, gm had a pretty good year, i'm the guy that helped get them the bailout money, but more broadly, nationally, it's hard to run, if you can make the case, and they think they can, it would have been worse if i didn't do what i did. >> and they can also say they didn't create it and this is the theme over and over, and we are trying to tamp down. tomorrow he has an event with veterans trying to do been joes retraining and he'll do a jobs

event. he'll take a bus tour going to the midwest over and over and over you will hear him say this is what i've done to try to stop this crisis. >> i know you talk to his top economic team and one of the president's frustrations is for months he's been asking, why are we not coming out of the recession like you historically you do, you hit bottom and you bounce and you come out with a pretty good boom when you bounce, but this has no bounce yet? >> if you look historically over the long term, it's a long hard slog and there are periods of growth and then retraction and growth and retraction, over time it takes a while, though, to get all the way out. it's about building that patience in. it's hard when you're actually unemployed to say patience. >> it's hard for people watching at home and we should always make note, we talk a lot about politics in washington, it's how it affects you at home that matters most and it affects the decisions in the re-election strategy. jessica yellin, thank you. syria deploys tanks in hama.

it is a horrific and appalling, he's massacring his own people who are coming out simply to express themselves peacefully. >> and next there's a deal tonight to get the faa back running at full steam. we'll tell you how that deal came about and show you how some of the crisis rhetoric used by the politicians, well, it doesn't quite pass the truth test. pediatrician so i want to major in biology. miss gopie is the best teacher i ever had. she's amazing, i love her. [ jade ] i'm teaching jasmine ap biology. i knew she had the talent... i always pushed her. [ jasmine ] her class you literally have to think, like it takes so long to do her homework. [ jade ] she's gained the confidence that she can achieve anything. [ jasmine ] i'm going to be a pediatrician... and i'm going to make this dream come true. a 100 percent. ♪ handle more than 165 billion letters and packages a year. that's about 34 million pounds of mail every day. ever wonder what this costs you as a taxpayer?

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check your steps at foodsafety.gov. even though congress has gone home, turns out lawmakers aren't quite done making deals. late today harry reid announced there's a bipartisan compromise to fund the federal aviation administration. remember we told you last night there was a logjam there. basically under this deal the senate will accept a temporary spending bill, that house republicans already passed and transportation secretary ray lahood will consider using his powers to block some of the house bill spending cuts that target small regional rural airports. more importantly, the deal sends about 4,000 government employees and a debatable number private contractors, get to that in a minute, back to work. senior political analyst, gloria borger, in touch with her sources on capitol hill. this was sort of a silly squabble between republicans and democrats, the best thing is the 4,000 inspectors, the construction workers, go back to work. how did they bring this one about? >> well, because the

transportation secretary ray lahood kind of stepped in and said i'm going to settle this squabble and the issue that you're fighting over right now, which is these rural airports, i have the authority to decide whether we cut funding for some of those or not, so leave it up to me. he didn't commit, john, whether he was going to do it or not, but as you know, on capitol hill, sometimes fights are about the things they look like and sometimes they're about bigger issues. and this is really a longer, larger fight about collective bargaining rights. >> let's talk about that. let's talk about that. first, though, i said debatable number of workers. if you've been following this debate in recent days and even in striking the deal the senate majority leader in announcing this agreement he said this -- i'm pleased to announce we've been able to broker a bipartisan compromise between the house and the senate to put 74,000 transportation and construction workers back to work. i'll stop there. the statement goes on. 74,000, right? 74,000, that's from the top democrat in the united states senate. you should be able to believe his numbers, correct?

well, let's listen here, listen here, in recent days as those who have been arguing to settle this dispute, listen to the numbers. >> laying off 70-plus thousand people is not my idea of putting people to work. >> almost 4,000 federal employees and some 70,000 workers for contractors around this country are being held captive. >> he and obviously members of his administration are actively engaged in trying to find a solution that will put 70,000 americans back to work. >> 70,000. got it? got it? you heard it several times there. 70,000? well, not exactly. hyperbole you might say. here's a fact check for you, the breakdown. 4,000 faa workers were furloughed. 24,000 construction workers, not 70,000, 24,000 construction workers are directly affected by this. that's 28,000 workers. not 74,000 workers.

