trayvon martin shooting. we ll learn what lies ahead. and north coia says its rocket is now ready to go. that launch could come literally any minute now. with neighboring countries on alert, we re monooring the launchpad in real time. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. captions by vitac www.vitac.com out of nowhere, seemingly, a huge political controversy erupts over women, work and wealth. it began with the democratic activist s sarcastic comment here on cnn about mitt romney s wife and republicans now vote it will help romney cut into barack obama s big lead among female voters. democratic strategist and cnn contributor hilary rosen is here to explain her comment and she s standing by live. let s get background from our senior correspondent joe johns. joe, tell us how this political storm erupted. well, wolf, it is certainly a great debate overworking moms versus stay-at-home moms. no matter what side you come down on, the speed with which this cont
i m erin burnett. outfront tonight, ratings agency fitch affirms of the united states aaa credit rating but says guess what, we re going to downgrade your outlook to negative from stable. this happened after the markets closed. obviously, something negative and all relate the to the lack of action and the failure of the supercommittee, still stocks is soared on wall street. because the markets closed before that action happened. the dow up by nearly 300 points. the reason was a wow weekend for the american economy. retail sales over thanksgiving surged. that s a fair word. they were up 16%, according to the national retail federation. ibm says it was the best kickoff to the holiday shopping season ever. topping it off today the federal reserve said household debt fell $60 billion. the outfront strike team called this optimism. 85% of them said they were not going to go into recession. when the pundits of america were sure of just that. well, as you can see, they ended up bein