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Scanning my newspaper over coffee this morning, an Associated Press story from the campaign trail leapt off the page: >>>SEMINOLE, Fla. -- Eager to change the subject after a dismal jobs report, President Barack Obama tried to rekindle some of the enthusiasm of his 2008 campaign Saturday with a bus tour through a must-win swath of Florida, urging supporters not to "buy into the cynicism that somehow the change we fought for isn't possible." Republican candidate Mitt Romney faulted both his own party in Congress and Obama for exposing the armed forces to huge spending cuts.<<< Obama, speaking to a...

_Resident Obama gave a speech today at the Clemente Center on the campus of the Florida Institute of Technology. Early reports are that the speech went very well and this from a very conservative source inside the venue. There was a very good turnout with FReepers Kristinn, Shove-it, Ravenstar, and yours truly. Others in the crowd who I missed, please shout out. THe Melbourne Tea Party had a good turnout and the SE corner had lots of Israeli flags and at least one sign that said Bibi (OK, they spelled it out but I don't have to). was for Romney....

The Nader Effect In Play After Virginia's Decision By Scott Bomboy A decision in Virginia to allow Virgil Goode on the presidential ballot could shake up the national election. And Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson has now come into the spoiler picture. For the past few weeks, Goode, the Constitutional party presidential candidate, and Johnson have been afterthoughts in the national presidential campaign involving President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. But Goode won the right on Tuesday to appear on the Virginia ballot, in a move that could hurt Romney’s chances of taking the key swing state in November. And now...

September 4, 2012 Waiting for Sinatra PEGGY NOONAN'S BLOG HOME PAGE » I was out of the room when I heard the phrase ‘savage disparities’ and knew it was Cory Booker, mayor of Newark. He spoke in favor of the platform. He had the kind of speech that you really agree with if you really agree with him. He is an obviously bright man who respects the role of business and is considered by reformers to be on the right side of the school reform debate. He has a gift for memorable phrases and seems highly literate in the quick...

(Reuters) - First lady Michelle Obama acknowledged on Tuesday that the change her husband Barack Obama sought in his White House campaign four years ago has proven difficult but urged voters to give him another term to fix the weak U.S. economy. "He reminds me that we are playing a long game here, and that change is hard, and change is slow, and it never happens all at once," she told the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. "But eventually we get there. We always do," she said.

Speculation is mounting that Texas Rep. Ron Paul will mount a third party bid for the presidency as pressure from his supporters builds ahead of his appearance Tuesday night on NBC’s Tonight Show with Jay Leno. According to a report, Paul’s supporters were deeply upset by how the libertarian Texas Representative was treated at the Republican National Convention last week. 300 of them joined in a conference call on Sunday night planning to urge Paul to launch a last-minute independent bid for the White House. In order for Paul to appear on the ballot in all 50 states, he would...

Former President Bill Clinton would be best used at Democratic National Convention to testify how that only the Dems have been successfully defending women from the Republicans' War On Women. Clinton has had much experience in fending for the females.

.....More may be revealed this week as the Democrats meet in Charlotte, N.C., when the president will be formally nominated as their candidate. Some of the possible second-term goals are ones he set aside in the first when they were too difficult or politically costly. They include a rewrite of immigration laws, efforts to combat global warming and a sweeping change in the tax code beyond the year-to-year extensions of Bush-era tax cuts.... The government faces a “fiscal cliff” of scheduled tax increases and spending cuts at the end of this year. If he and Congress can’t reach a permanent...

When we assess the President's post-election performance and the effects of his redistributive and regulatory policies, we find that, like a falling tide, he is sinking everyone. We also find that although Barack Obama has hurt all American families, he has hurt black families most of all....... [SNIP] The man is ill-suited for the job. He scores last...in unemployment, weeks unemployed, food stamps, and black illegitimate births, and near the bottom or tied for last in black unemployment, months of 12%-plus black unemployment, and children below the poverty line. Barack Obama has crushed the business and hiring climate. What's left...

The world is dynamic rather than static, so constantly thinking ahead is the key to understanding. Recognize now that on the morning after the election, whatever the result, America will never be the same. The results themselves will have wrought basic, fundamental change for the body politic. That inevitability underlines and highlights what you should be doing now to influence those results. Karl Marx's Last Stand The wildly overconfident Left is least attuned to what is at stake for them. If Barack Obama is routed this fall as he should be, it will be worse for the left-wing neo-Marxist views...

