Obama Widens Lead over Romney; 48% of US Give Obama Good or Excellent Marks

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Obama Widens Lead

By Alina Selyukh. President Barack Obama, picking up support following the Democratic National Convention, widened his narrow lead over Republican U.S. presidential challenger Mitt Romney in a new Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Saturday.

The latest daily tracking poll showed Obama, a Democrat, with a lead of 4 percentage points over Romney. Forty-seven percent of 1,457 likely voters surveyed online over the previous four days said they would vote for Obama if the November 6 elections were held today, compared with 43 percent for Romney.

“The bump is actually happening. I know there was some debate whether it would happen… but it’s here,” said Ipsos pollster Julia Clark, referring to the “bounce” in support that many presidential candidates enjoy after nominating conventions.

Obama had leapfrogged Romney in the daily tracking poll on Friday with a lead of 46 percent to 44 percent.

The president’s lead comes despite a mixed reaction to his convention speech on Thursday night in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Friday’s government data showing that jobs growth slowed sharply last month. [Read more from this story HERE].

48% Give Obama Good or Excellent Marks

By Rasmussen Reports. President Obama continues to earn positive marks for leadership from nearly half the nation’s voters, but there’s a wide partisan difference of opinion on this question.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 48% of Likely U.S. Voters rate the president’s leadership as good or excellent. [Read more from this story HERE].

Las Vegas Attempts to Cleanup X-Rated Litter but ACLU Threatens Tourists, City

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Photo credit: Moyan Brenn

Some tourists try to dissuade them by directing icy glares their way. Others stare, zombie-like, into the Las Vegas Strip’s ubiquitous video screens and light displays in an effort to ignore the pushy handbill distributors.

But some tourists accept the pamphlets and glossy cards that advertise all-but-nude exotic dancers. Then, more often than not, they toss the material in the trash. Or if a trash can isn’t nearby, onto the sidewalk — creating an endless X-rated litter problem that Las Vegas officials are now trying to clean up.

A new ordinance requires handbillers to pick up litter within a 25-foot radius on the sidewalk. But there’s a hitch: The law might run afoul of the First Amendment.

“If someone takes some material, regardless of what it is, and then walks down the street and decides to drop it, that’s the person who is littering. That’s the person that is responsible, not the person who gave it to them originally,” said Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the Nevada American Civil Liberties Union.

Las Vegas police aren’t enforcing the ordinance yet. The ACLU has been meeting regularly with the exotic dancer businesses and police to talk about how that will happen, as well as encourage handbillers to help keep the Strip clean. The group has not yet challenged the law in court.

Read more from this story HERE.

Over-Confident Obama Already Planning Second Term

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With the debates around the corner and the presidential race in full swing, the Obama administration is quietly planning a second term, Politico reported, as it assesses staff and crafts legislative plans.

What might seem as overconfidence, however, has some precedent in previous administrations. Still, a host of liberal groups also are quietly planning renewed lobbying efforts to pressure what would be a “lame-duck” president to push through some big-ticket projects, Politico reports.

Among the moves anticipated:

•The liberal Alliance for Justice, Leadership Conference of Civil Rights and the People for the American Way, among others, are focused on trying to make the process move faster to place more liberal federal judges on the bench.

•Heads of the major environmental groups held a two-day retreat in July at the Wye Plantation in Talbot County, Md., to consider ways to push big cap-and-trade programs in a second term.

•Environmental, gay-rights and immigration groups mindful of Obama’s own tight window for action are also working on how to get their ideas wrapped in various bills.

•Obama told Time Magazine that because of his policy contrasts with Romney, he’d interpret a win as giving him a mandate to end the Bush-era tax cuts for people earning more than $250,000.

Read more from this story HERE.

Vice Presidential Nominee Paul Ryan Says Hands-off Medical Marijuana

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Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan says the federal government shouldn’t interfere with states that have legalized medical marijuana.

The Wisconsin congressman tells KRDO-TV in Colorado Springs that he personally doesn’t approve of medical marijuana laws. But he says that states should have the right to choose whether to legalize the drug for medical purposes.

In response to a reporter’s question, Ryan said: “It’s up to Coloradans to decide.”

The interview was taped while Ryan campaigned this week in Colorado Springs and aired Friday.

Colorado is one of 17 states, plus the District of Columbia, that allow medical marijuana.

The Obama administration at first signaled that it wouldn’t interfere with state-sanctioned marijuana distribution.

Read more from this story HERE.

Rush Limbaugh: Obama Copied Jimmy Carter’s Convention Acceptance Speech from 1980 (+video)

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Rush Limbaugh dubbed President Barack Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention a “halfhearted effort” that proved the conservative radio host was right when he warned an Obama presidency “would end up being nothing more than the second term Jimmy Carter never had.”

Limbaugh treated his radio listeners to a side-by-side comparison of Obama’s Thursday night speech to Carter’s convention acceptance speech in 1980.

“I’m just sitting here in stunned disbelief,” Limbaugh said, according to a transcript on his website. “Barack Obama, he coulda channeled FDR. He coulda gone back and tried to copy something JFK had said, or RFK. If he’s gonna go back to the past and seek inspiration, if he’s gonna go back in time, if he’s gonna go back to the liberal playbook, if he’s gonna go back to the Democrat Party failed ideas of the past, if he’s gonna go back to the boilerplate, why pick Jimmy Carter, if you want to win?”

Limbaugh said last night’s speech shows just how right he was when he first linked Obama to Carter.

