home runs. pablo sandoval helps the giants tame the tigers in game one of the world series. will detroit even things up tonight? and her tv career has spanned decades. melissa joan hart will join us live to talk about her latest projects. it s thursday, october 25th, and starting point begins right now. welcome, everybody. our starting point this morning, the high -stakes struggle for eight must-win swing states. the president obama and governor romney tapping into their travel budgets, both men crisscrossing the country, targeting those toss-up states that will decide this race. ohio could be the most critical. and a new time poll has the president ahead there by five points, largely on the strength of early voting in his favor. but the romney campaign has something to celebrate this morning as well. cnn shifting the state of north carolina from a toss-up to a leaning romney column. let s get right to cnn s chief white house correspondent, jessica yellin. she s in tamp
tons of damage. 11 people dead in cuba. sandy ripping off the roofs of homes, flattening other homes al to the. the storm killed one person in jamaica. nine other people killed in haiti. heavy rains from the storm s outer bands have unleashed devastating flooding. although the hurricane is still several days away from the united states east coast, sandbagging is already under way as far north as new jersey. meet oreologist rob marciano is tracking sandy s every move. we re getting already dire warnings, really serious red flags about this storm. tell me exactly what s happening that makes it, you know, worse than what they call the perfect storm. well, the perfect storm never made landfall for one thing. this one looks like it s going to make landfall. that s what makes it worse. the setup is somewhat similar, we have a hurricane that s moving north and a strong cold front with a strong jet stream energy that s moving in from the west. and this morning, more than ever, we r
storm, but again, they are talking about the wind, the rain and power outages. and victor, that s really what people are bracing for as the storm gets to us. i m wondering, george, i saw an analyst yesterday saying this is going to be a lot worse than irene. are people sticking around for it, or are they boarding up and getting out of town? reporter: you know, when you walk around, when you take a look at how people are preparing for this storm, everyone s keeping a very close eye on us, as we report what s happening. they re watching the track of the storm system. right now it looks like it will move in a little further north than where we are. but we will feel the first brunt of the storm. we will see a lot of the winds that come through, the winds that could get up 40, 50 miles per hour in some places. a lot of rain that will come through later today. so the storm will definitely impact this area. but the concern right now is definitely a little further north than us.
and so we cut spending. we actually reduced the amount of money government was spending. and then we cut taxes 19 times. we made our state more business-friendly, the result of all of this was or job growth went from the basement up 20 points, up 20 states, that is. and we were able to balance the budget. and by the way, the $3 billion budget gap turned into a rainy day fund. hi, everybody, i m don lemon, we ll let you continue to listen to mitt romney, we ll watch coverage politics and hurricane sandy, back in a few minutes with mitt romney. let me tell you, i m confident in the future. look, i know these have been tough years and we re tired of being tired. yeah, the democrats chant four more years, we chant ten more days. righ right? ten more days, ten more days, ten more days, ten more days. you are right, ten more days, ten more days s we re changing our chant tomorrow, they keep saying four more years, we got a new chanlt, ten more days. let me tell you why i m
the cal band is getting tuned up on max well family field. and the football team is doing the same inside memorial stadium for this week s matchup versus usc. while police are investigating the teams off field antics. on friday afternoon, runningback was beaten during a fight in the locker room. the fresh man was first taken to get his ears stitched up and be treated for a concussion. the fight was quick, less than two minutes according to sources, but long enough to draw investigation, but not an arrest yet. in this case, more than likely what we ll do is prepare the case and we ll submit it to the district attorney and student conduct for review. cal athletics being equally tight lipped, choosing not to post the weekly online. instead, releasing this statement. we are fully cooperating with an investigation into an instent involving members of our football team. our team culture is built on mutual respect for and accountability for each other. we are in the process of