that's 28,000 workers. still a lot, mind you, and we want those workers to get back to work and get their paychecks, but that's 28,000. where does the 70,000 number come from? the associated general contractors of america, they're the ones who say this association that hires these people, they said 24,000, they say another 11,000 workers in related service, supply industries could be impacted. a little bit of a domino effect there and they also say as many as 35,000 other jobs like the guy who pulls his cafeteria truck up and the construction workers come out and the truck dealerships, the big number is 24,000 and a little hyperbole by the politicians. and gloria mentions there's a dispute about the labor rights. this is the short-term house bill, the house republican bill, it went over to the senate. and listen to the senate democrats saying why they didn't want this to become law -- >> this issue has nothing to do with essential air services. it has everything to do with a labor dispute between airlines and the american worker. >> you cannot have in an faa bill, you cannot take it up, a

union contract with a private company. you can't do it. it doesn't belong in a bill. it can't be in a bill. please understand that. >> it isn't in the bill. this is the short-term bill. you can go to our website, and this is the short term bill, senate democrats refused to consider. the labor dispute is not in this bill. it is in this bill. this is the longer bill that they will fight about when they come back and that the senate democrats had made clear they would not consider it so. republicans do want to do some business in here, you may like it, you may not. that's a debate that will happen. but it was not in the short-term bill that the senate democrats refused to consider. politics. >> total politics. and it is all about collective bargaining and that is why the faa has not been able to have a large spending authorization approved since 2007. because they have been arguing about collective bargaining rights for airline workers, and that argument has not been

decided, and that argument will come back again in september. so, we've just essentially put a patch on that until the next time they have to put a patch on it. until they resolve it. >> but why -- >> i know. >> it's a pox on both parties. i just cited two examples where democrats were using hyperbole. i can go back downstairs and i'm sure people at home are saying there he goes again. i'm sure there's plenty of republicans doing it. why can't they argue about this bill or pass this bill? >> here's the thing on the smaller spending bill. some of the airports that were targeted, the democrats got really mad about them. do you know whey? because guess where they were targ targeted, oh, could it be in nevada where harry reid is? could it be in montana where senator max baucus is? so, they -- they sort of felt like they had kind of been -- something had been shoved in their face, that they didn't like, you know, how that happens? and they're reacting.

so it's, like, little kids in a schoolyard can we say? >> little kids in a schoolyard, gloria, thank you. syria presses its crackdown and arwa damon will join us to try to sift through reports of at least 100 dead. the latest crackdown. and we'll ask the obama administration's ambassador to the united nations if there's anything the world can do to stop this horrific bloodshed. vrrooom...vrrroooomm vroom vrrooom vrrroooomm vrrroooomm vrroom vrrrooomm vrrroooooooommmmmm mmmm mm. a network of possibilities. in here, the planned combination of at&t and t-mobile would deliver our next generation mobile broadband experience to 55 million more americans,

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white house more than 100 people are reported dead tonight in the syrian capital of hama, one medical source tells us many of today's dead were shot in the head or at very close range. and while cnn cannot independently confirm the death toll, we've heard from a hama resident who says after three days of a tacks by government troops and tanks the situation only getting worse. >> it is being felt. nobody goes out. nobody gets in. anybody that is being in the streets are being [ inaudible ] we are getting in the streets but by the rules. snipers are all -- are being spread all in all the city. i have been told there were a gentlemen kn genocide in the area and the bodies have been burned.

>> cnn's arwa damon is on top of the story from beirut. we hear of escalating attacks and violence and killings, but on this day it's been very hard to get new images. amateur videos and the like. explain to our viewers why. >> reporter: yeah, and i think that's what's made what's happening especially disturbing. when we've been talking to activists they quite simply are petrified as to what eventually will emerge as to what has transpired inside hama. the city has been cut off. communications have been shut off ever since this offensive by the syrian military began on wednesday morning. we had been able to reach individuals fairly regularly on wednesday. again, talking to us on satellite phones, and doing so at great risk to their own lives. they have to go outside, find a safe place to make a phone call. they're only to stay on the line for a few moments. but then there had been for a period of a good 12 to 16 hours something of a blackout. we weren't able to get through to anyone. the activists weren't able to

get through to anyone. we haven't seen youtube videos emerge pretty much in the last 24 hours, and normally we would be seeing videos emerging on a fairly regular basis. and so part of it is because of this government crackdown, but exactly because of this media blackout is why people are so terrified what sort of atrocities are potentially going to come out. >> when you can talk to activists, you're hearing increasingly reports of food shortages, shortages of key medical supplies. any sense, best you can, of the state of siege? >> reporter: well, it does seem as far as what we're able to determine that the military still controls and does maintain positions inside the city. there's still tanks as far as we can gather positioned in that main square where we used to see those massive demonstrations take place. the one resident of hama who we were able to reach said in his particular neighborhood, for example, there were no troops on the streets, but he said there were snipers on rooftops.

