reason magazine. i am a libertarian and i have the inside track if you didn t know. until i read it in a newsletter i don t read it. a survival report. jill, you said the good thing about this gay poll and the gun poll is it doesn t matter. it is low down relative to economic issues, but according to the report. yes, according to this report. but doesn t that mean it does matter and that these issues are no longer of importance to people? at one time they did matter. i think if we were all comfortable with our job situation we would focus. take care of ourselves first and then we care about. i just want to establish that if you think the job situation improved, americans would revert back to their homophobia.
however, if you go state by state, you could get a map that looks like that, which is a tough battle from now until november. nen who thinks, john, that this race is all sewn up in either direction, they are mistaken. it is wide open right now. it will be fierce. it will be intense. and it will be is ugly. i have no doubt about that. if you think some of the rhetoric was intense, if you think some of those negative ads were intense and ugly mopg the republicans, just wait. ashleigh, i ll get ready for the situation room in an hour, but i know you re getting ready to hear from the president of the united states this hour. but before i go there, i want to give you breaking news as well on this announcement. i just got off the phone with the national campaign spokesperson for rick santorum. he said they all had a conference call last night, all the senior visitor sors, and then just about 10 minutes before this news conference where rick santorum announced themp stepping d
and it creates this contrast. you ve got north dakota here, a boom state with a billion dollar surplus in its state budget, cut in property taxes. got a billion dollar state surplus. very low unemployment. they re pulling in workers from all over the country. it s a boom state because they are drilling for oil that s under the ground in north dakota and yet, what have we got at the national level? we ve got job creation, that rate cut in half last month. we ve got 8% plus unemployment. and we ve got a president turn down 20,000 jobs instantly in the pipeline that he will not build. it s a contrast between drilling in north dakota and no drilling in the rest of the country and a declining job situation. all has to do with ideology. the interesting thing is it s a trickle down effect as to the benefits to the economy. my mom tells me that car sales in north dakota because she s in neighboring minnesota have
then the whole auto industry was going to virtually disappear. he was wrong and the president was right. governor, the president took on the reality of our job situation when he talked about the jobs report on friday. i want to play a portion of that for you. our economy has now created more than 4 million private sector jobs over the past two years. more than 600,000 in the past three months alone. but it s clear to every american that there will still be ups and downs along the way and that we ve got a lot more work to do. the ups and downs the president talks about certainly ohio is part of the ups here, unemployment at 7.6%. it was 9.4% when you took office. do you view this as sort of shared credit between the work you ve done and the work that president obama has done on the national level? well, look, first of all, the credit goes to the people that invest. all we ve done in ohio is create a better environment.
preside over crowds today in havana. he s on his last leg of his visit to cuba. before saying mass, he ll speak to cuban president raul castro. his brother fidel has requested a meeting as well. a key part of the health care reform law may be in jeopardy. the u.s. supreme court expressed different views on whether the government can require individuals to buy health insurance or face a penalty. today is the third and final day of the hearings. a ruling is expected in june. those are the top stories from cnn. i m monita rajpal. world business today starts right now. good morning. from cnn london, i m nina del santos. and a very good afternoon from cnn hong kong. i m andrew stevens. you re watching world business today. these are our top stories this wednesday. shares in totale fall after a major gas leak in the north sea. the oil giant says it could be months before the rig is back online. rupert murdoch s news corp. is hit by more allegations of hacking. this ti