will on the streets. journalists get a look at the violence syria doesn t want you to see. it is amazing to me how this guy has been shot this many times. i mean, he s superman. i have been shot three times. my fingers have bullet holes. did you hear had a? part man, part terminator. shot three times in a robbery. a marine pulls out the bullets with his own hands. and now he s talking about it from his hospital bed on this american morning. good morning, everyone. it is thursday, december 29. this is american morning. a lot going on today. let s get right to it. that s right. good morning, everybody. glad you are with us. i m alina cho. up first, dramatic shift in the political landscape with five days to go before the iowa caucuses. just look at this brand-new c cnn/ time poll. mitt romney on top in iowa now. followed closely by ron paul. newt gingrich plunging and rick santorum suddenly rolling right to the top three. gingrich now 11 points behind romney. he s
shot rick santorum leap frogs into fourth. his support has tripled since the beginning of the month and closing in on mitt romney and ron paul who are locked in the statistical ties within the margin of error. joe johns is in des moines to break it down. of course, the question is, did the gingrich camp see this coming? yeah, i think to some degree they saw this coming. hammering ron paul, for example. also, mitt romney. it s pretty clear that gingrich saw he had some problems because he was just getting hammered on tv ads day after day from these guys. a lot of people attacking his baggage, attacking his alleged flip-flops. questioning his conservative credentials, questioning what he did when he was speaker of the house and his relationship with nancy pelosi. all of these things play into the mix here in iowa because there are a lot of voters who are very conservative. they want to see the most electable conservative going up against barack obama in november, hala. well
earth. harris: the markets here in the u.s. apparently not so confident. the dow plunging nearly 200 points falling below the 12,000 mark. the nasdaq down more than 50. the s&p down 27. there is this. new signs of hope for the job market. unemployment claims hitting a nine month low. falling to 381,000 last week according to the labor department. that s the lowest level since february. and it s close to the 375,000 mark which economists say would signal a steady drop in unemployment. the u.s. air force now confirming the remains of hundreds of dead service members have ended up in a landfill. it all began at the dover air base in delaware. the the washington post first reporting today the military sent the cremated remains of 274 deceased american troops from dover to a private contractor. that contractor then incinerated the remains and sent them to a landfill in king george county, virginia. we did not direct the contractor to put any residual
budgets are all in alignment. can we pull up the markets now. i want to show ron what s going on. if this deal does work out, ron, as we see green arrows across the board right now. the dow jones up 160 points. we re above the boon mark of 12,000 psychologically. what is it going to mean for the u.s. economy? well, you know, what s eironc in a certain sense with the u.s. economy looks just fine. jobless claims fell yesterday to 381,000. consumer confidence is up to a higher reading than expected. and a variety of different numbers have been quite strong irrespective of what s happening overseas. china is slowing down, europe is slowing down. so the european union dean that was announced was helpful to the market. the better than expected economic data was also helpful. and there s no place like home. the u.s. economy, whether you re talking about debt and deficits, whether you re talking about growth, whether you re talking about the political environment, just in absolute and rela