they bear the name of his predecessor. president obama is seizing the bush tax cutted and calling for them to be extend, but not for everyone. the president wants to let them expire for the wealthiest americans. that puts him at odds with congressional republicans, as well as his rival mitt romney and sets the stage for a very heated battle with less than four months to go before the election. our white house correspondent brianna keilar is covering this for us. first of all, why is the president doing this today? reporter: well, wolf, this is certainly part of his narrative that he s trying to put out there as he runs for re-election. this is very much happening through that political prism. he tried to portray himself as really the one fighting for the middle class. now he s trying to portray his opponent mitt romney and congressional republicans as being defenders of the wealthy. so what he s calling for is for an extension of the bush-era tax cuts only for american fami
violently mauled by two chimps in south africa. ahead, the horrifying details of the attack. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. these numbers just coming in. let s go to the battle for the white house. a brand new cnn o.r.c. poll is just being released right now. take a look at just how tight the race is. among registered voters nationally, nationally. 49% say they are for president obama versus 46% for mitt romney. that s with a 2.5% samplining err error. despite the landmark ruling, there s been no change in the number for either candidate since the last poll that came out in may. look at this, when it comes to voters in the so-called battleground states, about 15 of them, the numbers aren t so close. let s go straight to cnn s joe johns. he s breaking the numbers for us. he s in des moines, iowa, right now. tell our viewers what we re seeing, joe. reporter: wolf, there s certainly a lot more to this than meets the eye. the main takeaway is mitt romney is r
stone but they got it wrong. the new memorial to dr. martin luther king jr. needs to be fixed but how? i m wolf blitzer and you re in the situation room. dramatic new pictures of the dangerous search and rescue effort off the italian coast where a cruise ship the size of a skyscraper lies on its side half submerged. the costa concordia struck rocks on friday night with 4200 people on board. six are known dead. 16 remain unaccounted for including two americans. look at these extraordinary images showing the massive gash ripped into the ship s hull. italian prosecutors say the captain made a grave error and could face serious charges. cnn s dan rivers is on the scene. reporter: wolf, this picture says it all about how precarious, difficult and dangerous this search and rescue operation is proving to be. it s been called off for several hours after the costa concordia started shifting, all of the rescue and fire officers were wenched off in a scramble as they felt the su
now, but a million people are on the way to fill it up for america s biggest celebration. and 2012 arriving hour by hour around the world. live pictures here. happy new year. hon congress. just three days until the iowa caucuses. cnn s political editor paul steinhauser is in the thick of it live in des moines, iowa. whirlwind day ahead, i m sure, for you, right? no doubt about it, nonstop on the campaign trail. this is the end of december in iowa and it should be cold. let s start with newt gingerich. he was reaching out to voters stai restaurant and bus stop. we ve seen newt gingerich s numbers kind of collapse here. he was the front-runner, but that s not the case any more. he s telling voters, don t count me out. i would ask you to go tuesday night, take all your friends and help us win. i do think this is wide open, no matter what the news media does to try to create some stampede. newt beginning rip s numbers have been going down and rick santorum s numbers have
the imf, alexus glick, experienced on wall street and covering and she is the ceo of the gen youth foundation, will cain is the cnn contributor, cloudy with a chance of rain has been your forecast. anything that s going to part the clouds? i don t think anything will part the clouds until europe clears up, which might be a while. we re probably in for stable, slow growth, but there s more risk to the downside than the upside. let s talk about europe. just this week it became more difficult and expensive for spain to wore ro money. we re looking at bond yields and this is telling us there s potentially a funding problem in europe. explain why that is so important? europe is a quarter of global economy. european banks are interlocked with our banks. so we want them to fix this, but i wonder, they might need a new constitution before this is over and do they have the political wherewithal to get a new constitution? you think we had political problems on debt in this coun