babes chicks, what do you call them? >> carmen electra is coming up on our show. >> she is a great actress and has a wonderful body. >> i thought they were kidding now you watch that, i'm thinking guilty. viewpoint is next. ♪ >> good evening. i am eliot spitzer and this is "viewpoint." president obama and mitt romney took their battle to ohio today. the president tried to hit the reset button on his campaign with a tough speech that contrasted his vision for the economy with the g.o.p.'s. romney tried to freeze the president in place with a withering response that attacked mr. obama's performance in. mr. romney was saying: you haven't. >> he has been president for three and a half years, and talk

it cheap. action speaks very loud. and if you want to see the results of his economic policies, look around ohio. look around the country. you will see a lot of people are hurting, and the policies the president put in place did not make america create more jobs. but. >> but are voters blaming president obama? according to the latest gallup poll 68% think his predecessor, president george w. bush bears responsibility for the economy compared to 52% who blame mr. obama. independent voters also blame bush more than obama by 67 to 51%. mr. romney added to the blame game today with a new web video that hammered mr. obama for a uniquely brutal gaffe last week. ♪ >> the private sector is doing fine. >> mr. obama proved once again a bit of self deposit prec

indication is the best response. >> there will be no shortage of gaffes and contro verse ease that keeps both campaigns busy and gives writers something to write about. i made my unique contribution to that process. >> that's us he is referring to. the president got back down to business defining romney's views on the economy as little more than a rehash of george w. bush's failures. >> governor romney believes deeply in the theory we tried during the last decade, the best way to grow the economy is from the top down. we tried this. their policies did not grow the economy. they did not grow the middle class. they did not reduce our deficit. why would we think that they would work better this time? [applause.]

>> for those who think they wouldn't, mr. obama offered an alternative. >> i believe that you can't bring down the debt without a strong and growing economy. i believe you can't have a strong and growing economy without a strong and growing middle class. >> this has to be our north star: an economy that's built not from the top down but from a growing middle class. >> for more on today's contrasting speeches, i am joined by felix sammon and nicholas from the "new york times." nick, let me start with you. was the president's speech new in any way? he needed a political reset but from an economic perspective was there anything new in there, or was this old wine in new bottles? >> so basically, what we are seeing him trying to do the same rhetoric. he has given a similar speech several times now. the problem is still there. the economy is still bad. he is still president. there is not much you can get congress to do in terms of

taking affirmative policy action or passing a jobs bill. so really, he has to keep talking about credit and blame. of course, we all know the upside and the downside of being president is that when times are great and you get credit and when times are bad, you get blamed. >> we have heard this speech. when i was swatchwatching it and i would tune it out because i was thinking, i have heard this before. this was the state of the union, the same speech he has given every time he feels compelled to give a big economic speech. the fact that it's the same as the speech given before doesn't mean it's wrong. it doesn't mean his argument isn't the better of the argument but basically, felix action am i correct in saying the president says trines will things will get better and romney is saying. they haven't and blame him. >> if you elect democrats to both houses of congress and everything goes my way and i manage to push through my apology, then maybe i can make things better but if i get re-elected president and we have the republicans in control of one of the houses, then nothing

is going to happen. >> that's a pretty dismal gloomy look. but let's focus on the economics for a minute. you watched and listened to that speech. did you hear an economic idea in the president's speech that was different from what we have heard over the past 18 months, two years, even three years? >> i detected a little bit of going to the right. in his jobs speech he was going sort of full-bore keynesian. in this speak, he was saying i want to bring down government spending to the lowest it's been in 60 years. i am going to be a moderate. i don't believe government can create jobs. i want to help you guys in the middle and this kind of thing. i think if anything he is. >> nick, did you have that sense as well because i was beginning to hear a bit more of a populism we had heard from the president not surprisingly as we get close to election day but in terms of

concrete ousts, i haven't seen anything. we talk about education, infrastructure. we talk about protecting the middle class, all noble traditionally f.d.r. ideas but nothing there. i am not saying this critically. nothing there that tells me how we are going to do it. >> i think one irony here is that a lot of people on the left agree with mitt romney on the tone but not the substance. they actually do think that obama's policies are part of the problem. of course, they think he doesn't have a big enough stimulus in the first place. it's like how do you -- you know, how do you argue for the thing that you didn't do and don't want to say you should have done. >> right. >> do you tack a little more right to be populist? i think they see in their polls and research that there is some mileage to be gained in pitting himself against the masters of wall street, the masters of the economy. there is a sense of sus springspicion and blame among voters. >> the populist, emotional