“Little did I know — and I’m always aware when I’m right; I never doubt it — but little did I know how right I was when I warned the people of America that an Obama presidency would end up being nothing more than the second term Jimmy Carter never had,” Limbaugh said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Here’s Jimmy Carter’s 1980 acceptance speech:

Eastwood Says His Convention Appearance was ‘Mission Accomplished’

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AFTER A week as topic No. 1 in American politics, former Carmel Mayor Clint Eastwood said the outpouring of criticism from left-wing reporters and liberal politicians after his appearance at the Republican National Convention last Thursday night, followed by an avalanche of support on Twitter and in the blogosphere, is all the proof anybody needs that his 12-minute discourse achieved exactly what he intended it to.

“President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” Eastwood told The Pine Cone this week. “Romney and Ryan would do a much better job running the country, and that’s what everybody needs to know. I may have irritated a lot of the lefties, but I was aiming for people in the middle.”

For five days after he thrilled or horrified the nation by talking to an empty chair representing Obama on the night Mitt Romney accepted the Republican nomination for president, Eastwood remained silent while pundits and critics debated whether his remarks, and the rambling way he made them, had helped or hurt Romney’s chances of winning in November.

But in a wide-ranging interview with The Pine Cone Tuesday from his home in Pebble Beach, he said he had conveyed the messages he wanted to convey, and that the spontaneous nature of his presentation was intentional, too.

“I had three points I wanted to make,” Eastwood said. “That not everybody in Hollywood is on the left, that Obama has broken a lot of the promises he made when he took office, and that the people should feel free to get rid of any politician who’s not doing a good job. But I didn’t make up my mind exactly what I was going to say until I said it.”

Read more from this story HERE.

White House Violates Law Again: Sequestration Report Deadline Missed

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The White House on Friday said it will miss the legal deadline for delivering a report to Congress on the spending cuts from sequestration that are scheduled to take effect in 2013.

Spokesman Jay Carney told reporters on Air Force One that the report will be coming next week.

Under the terms of the Sequestration Transparency Act signed in August, President Obama was to tell Congress by Friday how the administration plans to implement the $109 billion in automatic cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act.

The Office of Management and Budget has repeatedly failed to make legal deadlines. It delivered its presidential budget proposals and mid-session updates late both this year and last year.

Republicans have tried to tie the tardiness to the failure of the Senate to pass a budget resolution for the last three years.

Read more from this story HERE.

GOP to Pass ‘No More Solyndras Act’ when Congress returns

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House Republicans will pass a bill next week that suspends new loans for clean-energy companies under the Department of Energy program that loaned nearly $530 million Solyndra, the failed solar panel producer that Republicans have targeted as an example of government waste.

Under the “No More Solyndras Act,” H.R. 6213, any similar applications for government loans made in 2012 could not be accepted, and any applications submitted before 2012 could only be approved after a Treasury Department review of the proposed financial terms of the loan.

In addition, any loans approved would have to be reported in full detail within 60 days. Any violation of the bill would subject related officials to penalties, including a fine of at least $10,000 and up to $50,000.

The bill finds that the Obama administration pursued a “green jobs” agenda with the use of $90 billion in program funding in the 2009 stimulus bill, in addition to $47 billion in loan guarantees from various appropriations bills that can be used under the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

The stimulus bill also created a new loan program for commercial technology, and Solyndra was one of several companies that benefited from this new program. Solyndra and two other recipients of the same program have since declared bankruptcy.

Read more from this story HERE.

August: Lowest Male Employment Rate in History; 4 Stopped Looking for Work for Each New Job

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Just 96,000 American jobs were added in August in a bleak monthly jobs report as 368,000 left the workforce, bringing labour market participation down to its lowest level for 31 years and dealing a blow to President Barack Obama’s re-election chances.

The national unemployment rate dropped to 8.1 per cent, down from 8.2 per cent, but this was only because so many people gave up looking for work. If the participation rate had not dropped so precipitously, unemployment would have risen to 8.4 per cent.

Factory employment fell by the most in two years and temporary-help companies eliminated positions for the first time in five months. The 69.9 per cent labor force participation rate for men is at lowest level recorded since the US government began tracking it in 1948.

According to James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute, the unemployment rate would be 11.2 per cent if the labour force participation rate had remained what it was when Obama took office in January 2009. The U.S. Labour Department also said that 41,000 fewer jobs were created in June and July than previously reported.

President Barack Obama was made aware of the figures before he took the stage to deliver his prime-time address at the Democratic convention on Thursday night, which could account for his sometimes grim demeanour as he spoke.

Read more from this story HERE.

Fact Checking Last Night’s Speech: Obama Finally Produced Something Shovel-Ready

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President Barack Obama laid claim to a peace dividend that doesn’t exist when he told the nation he wants to use money saved by ending wars to build highways, schools and bridges.

The wars were largely financed by borrowing, so there is no ready pile of cash to be diverted to anything else.

The claim was one of several by Obama in his acceptance speech Thursday at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., and by Vice President Joe Biden in earlier remarks that did not match the facts. A look at some of their assertions:

OBAMA: “I’ll use the money we’re no longer spending on war to pay down our debt and put more people back to work — rebuilding roads and bridges, schools and runways. After two wars that have cost us thousands of lives and over a trillion dollars, it’s time to do some nation-building right here at home.”

THE FACTS: The idea of taking war savings to pay for other programs is budgetary sleight of hand, given that the wars were paid for with increased debt. Obama can essentially “pay down our debt,” as he said, by borrowing less now that war is ending. But he still must borrow to do the “extra nation-building” he envisions.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: DonkeyHotey