Europe: Tips on how you can Watch Tonight's Election Results Online - by John Paul Titlow

On November 6, 2012, the first post-PC U.S. presidential election will come to a close. Just like the primaries, conventions and debates, tonight's election returns will be obsessively and extensively live streamed and covered live online. For those relying on the Internet for their nail-biting date with democracy, there are more choices than anyone could possibly list.

Pretty much every modern news site in the United States (and many abroad) will be covering the results as they happen. That coverage will consist of a dizzying array of interactive maps, data visualizations, live video feeds, tweets, Instagram photos and good, old fashioned news articles. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal are even pulling down their paywalls for the occasion.

YouTube's Election Hub will be live streaming results, just as it has done with pretty much every other major election-related event this year. The politics-focused channel has become a robust repository for videos related to the presidential campaign, from debate clips and convention speeches to attack ads and professional punditry. While waiting for the electoral results to start rolling in, you can ease your impatience with one last burst of election-related video before the campaign fatigue comes to a merciful end.

CNN will offer live video feeds of the election results, along with the usual assortment of maps, interactive tools and social media updates. The live video stream will be available on CNN's mobile apps, but only to cable subscribers. Users of any tablet can check CNN's live results map in the browser and play around with the Facebook Election Insights tool, which is fueled by real-time data from the enormous social network.

The Wall Street Journal is planning a similarly cross-platform night of political coverage. Alongside standard news stories, it will have a dynamically updated map powered by CartoDB, a New York-based mapping startup. In addition to state-by-state election returns, that map allows users to overlay state-based data points like unemployment, per-capita income and previous election results. The Wall Street Journal will also stream video coverage live on its website and via its WSJ Live app for mobile devices and Internet TV streaming boxes.

Other sites offering live-streamed video coverage include Politico, Washington Post, CBS News, HuffPost Live and the Chicago Tribune, to name but a few.  If you're at a loss, head over to UStream, where there will be a selection of more than a dozen video streams to chose from.
Video isn't the only option. If you'd rather listen to the returns and focus your eyes elsewhere, NPR will be broadcasting live on its website and via its mobile apps. Meanwhile, Slacker Radio has partnered with ABC News to provide its own live audio coverage.

Also check your own local European stations and if all else fails head over to UStream and take your pick.

Read more: How To Watch Tonight's Election Results Online

US Presidential Elections:U.S. voters have two stark options for one great problem - by Adam Radwinsky

Barack Obama

As Barack Obama wrapped his speech at the Democratic National Convention this year, the music of one of the U.S. President’s most high-profile supporters blared over the loudspeakers. But the lyrics might have said more about the state of his country than Mr. Obama was really aiming for.

We Take Care of Our Own is one of those Bruce Springsteen songs that only sounds jingoistic if you’re not paying attention. Listen closely to the verses, about searching in vain for spirit and hope and honest work, and you realize that the chorus is a bitterly sarcastic lament for a nation failing to live up to its promise.

If that made it a strange choice for a President seeking re-election, it also made it a fitting theme song for a campaign in which Americans have been forced to confront the prospect that they’re living in an empire in decline.

Emerging economies such as China and India are rapidly overtaking the United States as economic superpowers. Recovery from the Great Recession is so slow that it’s debatable whether parts of the country will be the same again. The U.S. federal government is perpetually on the brink of a debt crisis, with Democrats and Republicans so busy fighting each other that they can barely figure out how to pay the bills.

As they seek some light at the end of the tunnel, Americans find themselves with two basic choices – one about policy, and one about character.

Mr. Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney have significantly different ideas of how, exactly, they should take care of their own. Consider it interventionism versus getting out of Americans’ way, with an asterisk.

Mr. Obama believes, albeit to a mild extent by Canadian standards, in the power of government – to ensure Americans have health-care coverage, to bail out core industries when they’re failing, to preserve as much program spending as possible while the country wrestles with its massive deficit.

He has significantly increased financial and other forms of regulation, and is prepared to raise taxes on high-income earners.

Mr. Romney has effectively argued that Americans would better help themselves and each other if the federal government gave them more room. He would roll back Mr. Obama’s attempts at more expansive health coverage, trim back regulations, and shift responsibilities (including for emergency response) to states or the private sector. He wants to cap federal spending at 20 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), which would mean big cuts to most everything other than social security and (arguably) medicare, while keeping taxes low.

The asterisk is that Mr. Romney wants to protect military spending, warning that Mr. Obama’s willingness to cut it would devastate the economies of states reliant on it. That only adds, though, to their wildly different strategies of trying to navigate their way off the fiscal cliff that awaits whoever takes office.

But not everything is as tangible as differences of opinion on how the budget should be structured. There’s the ability to strong-arm or finesse those policies through a divided Washington, and to adapt to whatever is tossed at the United States by the fast-changing world around it. And perhaps above all else, there’s the need to provide moral leadership – to offer hope, or at least reassurance, and to refuse to take the United States’s retreat lying down.

There is, in short, that matter of character. And while both men have a lot to admire on that front, they’ve also each given Americans reason for pause.