argument is compelling which is why the fairness argument about making those who are wealthier pay more on their taxes. >> did you hear those in the speech? i didn't get a lot of propertyopulist emotional anything. this was 53 minutes long and it wasn't exactly stirring. >> there were al luciens to it but not teddy roosevelt. it wasn't as rhetorically aggressive as it might have been. we are left with a president, even though it was a gaffe last week when he said the private sector is doing fine. he has to argue things are getting better because of my apology. he has to argument mitt romney will take us back. mitt romney says the things we did under george w. bush are the right answer because romney's policies real. nick, am i missing something there. >> to feel i and your point, a year ago, he gave his teddy roosevelt speech that was much more fiery, much more populist if by the current modern standards of pop ulism pretty

thin, you know. he was kind of poking at the banks, poking at those who have the most and saying we have to share the wealth. you are right. there was not any of of that real positioning here maybe some hints of it. but it was not designed to be that kind of speech, i think. >> right. and at the end of the day, this comes down to a bunch of numbers we are going to get between now and november. the unemployment numbers between now and november, first friday of every month, political reporters are now scouring economic data in a way they never used to. >> it's going to be an up hilt battle for him. >> here is an important distinction. in the swing states, things are not as bad as they are in other parts of the country. what i thought was interesting about the choice of ohio to give

a speech on the economy is things in ohio are pretty good relative to the country. their economy is improving. >> nick, you highlight what is increasing and fascinating tension between the president and the governors. actually, i suppose it's romney and the governor's. romney, the republican nominee wants to argue things are terrible and hence we need a fundamental change. the republican governors up for re-election say things are better. in ohio, the rate has come down to 7 adopt 4%, the unemployment number, down from, i think it was up somewhere around 12. i may be wrong. it was somewhere in the strat fear so there is a tension between romney and the republican governors. how does romney bridge that camera chasm chasm. >> i think romney's economic policy is sten inchoate. i hope he will refreshflesh it out.

right now, he seems to say if we cut the taxes and magically, it will have lots of growth and job growth. i wish he could explain this a little bit more. >> okay. you are giving him more benefit than i am willing to give him right now. it is in choate. i think this proves the point the president was maying which is it is a rehash. his is bad old wine in bad new bottles. we have been there. we lived through it. this is rot-gut the first time you can go to a liquor store. this is bad stuff. right? romney, governor romney didn't give us anything more coherent than that that i heard. >> his speech is an attack on the president. we saw he moved his speech time up because he wanted to get in before the president. that was for a political position. he wanted to say, look. i got here first. i am going to tell you what the president is going to say. he is going to say the same ol' stuff. he was partly right. this is not a big policy speech for governor romney. >> i want to come back to something you said.

you said it hasn't gotten better. i might disagree. not sufficiently better so anybody feels comfortable where the president can legitimately say things are going fine. i want to put a couple of charts up. we have private sector job growth over the last couple of years and if you see what the effect of a stimulus has been, you will see that the stimulus, to say it worked may be an over statement but it had a dramatic impact. the private sector has given us more than four million private sector jobs in the last couple of years. >> that's not an insignificant number. >> and it had to because the government was cutting jobs. obama, unlike bush unlike his republican predecessor actually cut a diminution in government jobs, mostly at the state level. but you need a huge amount of private eyestioning job growth to make up for that and the point here is, surely, the stimulus is running out. we had the stimulus at the beginning of obama's term. it did create some job growth. it is not creating job growth any more and going into the

election, i don't see the job growth. >> i agree with you. it has stalled out. and nick when i read the columns in your newspaper, all of the economists are getting pretty bleak and gim and saying we need something more fundamental. but it may be another stimulus because if you buy what is shown in the data and even the chart i love, you know, the capacity utilization, which is the precursor, that one is going up as well. and when that happens, then you know something is going to happen. another stimulus might make the difference. >> that's certainly the an i think sys of what romney wants? >> it's a problem. the public. they are not sure who to blame and what to do. i think there is not a ton of appetite for huge public expenditures, even though i think most economists think that in the short-term, more spending would be useful. in the long-term, it would have to come down. it's tough for everyone to navigate that. they don't quite i think, buy

