Wake Up
Pollsters and pundits in the United States may be hedging their bets, but a bookie in Britain is paying out even before the presidential race is over. Paddy Power, Europe’s largest book-maker and one of the big “bet shop” chains in Britain where they’ll bet on anything has decided that President Obama has already won reelection, and is handing over cash to those who placed bets on him.
For more on this story, visit: U.K. bookie declares Obama victorious – CBS News.
By Dave Johnson, Campaign for America’s Future | News Analysis
Last week Mitt Romney delivered possibly the most dishonest presidential campaign speech in American history. It contains lie after lie, distortion after distortion, and trick after trick. The fact that a person capable of giving such a speech has reached this level suggests that it may be too late to salvage the country. Our institutions may be corrupted beyond repair.
For more on this story, visit: What Does Romney’s Campaign of Lies Say About Our Country?.
By Richard D Wolff, Truthout | Op-Ed
Neither Mitt Romney nor Barack Obama even mentions six alternative economic policies that, deployed together, would reduce unemployment, increase workers’ real earnings and decrease the federal deficit.
This presidential election arrives five years into a severe economic crisis that both Republican and Democratic policies failed to end. The latest unemployment rate (7.8 percent) is not even halfway back to the 2007 level of 5 percent, from the crisis high of 10 percent. Jobs have not recovered, but corporate profits and the stock market did, thanks to huge government bailouts. Average real weekly earnings of most workers fell 2.4 percent from October, 2010, to the present – during what business, media and political leaders enjoyed calling a “modest recovery.” That 2.4 percent real wage drop means that workers lost the equivalent of six days’ wages (one week and one day) per year between late 2010 and now. Income and wealth inequalities thus deepened further across the crisis. No end of these developments is in sight.
For more on this story, visit: Silences Louder Than Their Words: Effective Economic Policies Neither Candidate Advocates | TruthOut.
Davenport, Ia. – The first person to get his photo taken backstage with President Barack Obama this morning was a volunteer who has made more than 17,000 telephone calls for his re-election campaign.
Davenport retiree Jim Murphy said Obama thanked him, then posed for some snapshots shortly before taking the stage at the Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds for a 10 a.m. campaign rally.
Murphy said Obama had called him on Aug. 6, back when he’d made only 10,000 phone calls.
“I sure hope it makes a difference,” Murphy said. “It’s hard to get volunteers. I don’t know why. They all want to get him elected but nobody wants to help.”
Murphy calls Iowans to remind them to vote and to persuade them to vote for the Democratic candidate. He spends about four to six hours a day, five days a week on the phones at either the Bettendorf or Davenport Obama campaign offices.
For more on this story, visit: Iowan who made 17,000 calls for Obama gets backstage photo opp | Des Moines Register Staff Blogs.
The dark money group Defend my Dividend is more Astroturf than grassroots.
By Theodoric Meyer, ProPublica
This story first appeared on the ProPublica website.
Since August, a dark money group called Defend My Dividend has spent nearly $90,000 running ads on South Florida TV stations warning seniors about a looming increase in the tax rate on dividends.
“You worked hard, saved for retirement, and dividends are a big part of it,” says one of the ads, which Defend My Dividend has posted on YouTube. “But if President Obama and Congress don’t act this year, tax rates on dividends will spike, almost tripling in some cases.” Time is running out, the ad intones, as phone numbers for Obama and Congress appear on the screen.
For more on this story, visit: Big Electric Companies Behind ‘Grassroots’ Ad Campaign in Florida | Mother Jones.
He denounced “the abrupt withdrawal of our entire troop presence” from Iraq, though he didn’t say how long he would have kept our troops there.
And he hinted broadly that he’d keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014. “I will evaluate conditions on the ground and weigh the best advice of our military commanders,” he said. “And I will affirm that my duty is not to my political prospects, but to the security of the nation.”
On Iran, he also threatened war, aligning himself squarely with Benjamin Netanyahu. “I will put the leaders of Iran on notice that the United States and our friends and allies will prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons capability,” he said.
For more on this story, visit: Romney’s Foreign Policy Speech: All War All the Time | The Progressive.
The smile. That laugh. The look on Joe Biden’s face said it all during his commanding performance in Thursday’s vice presidential debate held in Danville, Ky.
Given President Obama’s less than stellar performance in last week’s first presidential debate, a lot was riding on Biden’s shoulders: the polls, which have swung Mitt Romney’s way in the past week, for one, and the critical undecided voter in swing states for another.
Could Biden deliver? The answer Thursday night was a resounding yes.
For more on this story, visit: Tracy Bloom: Biden Laughs His Way to Victory in Vice Presidential Debate – Politics Today – Truthdig.
Paid for by the Jewish Council on Education and Research