and he was describing to us how he had to sneak out of his house, sneak across the walls, try to avoid detection by these snipers, and he was telling us two people who he knew personally had tried to venture out of their homes to go get food and they were shot. >> and, arwa, any sense at all -- any sense at all -- that this international condemnation, the escalating condemnation will convince president assad to pull back or is he heading toward what most people is an attempt on his part to deliver a decisive blow to the insurgency? >> it would be extremely surprising if these ongoing condemnations were to have any sort of impact whatsoever on the regime. the activists will tell you the only way to truly force the regime to change the course of its behavior would be to impose the type of economic sanctions on the energy sector, for example, that would truly pin it into a corner. >> arwa damon for us tracking the story from beirut. arwa, thank you. susan rice is the u.s. ambassador to the united

nations. she's with us now from the white house. ambassador rice, i know finally, a presidential statement from the security council yesterday. i'm holding it up. it's eight paragraphs long. you call it long overdue. isn't it also fair, though, to call it long on words and short on actions? there's no call for an investigation. there are no new sanctions. why should president assad care about this piece of paper? >> well, john, first of all, it was long overdue, but unanimous condemnation in clear-cut terms by the security council and all of its members of the violence perpetrated by the syrian government against its own people. it took a long time to get this, in part because countries like russia and china and others had been protecting assad and making it impossible for the council to speak with one voice. that changed in the wake of the most appalling vie le ining viee that we've seen today, and assad saw his friends defect and join in a strong and forceful

condemnation. >> you talked about the reluck tages reluck tages tance of china and but the statement calls for a syrian-led political process to get to a resolution. isn't that the fox guardi ining henhouse, you have no assurance that assad will fix this? >> we agreed within the security council that indeed the people of syria are the ones that have to chart their own future. by making the statement that we condemn the violence, that we condemn the actions of the government that it has to stop, that there has to be accountability which was also a core element of the statement, we're making it clear that the people of syria are in the driver's seat. we have been very plain in the u.s. government that assad has lost all legitimacy, that his time has passed. he is a man of the past, and that a future will be charted in syria without him, and it will

be the syrian people who will do that. >> you say he is a man of the past. you have those words there. i want to listen to the white house press secretary, jay carney, who echoed, and then i want to ask you a question on the other side. let's listen. >> assad is on his way out, and as ambassador ford said, we all need to be thinking about the day after assad. because syria's 23 million citizens already are. >> that is a hope, it's an aspiration, not only for ambassador rice and president obama, but for as jay noted syrians who have been bravely standing in the streets that are now being shot and run down by their own government. is there any evidence, ambassador, any evidence at all, that president assad feels enough heat to even think about stepping aside? >> well, he's certainly feeling more and more heat, john, with every day. the heat is coming in various forms. the economy is crumbling. the people of syria are rising up in city after city, day after day, night after night, making plain that they are determined

to forge a future of freedom and democracy and that that does not include bashar assad. >> and help us understand what additional sanctions you have at your disposal, yoeuropeans woul have at their disposal. "the new york times" suggested this the top consumers of syrian oil germany, and france and the netherlands to stop buying it, it would have a big impact a damasc damascus, there should be no new investments in syria's energy sector. can you convince your friends in europe to do that? >> we think the financial sector, the energy sector, all forms of investme menment ought on the table. we have a broad range of sanctions on syria that, in fact, preceded the latest developments. we've intensified the sanctions and targeted them now so that assad and those closest to him are among those facing the sanctions. we added another major player to

the list of sanctions, he and his company, a syrian parliamentarian and a major business man and a financier of the regime is also on the sanctions list, but, yes, we're in conversations with our partners in europe and elsewhere about the full range of additional measures that are at our disposal. >> what's the right word for it, madam ambassador, when you listened to the gentleman who braved even calling cnn to report what is going on, snipers on the roof, tanks in the streets, three days of shelling before the tanks come in, people being assassinated for simply standing up and saying i want the right to have free speech? what is the word for what he's doing do his people? >> it is a horrific and appalling and massacring his own people who are coming out to simply express themselves peacefully, it's appalling behavior and it deserves not only the condemnation but the full force of the international community the pressure that it stop. and what assad will find out sooner rather than later that the oppressive tactics don't