Americans have faced flawed choices before, and they’ve been grappling with some of the same policy questions since the Reagan era. But to spend any time in the United States, in this election year, has been to detect a palpable anxiety – a sense that U.S. exceptionalism is at stake like never before.

On Tuesday, Americans will give a mandate to take better care of their own. That Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney are still running neck and neck in the campaign’s final days suggests neither has quite convinced his country just yet that he’s capable of it.

 Read more: U.S. voters have two stark options for one great problem - The Globe and Mail

Europe ‘less important’ for US presidents

What will the outcome of the US presidential race mean for Europe? During Barack Obama’s tenure in the White House the economic crisis ensured that he remained engaged with the EU.
Mitt Romney has worried some European observers with hostile comments towards Russia and China, a hardline stance over Iran, and a pro-Israeli, anti-Palestinian approach.

Europe is not listed among the Republican candidate’s foreign policy priorities on his website.
Dr Ted R Bromund of the conservative think-tank the Heritage Foundation told euronews that Europe’s importance had declined.

‘‘I think Mitt Romney would focus a little bit more on Europe than President Obama has done, but I think the era of the US focusing on Europe as the most important part of the world has gone, regardless of whether Mitt Romney or Barack Obama is in the White House next year. That was a different era in US policy; Europe is at peace; it is losing economic importance vis-a-vis Asia. And naturally the United States is going to look at where there are foreign policy crises and where the economy is growing, instead of places where this is not true,’‘ he said.

Mitt Romney’s foreign trips have been noted for their gaffes: criticizing London’s Olympic preparations, and describing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Read more: Europe ‘less important’ for US presidents | euronews, world news

Reflections on the upcoming US Presidential Elections and Democracy - by RM

The current corporate-media-hyped two-party US presidential race finds the American people looking to their candidates -- President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney -- for solutions.

The question is, are they getting any answers? 

Unfortunately, it seems they are coming back pretty empty-handed as the candidates have continued to push their own party agendas, speaking in "talking points" rather than "addressing real problems".

All this while the aggressive and thieving corporate crime wave continues to sweep the US and the rest of the world, draining hard-earned savings, health and safety of millions of people, with little or no law enforcement to stop it.

Charles Ferguson, director of the Academy Award winning documentary Inside Job, who took the stage to accept his Oscar in 2011 said: "Three years after a horrific financial crisis caused by massive fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail, and that's wrong." Rampant corporate crime is going to continue unless we start punishing crime in the suites with at least as much fervor and budgets as we do the crime in the streets. 

Not much has changed since that remark by Mr. Ferguson last year. Corporations and their interest groups indirectly still influence and control every aspect of the US political establishment and sadly this continues to encourage widespread corruptive practices.

The US Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United on January 21, 2010 opened the floodgates even further for special interest money and corporate influence in politics. At the same time, a rash of new voter suppression laws in more than 30 states has threatened to make voting difficult, if not impossible, for millions of Americans.

In 1977, in the wake of Watergate, the US Congress enacted the FCPA , after revelations that more than 400 American companies had paid bribes totaling more than $300 million to foreign government officials and politicians. Over the last 35 years, the US Department of Justice has established several enforcement mechanisms, leading to increased but still not sufficient compliance efforts by corporations.

However, the narrowing global governance deficit requires closer cooperation, and a willingness to invest in civil-society organizations that also hold governments accountable. So far not much is happening in that direction. Much more needs to be done.

Another recommendation would be that anyone holding an elected or government position has to give complete public disclosure of all private and corporate donated funding received and that this can be enforced by law.

To avoid corruption elected officials should only be allowed two terms in office and not be allowed to give themselves or each other benefits unless the rest of the country they serve is given similar benefits as well. No health insurance, no life insurance, no big pensions or fancy perks unless they see fit to provide these benefits to all citizens.

It is essential that elected Government officials become a part of the rules before they are given the moral authority to govern. The motto must be “Money Out, Voters In”.

When it comes to democracy and liberty in the US it seems that politicians on both sides of the aisle have forgotten the famous words of one of America's founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin , "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Today in 2012, the people of the United States find themselves living under the mantra "whatever it takes to protect the American people". Rampant claims of "executive privilege" and "state secrets" and violations of due process have led to "Big Brother" -- The Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, the continued imprisonment-without-trial of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, and in the U.S., the invasive TSA agents who harass travelers. 

Throughout the history of the US, powerful politicians and interest groups have tried to block eligible voters from casting a ballot. For much of the twentieth century, they used literacy tests or demanded poll taxes. Today they ask for photo voter ID, or create restrictive voter registration schemes. These laws, combined with the challenge posed by limitless corporate influence, strike at the very core of  US  democracy.

This coming Tuesday, November 6, American voters going to the polls can either vote for more corporate involvement on life in America, negatively affecting its hardworking middle class, or vote for winning the battle against that stranglehold. A battle which started 4 years ago on November 6, 2008.  .