In a clip posted to online knowledge forum Big Think via YouTube, former children’s show host Bill Nye spoke out against the denial of evolution, saying such views harm young people especially and hamper scientific progress. Nye, who hosted the educational show “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” which aired on PBS Kids from 1993 through 1998, made the statements in a clip posted online on Thursday, and has since been viewed over one million times. In the clip, Nye praises the United States for its contribution to technological innovation, but says that the denial of evolution is unique to the...

....Chávez and other thugs (such as Iranian Madman-in-Chief Ahmadinejad) send in busloads of paid agitators to interrupt challengers' speeches and make their own support look more substantial than it is. Barack Obama thought only to send Joe Biden, knowing that the throngs of supporters -- made up largely of reporters, anchormen, and their entourages -- would be provided for him by an all-in-for-Obama media aiming similarly to create a false impression of unflagging popularity. And they surely would have, had a little wind [Isaac] not sapped the brief courage of Delaware's big-talking Cowardly Lion. ....according to a 2011 PewResearch poll...

Guys, I have to let you in on a little secret: the election is already over. No, I haven’t got crazy (yet) and realize that election day is more than two months away. However, after watching the last six weeks of this trainwreck of a campaign, it is impossible to believe that Romney has any chance to win. He doesn’t, and Obama will be reelected. We can make such bold predictions by reviewing a few pieces of evidence. Romney’s campaign: These guys don’t have a clue, do they? Like most members of the observing public, I assumed that the Romney...

It's August 23rd. And 75 days from now, I'll either be looking at another four years in the White House -- or the end of this opportunity. I know what's at stake for the parents worrying about health care, the kids who need help to go to college, and the seniors who want a secure retirement. But we're getting outspent by wide margins in critical battleground states -- and what we do about that today could be the difference between winning and losing on November 6th. So as we near one of the last fundraising deadlines of this campaign, I'm...

Vice President Joe Biden will be back in Massachusetts for two fundraisers this weekend. Biden, a Democrat, will be the featured guest at a fundraiser hosted by Kathy and Mike Schell at the Wayside Inn in Chatham, on Cape Cod, at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday. The cost to attend is $5,000 per person, or $20,000 per couple to be an event co-host. Mike Schell is an Obama bundler who has raised $50,000 to $100,000 for the president, according to a list of bundlers disclosed by the campaign. The money raised will go to the Obama Victory Fund, which funds the...

While President Barack Obama addressed a crowd in the battleground state of Nevada on Wednesday, a heckler began yelling but was eventually drowned out by the audience chanting, “four more years.” When the noise began to die down, President Obama said “that young man probably needed a good teacher … we all need it.”

<p>His critics will say this unfortunate photo reveals a deeper problem with his presidency -- that he's just a walking teleprompter.</p> <p>A Reuters photographer captured a shot of Barack Obama with his face obscured by a teleprompter during a campaign event at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday.</p>

This year’s political season is yielding more than just heated debate in Atmore, including jail time for two women caught allegedly stealing campaign signs along Martin Luther King Avenue and Ashley Street Monday night. Crenishia Antoinette Bosby, 24, of Fairhope, and Jawada Marquetta Bosby, 31, of Daphne, were taken into custody by Atmore police officers and agents with the 21st Judicial Drug Task force at approximately 8:45 p.m. after being pulled over on Ashley Street. The pair was also found with a 12-year-old minor and a .25 caliber handgun in the vehicle. For the complete story on Monday night’s...

s President Barack Obama was departing his impromptu appearance at the White House press briefing on Monday, ABC News White House correspondent Jake Tapper had some parting words for the president. “Don’t be a stranger,” Tapper said from the briefing room. Tapper’s sentiment seemed to be expressing a consensus among the White House press corps. Prior to this Monday appearance, Obama had not made a solo press conference since June 19. ...more (w/video)...

NewsBusters reported Sunday that Newsweek is out with a truly shocking edition featuring a cover story entitled "Hit the Road, Barack: Why We Need a New President." New York Times columnist Paul Krugman took to his blog Sunday excoriating the article in a piece he called "Unethical Commentary, Newsweek Edition": There are multiple errors and misrepresentations in Niall Ferguson’s cover story in Newsweek — I guess they don’t do fact-checking — but this is the one that jumped out at me. Ferguson says: The president pledged that health-care reform would not add a cent to the deficit. But the CBO...