the kind of pure republican argument if we taj we get magical growth. they are also suspicious of government spending. it worries them when economists tell them it shouldn't worry them? >> people think that if they need to balance their checkbooks and their personal lives, the government should balance its checkbook as well and should not live beyond its means whereas in fact that's the exact opposite. when the economy is in a trough you need to spend. obama is talking about how this is a glorious democracy and what the american people want is not what's good for them. >> personal finance metaphor could be the most desstructive metaphor. it has done huge damage. we have done that with austerity in europe. if we follow that here,

recession, depression, round 2 will be fast approaching. righter's nick confessore. great to have you both on the program. tomorrow night, i will join by the soon to be host of our own show, joy behar. she will occupy this time shot on current for one week only next week. but you can catch her right here on "viewpoint." john boehner says he has a jobs plan. the only one who could get a job out of it might be mitt romney. ahead. stay with us. [[vo]]joy behar is coming to current tv for one week only until the fall. what happens if you ask her to tone down her opinions? >>sorry, i can't hear you. what? [[vo]]or tell her she has to stick to a script?

and who doesn't want 50% more cash? ugh, the baby. huh! and then the baby bear said "i want 50% more cash in my bed!" phhht! 50% more cash is good ri... what's that. ♪ ♪ you can spell. [ male announcer ] the capital one cash rewards card. the card for people who want 50% more cash. what's in your wallet? ha ha. ♪ ♪

>> a supreme court rooming in citizens united made this number possible. now it's our number of the day. infinity. while presidential campaigns have limits, super p.a.c.s do not. sheldon adelson gave $10 million to pro-mitt romney groups and said he would have given as much as 100 million for newted gingrich. forbes magazine says he is willing to go limitless against president obama. this from a man worth $249,000,000,000. when sheldon adelson means limitless, it really is pretty close to limitless. consider this: even if he really did give $100 million, it would be like a family worth

100,000 donating $400. it wouldn't even hurt him. we now have two completely different campaign systems in one, individual donors give limited amounts directly to the candidates. the conventional path for the small donor. in the other, totally different system, the supper rich can support super p.a.c.s and campaigns and spent asspend as much as they want. adelson has the right to give make his voice heard. if if he gives $100 million for romney, that's nearly al third of what john mccain spent in his 2008 campaign. >> our conversation with you, the viewer. we are intend. here is how you can connect with he will eliot spitzer. jennifer granholm is politically direct on current tv. >>the dominoes are starting to fall. (vo) granholm is live in the war room. >> what should women be doing? >> electing women to office. (vo) she's a political trailblazer. >>republicans of course didn't let facts get in the way of spin. >>do it, for america.

>> when the president's speaks on the economy, the republicans are in counter attack mode. john boehner decided he would record his own message on the economy. >> these are the many of the 30 jobs bills that have passed the house, currently stalled in the democratic controlled senate. these aren't big controversial bills no one has read practical common sense proposals to help create a stronger economy for all americans. we are going to keep adding to this pile. we are going to keep calling on president obama and democrats in the senate to give these jobs bills a vote. >> in case you haven't been paying attention this is not a few line of attack. >> we have 30 bills. >> 30 jobs bills passed over the last year. >> we have passed 30 bills in the past that would help get our economy moving again.

30 jobs bills sitting in the united states senate. 30 jobs bills all passed with bi-partisan support. the house has already cast nearly 30 jobs bills in the 30 past -- house-passed bills. >> of course, in boehner's response message, he only appears to be standing in front of 24 bills. when you go to their website, you can find the full list of 27. we took a look at all of them. here is what they do. 9 of the bills deal with stripping away the epa's ability to protect public health. eight diminished the government's broad regulatory power and three to open up for offshore. two alter rules for the formation offun unions making it more difficult if not impossible. one is a resolution publicing for the keystone xl pipeline a proposal to open a forest for copper mining and disproving of net neutrality. only one bill deals directly with creating job opportunities, hr 3012, the fairness for high school immigrants which makes it easier for companies to hire highly skilled immigrants.

