Iran’s News Agencies Say Obama Acknowledged its Nuclear Rights, Didn’t Want to Impose Sanctions & Warns of Romney Vote Fraud

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In a curious article in Iran’s semi-official news agency FARS today, Iran is claiming that Obama not only acknowledged Iran’s right to pursue nuclear technology, but also did not want to impose sanctions on Iran explaining he had to because of congressional action:

Swiss Ambassador to Tehran Livia Leu Agosti attended a meeting with senior Iranian foreign ministry officials a few days ago to submit a letter from the US president to Tehran leaders.

Vice-Chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Hossein Ebrahimi told FNA that during the meeting, Agosti had told the Iranian officials that President Barack Obama recognizes Iran’s right of access and use of the nuclear technology.

“There are a couple of points with regard to this (US) message (to Iran),” Ebrahimi said and added, “Firstly, during the session to submit the message, the Swiss ambassador to Tehran quoted the US president as saying that ‘we (the US) recognize your nuclear rights’.”

As regards the second issue, the lawmaker said that the Swiss diplomat had also quoted Obama as saying that “I didn’t want to impose sanctions on your central bank but I had no options but to approve it since a Congress majority had approved the decision.”

Although FARS is by no means a reliable news source, the above statements become a bit more interesting in view of Iran’s statement this weekend in defense of Obama, suggesting that Romney is getting ready to steal the election from him:

Iran’s government mouthpiece Press TV is panicking over the prospect of a defeat for President Barack Obama and warns that Mitt Romney will steal the election through “black-box” voting machines that “manufacture election outcomes.”

It also charged that the polls – virtually all of which now show Romney in the lead or at least in a dead heat – are fraudulent.

Electoral College Tie Could Result in President Romney & Vice President Biden

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Though far-fetched, technically it could happen that votes by the House and Senate to break an Electoral College tie would pair the Republican presidential nominee with the Democratic vice president.

For the first time in 135 years, the presidential race might depend upon Congress. With three weeks to go before the election, a 269-269 Electoral College tie is unlikely but possible, experts said. It could result, for example, if Romney wins all the swing states except Ohio, Wisconsin and New Hampshire.

In four U.S. elections, including 2000, the person who finished second in the popular vote won the presidency. The House decided two elections, including one with an Electoral College tie, and a bipartisan commission of House, Senate and Supreme Court members decided a third, according to the House historian.

“In a rather archaic tradition,” says Kyle Kondik, a tie throws the presidential decision to the House — which has a current GOP majority. Each of the 50 state delegations casts a single vote and the candidate who wins the most votes wins the White House, said Kondik, a political analyst at the University of Virginia.

“Republicans appear to be heading to comfortably holding their majority” in the 113th Congress, said Jeff Brauer, a Keystone College political scientist, “which means the advantage would go to Mitt Romney.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Ann Romney Opens Up on the Campaign Trail About Her MS: “I Can’t Keep Up the Pace”

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Ann Romney opened up about her struggle with Multiple Sclerosis during a surprise visit to a Cuban restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on Saturday.

‘I was very coordinated and athletic, and all of a sudden I’m falling and tripping and losing my balance and being so weak,’ Romney, the 63-year-old wife of Republican presidential nominee, told diners. ‘And I was like, “Something’s wrong!”‘

Romney was diagnosed in 1998 with the incurable neurological disease, which attacks the central nervous system and immobilizes many of its victims.

At the time, her husband was still working at Bain Capital, the venture capital firm he founded.

Ms Romney said she was an avid tennis player when she first started noticing her symptoms, which primarily affected her balance and coordination.

Read more from this story HERE.

Gloria Allred’s October Romney Surprise Revealed?

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The online publication Alternet has revealed that Gloria Allred’s potential “October Surprise” may be a woman named Carrel Sheldon in 1983 who was counseled by her young Mormon Bishop, Mitt Romney, to not have an abortion even though her doctor said it was medically necessary:

Sheldon, a mother of four at the time (a fifth child had died as an infant), was then a practicing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), outside of Boston. The LDS leader in Massachusetts at that time, called the “stake president,” was a Harvard-trained physician, Dr. Gordon Williams, and he counseled Sheldon to follow her doctor’s advice to terminate the pregnancy and protect her own life, so that she could continue caring for her four living children.

“Of course, you should have the abortion,” she recalled him saying.