work, they only inflame further frustration and aggravation and will only turn his people further and faster against him. >> ambassador susan rice, appreciate your time tonight. >> thank you, john. >> thank you. still ahead, more on the syria crisis. secretary of state clinton adds her voice with tough new words for the syrian regime, and as we map down the crackdown, we'll take you and show you graphic images. ew. krystal. . . krystal . . . what lead to your decision to go with the fusion? i just keep on going back to looks; it's a great looking car. how do your co-workers feel about your decision? they were the ones who were against ford. they were like they're a truck company. for the most part i am pretty sure i have changed most everyone's mind. krystal, you seem pretty comfortable up there, are you sure you haven't done this before? umm. . . i did 8th grade telecommunications class.

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back to the syria crisis in a moment, but first other news you need to know right now. this afternoon a texas jury conplict co conflicted sw eed warren jeffs. and the state power authority warning that rolling blackouts are possible due to record amounts of electricity due to the heat wave. and tropical storm emily degen rated in a low-pressure system system. virginia tech officials lifted a campus alert after getting no additional information about reports of a possible person carrying a gun on campus. nfl training camps will stay open late today. the websited players ratified the new collective bargain agreement. and secretary clinton speaks out about the crisis in syria and as we map out the crackdown, we need to warn of the graphic images of the violence inside hama.

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take a peek here. it's the president's 50th birthday, suffice to say a noticeably grayer president obama than on the day he took office. to be fair to this president, he does not stand alone here. the job ages you. let's take a look back through time. first a little jimmy carter back in the day. jimmy carter you remember served four years as president. looks a bit older, not horribly, but a bit older when he wrapped up his term. ronald reagan eight years as our president, at the beginning and

end of his term there. he's one that jumps out at you, george h.w. bush, a one-term president, but you can see the wear and tear on the office on president bush back in the day. i got a lot of gray hairs covering this 58, bill clinton at the beginning, and bill clinton at the end of his presidency, an eight-year presidency, a two-year presidency and george w. bush, you can see a big wear and tear. let's look at our current president, you see then 47, now as he turns 50, politically as i bring in my guests here, ron brownstein of "the national journal," lynn sweet, the years have not been good on our president. you look at 2009 and now you look at the president today, come on up, mr. president, there you go, make it work. if you pull up the numbers, the unemployment ratings 7.8% when he took office, and unemployment now, 9.2%, approval, 45%.

look at that. 45% approve, 76% when he was just getting started disapproval. now, a majority of americans say they disapprove. ron brownstein, thinking about his re-election campaign, ouch. >> the presidency is marked in dog years, john. you know, it ages everyone, but especially when you're governing in times in difficult and tumultuous as these. these have been extraordinary years and decisions that he faced in the first months of his presidency, and an extraordinary reversal he suffered at the midtown in 2010. now, as he's looking toward 2012, the single best predictor of how an incoming president is going to do is his approval rating when he's looking at 45% or below, he is looking at an uphill climb. >> and by history if you go back, i was looking through this the other night, whether it's approval rating or right track/wrong track, unemployment, economic statistics, they would all tell you looking at history, hard but not impossible, but these guys look at it they made

history once and they can do it again, right? >> that's right, john. the biggest number is not the approval ratings but it's the jobless rate that has always been the big issue for him. >> unemployment rate. i want to move on more shall we say campaign politics. lynn, i want to bring up a picture, you posted on your blog here, a chef grilling outside the white house. can we bring that up and show it? it's a chef at a grill outside the white house. this is your exclusive sneak peek at? >> the obama birthday party tonight. >> where are our invites? >> not only did they not invite us, and i say this because the obama white house probably doesn't even want us to be talking about this right now, this is an event in the rose garden. people are already there. you have entertainment, herbie hancock is over there, who played at last night's fund-raiser in chicago. this is a birthday party that was left off the official schedule. though, i was told by the white house that the obamas are paying for it themselves. they would rather you not know and not talk about his barbecue