joining me is contributing editor tim dickinson. thank you for your time, term. is this a jobs program, or is this just a lot of hot air and bills pulled together that don't have any nexus with the economy and job creation. >> if you believe these are job bills, this is what you believe, rolling back environmental protection that save the lives of young people and seniors will create jobs. you believe that stripping away financial protections put in place to keep businesses honest to keep the sec with some oversight overstock exchanges, that's going to create jobs. this is very curious sort of message to be rolling out on the day that mit romney wants to have an up or down conversation about barackbam's performance in the white house, you know, obama wants to make this a choice election to say, hey, you may not love what i am being able to accomplish but look on the other

side. they are showing just kind of crazy stuff that the tea party and business roundtable want. >> i think in fact john boehner did barack obama a huge favor to pick up on your point. the white house highlights those bills actually are exhibit "a" for what the presidents was arguing, john boehner is precisely what got us into this pickle in the first place it is old wine in bad old bottles. there is simply nothing new there. you have to believe it was too much regulation that created the problem in the first place. what a lot ten at universe do you have to be in to believe that. >>? >> i think this is a tremendous favor because the president is in a perch here the economy is faltering his health bill is

under assault. he is going to have a difficult time making the argument things are getting better. he has this robust record. so he is left with saying, you know what? you may not love everything i am doing but these guys are frightening. he said one of his most effective lines is if you want to go back to the policies the last 10 years, mitt romney vote for mitt romney because he is capable of delivering on that. >> policies, compared to what? compared to the what the alternatives might be garac obama compared has an agenda. something in the right direction. i am hardpressed when you look at what john boehner laid out there to see anything that will create a job except for a few fraudsters in the stockmarket. or seam companies companies going to pollute with bad technology to give your kid a case of asthma or kill your

grandma. this is life-saving stuff that's literally going to kill people. >> you referred to, you know there is one they called the farm dust regulation prevention act of 2011. i am not sure farm dust is a major issue. what this does is and the clean air act by exempting dust. nobody at the epa is regulating farm dust. this is a kanard. >> little green footballs and, you know, some third-rate talk show host on the right-wing. this is an entirely made-up thing. the only person who drives this further is a right-wing talk show host or staffers that have to invest their time in this nonsense. >> not to be too much about the farm dust regulation act which i am sure john boehner believes in deeply. i wish more people remembered the clean air act, one of the essential and critically important pieces of legislation

ever past signed into law by that raving liberal, richard nixon. he signed that law, believed in it, understood why it made sense in terms of protecting our people, building the economy. they are anybody elsing around the edges dumn ideas. >> so far, it's frivolous. taking away requirements for actual toxins that are going to be released in the environment and have negative health impact. people are desperate to jobs but they don't want to come at the expense of their children's health or a premature death of a loved one. >> the soundness improvement act. first of all, that's a lunchingclunky name. you can do better than that john boehner, please. come up with something that sounds better. this begins to roll back dodd-frank. how can they begin this quickly to begin to roll back dodd-frank. it hasn't had a chance to be effective. but they are blaming excessive

regulation to the crisis of 2008 which again is to live in an alternate universe. maybe they believed jamie dimon's testimony yesterday. beats me. how could they believe >> then. >> this says the wall street scene was great until uncle sam tinkered with bear stearns and the whole thing collapsed and the government created a crisis of confidence. it's ridiculous. this is the kind of thing that the president would love to run against. >> that's why i do wonder why doesn't the white house start doing full t.v. as where ne say here are the bills they call the jobs agenda. let's look at them. respond in detail. respond with the sort of finely crystalized attack you do in a courtroom, piece by piece, taking apart the evidence. why doesn't the immediate i cant world attack these frivolous bills and say this isn't the jobs agend add? >> well, it's difficult. i mean, you know, this is ebb john boehner and the house of rep '70stives they are just 1,

you know, one party to getting legislation through. sot everybody gets bottles up in the senate, you know, good bills and bad bills >> right? >> this is had a cya move on boehner's part to show his constituency we have been trying to do something here. you know i think it's really important for the white house as far as their politics are concerned to get beyond the talking point to sort of give it torun rub noses in the dirty agenda. who profits? polluters, you know, wall street criminals, you know, this is not an agenda that moves forward. >> right. >> for the cause of the middle class. >> i would love to see the president give a speech where he took on these bills saying we are talking about bills 8 through 12. take them apart. be the lawyer he is and say that's why these guys really do not have any creative ideas. then payor, dallas his best argument. contributing editor, thank you