According to an account later written anonymously by Sheldon for the LDS women’s journal,Exponent II, it was after receiving this counsel from her [stake president Doctor] Williams supporting the potentially life-saving procedure that she experienced an uninvited visit in her hospital from her Mormon bishop at the time, 36-year-old Mitt Romney, who adamantly opposed the abortion.

“He regaled me with stories of his sister and her retarded child and what a blessing the child had been to the family,” Sheldon wrote of the incident. “He told me that ‘as your bishop, my concern is with the child.'”

Read more from the story HERE. Ms. Sheldon had the abortion anyway but became disenchanted with LDS. Ultimately, she left Mormonism, claiming that Mitt Romney’s response to her situation convinced her to do so.

Unfortunately for Allred, Obama and their allies, this “revelation” is unlikely to have the desired effect on the outcome of the November election.

Desperate Straights: Obama Working With Rev. Jeremiah Wright to Boost Black Vote

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According to former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, Obama is speaking to his disgraced former minister, Jeremiah Wright, in an effort to create excitement among black Americans for his reelection. As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle this weekend, Brown stated that

the polls show a very tight race. One thing they don’t show, however, is how race is a factor in the election.

By my estimate, you have to build in a three- to five-point slip from the poll numbers for any black candidate on election day. To overcome the slip, you need to pump up the black vote by equal measure.

And that’s not easy, because brothers and sisters aren’t among the top turnout groups.

In 2008, Barack Obama was able to compensate for the slip and then some. You would have thought it was Nelson Mandela coming out of jail. This time it’s not going to be that easy.

If Obama looks as if he’s going black, he could turn off white people. So he’s largely been lying low on the race issues – visibly pushing for the Latino vote, the gay vote, the women’s vote, but not the black vote.

But last weekend, he held a conference call with a collection of black preachers that included his old pastor, Jeremiah Wright. He wanted to talk to them about getting out the vote.

Huffington Post & DailyKos Pundit Disrupts ‘Hating Breibart’ Movie, Gets Booted

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Gateway Pundit blog and Michelle Malkin’s Twitchy site both reported on Saturday how Ryan Clayton, a far left contributor to DailyKos and Huffington Post, was escorted out a Friday night showing of the documentary, Hating Breitbart, in Arlington, Virginia, for his outbursts during the opening minutes of the film. Clayton actually makes an appearance in the movie, where he shouted bogus allegations of cocaine use and soliciting male prostitutes at Breitbart in 2011.

I actually played a part in getting the leftist booted out of the theater. I went to the 10:20 pm showing at the invitation of Jason Jones of Movie to Movement, who is a good friend and a former boss. I sat towards the back of the theater, as many of the seats were filled by the time I entered. When the documentary started, Clayton somehow thought it was appropriate to add his own commentary track and laughed like a hyena at various points. I spoke up and told him to stop talking. But he didn’t stop.

After putting up with his antics for about 10 to 15 minutes, I got fed up, and quickly made my way out of the theater to track down the management of the theater complex. I discovered that a young Hispanic woman, who also had enough of Clayton’s outbursts, had already left to do the same thing, and the two of us waited for the managers to come up to where we were.

When I reentered the darkened theater, instead of going back to where I had been sitting, I decided to sit in an empty seat near the front and next to the aisle. The managers came in not long after I did, and removed Clayton. As he was leaving, he walked right past where I was sitting and stopped in front of me, thus blocking my view. I told him to get lost, but he kept up his asinine behavior, pretended to have trouble hearing me, and moved closer to me. I repeatedly told him to get out of my face, and after a moment, he finally left.

After his departure, I moved to the back of the theater. But at some point, Clayton actually returned, having somehow convinced the managers to let him back in. This time, he was with a second person, and for the reminder of the movie, he was largely quiet. When the credits started rollings, most of the viewers, who had paid $12 to see the documentary and not Clayton’s clown act, left. But the DailyKos writer added insult to injury by conducting mock interviews of the patrons, before being booted completely from the premises by a security guard.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Iran’s Number One Target is NOT Israel – It’s the United States

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This exceptional video is narrated by Banafsheh Zand Bonazzi, the daughter of a leading Iranian journalist and intellectual who was imprisoned multiple times by the religious regime and who recently committed suicide while incarcerated.