tonight. i think the reason why is after this long, grueling debate over the debt and deficit, the mess over the faa, they don't want to have pictures of obama partying. >> he's paying for it himself. that's an important point to make. i want you to listen to something the president said. he was in chicago as lynn noted, herbie hancock performed, he was raising money for his re-election campaign. and the president understands it's hard to say re-elect me when times are so tough, listen. >> when i said change we can believe in, i didn't say change we can believe in tomorrow. not change we can believe in next week. we knew this was going to take time. because we've got this big, messy, tough democracy. and that's a great thing about america is, is that there are all these contentious ideas that are out there. and we've got to make our case. >> as the president prepares to make his case, mitt romney, one of the roishl republicans who

like to be his opponent had a little fun and posted a video making clear the president was going home to chicago, take this, was mitt romney's message. >> change has come to america, america, america, america. ♪ >> it ends with the tag line that said obama isn't working. now, we don't know if mitt romney will be the republican nominee, but that will be the republican message, right? obama isn't working? >> absolutely, look, the president i think himself understands that he is running more against the economy and his record on the economy than he is against any individual

republican. the history of presidential elections is that involving an incumbent is they are not fundamentally a choice. they are fundamentally a referendum on the incumbent and only secondarily between the incumbent and his opponent. what he needs above all all before 2012 is not to say we're all the way back but to be able to say we're moving in the right direction. and without that it's hard to structure an argument for him. >> one thing that obama has been saying on the clip, change, that theme that got him elected people will say where is it? he's reminding people he never said it would happen in the first term. >> hope and change. hope and patience. >> yeah, four more. >> we're just kicking off for 2012. up next, one of our top stories today. new images inside hamil.

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we need to warn you some of these images could be a bit graphic. they are graphic. we're trying to take you inside the bloody syrian crackdown. this is gunfire. this is amateur video posted on youtube. listen closely. [ gunfire fwr] you hear gunfire there. here, images of tanks in the streets. this is the syrian regime track

cracking down on its own people. >> this image is graphic. what we don't know is who is throwing whoem off the bridge. are these forces throwing people off a bridge? it is a horrific crackdown of a reregime against its own people. let's discuss it. professor, earlier in the program, susan rice called it a good thing, a long overdue thing that the presidency of the security council produced this. and yes, finally china and russia have agreed to criticize assad but they haven't agreed to

do anything about it. >> john, what's interesting about this whole -- what happened in the security council is there wasn't a security council resolution, because the resolution would not pass because the russians and the chinese would veto it. so there was a presidential statement was issued and there's very little comfort to the people being subjected now to three or four days to brutal shelling to an assault on the city. i think the international response has been down right embarrassing. >> embarrassing. listen to secretary clinton here. in addition to once again saying assad has no legitimacy. she put the stamp of the united states behind a specific number. let's listen. >> we think to date the government is responsible for the deaths of more than 2,000 people of all ages and the united states has worked very hard to corral and focus

international opinion to take steps toward a unified response to the atrocities that are occurring. >> perhaps belatedly, but the secretary has been out there, has been outspoken. but poem has said he lost legitimacy but he has not said assad must go. and some of the european allies of the united states still won't impose the harshest economic sanctions, like give up syrian oil. why? >> well, that's right, john. i'll tell you, you know one of the things that damon said in the report tonight is the most important thing that neither secretary clinton nor secretary rice addressed in speaking to you. that is when the crackdown happened in egypt and there was a shutoff of media access, whether it was the internet or cell phone and satellite access, the united states was very vocal about the need to turn that on. we heard that arwar has not contacted opposition and they

can't contact her. if secretary clinton and rice want to say something that will save lives of opposition leaders in syria tonight, then they need to demand that that internet access, that there's transparency so those people can communicate, so you can have those pictures. those are the pictures that will galvanize the international community to do better, to take more actions like we've discussed, for example, in using oil and using financial markets to restrict syria's access to financial markets and their oil revenues. >> and we did hear from a resident, the gentleman who braved death, risked death to call us earlier in the day. people are afraid to go out, if they could find an open market, an open gasoline station. they're afraid to go out because there are snipers on the roofs and they're afraid they will be shot. why is it taking so long, or is there anything the world can do? is that why it's taking so long to have a unified front? >> well, look, john, i think

you're absolutely right. the protesters named last friday, they gave last friday a name -- your silence is killing us. there's a silence in the world about what's happening. and we now know him bashar al assad for what he is. i think he's hoping for a tiananmen square. i think he's dug in for a fight. he took the fight to the city of hama. >> if you were still in the west wing and you could walk into the oval office and say mr. president, if you could do this one thing, what would it be? >> secretary rice mentioned the financial sanctions. what you need to do is deny the government of syria the access to the