for your time tonight. >> always a pleasure. that you were. >> the biggest tightrope act since mitt romney met with the tea party tea party. the view finder is next. self-esteem, low blood sugar and missing red wine with my -- and mixing red wine with my painkillers. of sununu, you're wrong. mitt romney, you're wrong. we need more teachers, not fewer teachers

firefighters that support our gaeme inc. thank gaemezilinsky, thank you for joining desk top, lab top, ipad. iphone. >> pleasant your hearts. >> the big one. >> stephanie: all i know, the little flower is there and it means go to meeting. i love go to meeting.

this this

>> somebody said they tried to yell at you to come back? >> it must have been a woman. i don't listen to men yelling. >> casey anthony breaks silence. the most not ore oryos woman in the america. >> this is cnn. >> casey anthony was not a party girl and has not gained wait. >> this is cnn breaking news. casey anthony has not gained weight. >> this is cnn breaking news. >> there is no more news. >> all right. tensions over syria. are they a flashback to the cold war? more view points going. viewer because we're independent. >>here's how you can connect with "viewpoint with eliot [ train whistle blows ] [ ball hitting paddle ] [ orbit girl ] don't let food hang

around. yeah! [ orbit trumpet ] clean it up with orbit! [ orbit glint ] for a good clean feeling. ♪ eat, drink, chew orbit! ♪

admitted that that look, we were able to keep a lot of the folks because of the stimulus. >> bill: absolutely. again, do you great work, judd. thank you. all of your colleagues at think progress. we'll see you again next the airplanes are going to get from one part of the country to the other without any air traffic controllers. i mean this is ridiculous and mitt romney ought to know better. i stand with our public employees and cops and firefighters and their teachers?

>> tougher moil in the middle east. three days before president obama and vladslatamiir putin are to meet one day after hillary accused them. sergei lavrov shuck down the allegations. >> we do not have anything not through ms. clinton or anyone else. we are not delivering to syria, not anywhere else, anything that's being used. unlike the united states which delivers sus specific weapons to the countries of the region on a regular basis >> a tension war of words is breaking out. meanwhile, the future of democracy in egypt is on shaky ground after the highest court ruled to dissolve the parliament that after the rebately was controlled by the muslim brother-in-law. they ruled that a former aid to

hosni muammaric. it is being called by some a precurse or to a military cou. joining me deputy senior advisor to president jimmy carter, rights for huffington post, thank you for joining us tonight where to start with this horrendous news anywhere you look in the middle east. you have been focusing on syria and in your writings, is there anything to suggest anything positive at all? >> no. not on syria, not at all. the violence is getting deeper. the humanitarian catastrophe is getting deeper. the amount of outside interference in the region with syria now is getting even more complex. it smacks of the 193 section spanish civil war or yugoslavia. it is what i feared the most, country that will implode. >> radiate out into the entire

region, the detritus. whereas for a number of weeks, through under the umbrella of the united nation we were trying to get russia to join us in some sort of concerted effort. now things have broken apart with a war of words between us and russia over the helicopters but that is the underlying tensions on the larger issue. >> the russians have been providing hundreds and millions of dollars to arms for syria for years. >> that's nothing new. they keep providing tanks and helicopter gun ships and i have been watching this go on through their major export company. they have a port that is receiving the port of tartus, one shipment after thers. the russians will deny. are we going to argue they are hypocrites? we should.

may this this this >> thing are getting better.

i don't think romney likes to here that. more viewpoint coming up next. >> >>try to be a little more conservative tonight. [[vo]]joy behar is coming to current tv for one week only until the fall. what happens if you ask her to tone down her opinions? >>sorry, i can't hear you. what? [[vo]]or tell her she has to stick to a script? our conversation is with you the viewer because we're independent. >>here's how you can connect with "viewpoint with eliot spitzer." >>questions, of course, need to be answered. >>we will not settle for the easy answers.

after the commercial. >> it is a combination of low self-esteem, low blood sugar and missing red wine with my -- and

mixing red wine with my painkillers.

test. test. test. test.