The Iranian expatriate makes a bold statement: “Iran has a plan to destroy the West and its number one target is America.” She talks about Iran’s technological advancement toward a nuclear weapon, including its efforts to develop a neutron or EMP bomb.

Ms. Bonazzi also asserts that the potential of a nuclear Iran is the single-most important economic issue facing America and the world today.

Finally, she discusses Iran’s hatred for Israel and the messianic vision of its fanatical leadership. Iran seeks to usher in a world under the control of extreme Shariah law.

The Iranian regime recognizes that there would be a significant cost to its own population in pursuing its objectives, but any such sacrifice in removing the world’s “Great Satan” would be worth it.

Ms. Bonazzi concludes, “An Iranian nuclear bomb changes everything . . . [it is] the most crucial issue in human history.”

Although Restoring Liberty does not agree with the internationalist undercurrent to her presentation, Ms. Bonazzi gets the threat right and recommends the following video:

Obama Denies Agreement With Iran For Direct Talks After Election, Israel Says it Knows Nothing (+video)

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By Paige Winfield Cunningham and Dave Boyer. The White House denied a report that it set up direct talks with Iran about its nuclear program, but that didn’t halt a flurry of speculation Sunday.

Democrats said the talks, if they are happening, prove that sanctions supported by President Obama have worked; Republicans accused the Iranians of using the U.S. election to buy time for their nuclear weapons development.

Iran has agreed to directly negotiate with the U.S., but with the caveat that talks not take place until after the Nov. 6 presidential election, according to a weekend report by The New York Times. While Iranian officials cited uncertainty about the election as a reason for delaying talks, Sen. Lindsey Graham said that’s just a “ploy” allowing them to use the election cycle “in a pretty clever way.”

“I think the Iranians are trying to take advantage of our election cycle to continue to talk,” the South Carolina Republican told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.” “I think the time for talking is over, we should be demanding transparency and access to their nuclear program.”

With the presidential election just 15 days away, there’s little the White House does that isn’t being viewed through a political lens — and that’s especially true when it comes to foreign policy, with GOP candidate Mitt Romney and other Republicans criticizing how Mr. Obama has handled touchy situations in countries like Iran, Libya and Afghanistan. Read more from this story HERE.

Today, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu commented on the report of the Obama Administration’s direct talks with Iran. He stated that he believes Iran is continuing to use bad faith negotiations as a tool to delay while it develops its nuclear capability:

Ex-President Bush Says He’s Skeptical of Romney’s Chances of Winning

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Former president George W. Bush is keeping up with the presidential race, and isn’t crazy about what he sees from Republican candidate Mitt Romney, says a new report.

In a long profile of brother Jeb Bush, New York magazine reports that George W. “gets a regular drip feed of political news from (former aide) Karl Rove and others — he’s been critical of Romney’s campaign and skeptical of his chances.”

There is no elaboration.

The former president — who is an issue in the campaign; President Obama often cites the bad economy and two wars he inherited from Bush — is also “living as invisibly as possible,” reports Joe Hagan in New York magazine.

In addition to golf and Texas Rangers baseball games, Bush also has a new hobby, the article says: Painting, “making portraits of dogs and arid Texas landscapes. ‘I find it stunning that he has the patience to sit and take instruction and paint,’ says a former aide.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Strikes Deal With Iran for Direct Nuclear Talks … After the Election

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The United States and Iran have agreed in principle for the first time to one-on-one negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, according to Obama administration officials, setting the stage for what could be a last-ditch diplomatic effort to avert a military strike on Iran.

Iranian officials have insisted that the talks wait until after the presidential election, a senior administration official said, telling their US counterparts that they want to know which American president they would be negotiating with.

News of the agreement — a result of intense, secret exchanges between US and Iranian officials that date almost to the beginning of President Obama’s term — comes at a critical moment in the presidential contest, just two weeks before Election Day and a day before the final debate, which is to focus on national security and foreign policy.

It has the potential to help Obama make a case that he is nearing a diplomatic breakthrough in the decade-long effort by the world’s major powers to curb Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, but it could also pose a risk if Iran is seen as using the prospect of the direct talks to buy more time.

It is also far from clear that Obama’s opponent, Mitt Romney, would go through with the negotiation should he win election. Romney has repeatedly criticized the president as showing weakness toward Iran and failing to stand firmly with Israel against the Iranian nuclear threat.

Read more from this story HERE.