EU-Digest

Copyright © 2012, EU-Digest

U.S. Presidential election: Polls show a tightening race between Obama and Romney in swing states

President Barack Obama is leading the polls in several battleground states but Republican challenger Mitt Romney is catching up in a tight U.S. election race.

With four days left until Americans head to the voting booths, pollsters and pundits are closely watching the match between Obama and Romney in states that have a history of swinging between Democrats and Republicans.

The latest poll showed that in Iowa, which has emerged as an important swing state this year, Obama is at 50 per cent, six points ahead of Romney, who has 44 per cent among those who have already voted or are likely to do so, according to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist College poll. In New Hampshire, the president leads 49 per cent to 47 per cent.

And the difference is going to be razor-thin overall: the nationwide tracking poll gave each candidate 49 per cent.

Read more: U.S. election: Polls show a tightening race between Obama and Romney in swing states - thestar.com

US Presidential Campaign: Romney Continues Campaign of Lies say opponents

Back in July, David Axelrod, senior campaign adviser for the Obama campaign, called Mitt Romney "the most secretive candidate we've seen probably since Richard Nixon."  

At an event in Defiance, Ohio Thursday evening, Mitt Romney got his Halloween on early by playing the Grim Reaper of jobs when he told a complete falsehood about Chrysler moving Jeep to China and taking Americans job with them. 

Chrysler said that a “careful and unbiased” understanding “would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments.” That’s our Mitt.

The truth is that Chrysler is not moving its Jeep production from America to China. As Chrysler said today, “Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China.” 

Romney took “a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats” Thursday when he said, “I saw a story today, that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China. I will fight for every good job in America, I’m going to fight to make sure trade is fair, and if it’s fair, America will win.”

Did you catch that? He saw a “story” alright, and just like Fox, he figured he’d “some people” reality by not bothering with it at all.

Romney charged in the second presidential debate that "it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror." Obama denied it, urging Romney to "Get the transcript."
FactCheck.org observed. "The transcript does show that Obama said in a Rose Garden speech on Sept. 12: 'No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.'"

In the same debate, Romney said a gallon of gasoline in Nassau County, N.Y. was $1.86 when Obama took office. It's now "4 bucks a gallon."

As fact checkers for USA Today stated, "Gas prices were going through a period of exceptional volatility when Obama took office – largely because, as Obama noted, gas prices plummeted as the recession took hold and people drove less...But gas prices are still 34 cents below their all-time high during the Bush administration. In the summer of 2008, the national average hit $4.05 a gallon."
FactCheck.org noted, "Mitt Romney falsely claims in a series of TV ads that President Obama 'will raise taxes on the middle class by $4,000.' That's nonsense. The ads cite a conservative group's study, but even the group itself doesn't say Obama will raise taxes on middle-income taxpayers. It says his budget could result in a 'potentially higher tax burden' over the next 10 years.

"In fact, the group's study considered two other budget scenarios – current law (allowing the Bush-era tax cuts to expire as scheduled at the end of this year) and current policy (extending current policies into 2013, including extending the Bush-era tax cuts) – and determined that Obama's budget 'provides a middle ground between these two extremes.'"

Romney said during a Republican debate on Feb 22: "I said today that we're going to cut taxes on everyone across the country by 20 percent, including the top 1 percent." However, during a debate with Obama, he said, "I'm not looking to cut taxes for wealthy people."

Read more: Romney Continues Campaign of Lies

Religion: Why Europe supports President Obama, not Mitt Romney - by Robert Bennett

This is being written in Paris, where I have been attending an academic conference dedicated to an analysis of the 2012 presidential election. If they could vote, Europeans would solidly support President Obama, with France leading the way. Some polls show that Obama would draw more than 90 percent of the vote here; across the entire continent, he runs above 70 percent.

Those attending the conference told me that this is not because Europeans particularly dislike Mitt Romney. They simply don't know anything about him, with one exception — they know he is a Mormon.

But most don't know what that means. One European panelist, who spoke just after I did, spent his entire time talking about Mormons, portraying them as crazed zealots who comprise a truly sinister force in American life. In addition to the specifics of Mormonism that he considered ludicrous, he also made it clear that anyone who believed in Jesus as a divine being was laughably deluded. It was such a stunning diatribe that the moderator of the panel, an American, interrupted the pattern of the presentations to give me time to respond. I was pleased that my statement received a very respectful hearing from the audience, who thought the other speaker had gone too far. He later apologized to me, saying, "I didn't know you were a Mormon."

The reason the religion issue has not gone away in Europe is that all religions are now considered suspect here. The European conviction that Romney's beliefs must be an issue stems as much from the fact that he holds them as from their specifics. No European politician can afford to be seen as devout; the panelist's statements suggested that religious devotion in a candidate demonstrates that he is not a serious person. That is one of the reasons why Europeans were as dubious as they were about George W. Bush.

My own idea as to why there is such a different view of religion between America and Europe turns on the question of separation of church and state. Historically, European countries have had state Churches: the Roman Catholic Church in Italy, the Church of England in Great Britain, the Lutheran Church in Germany and so on. Supported both financially and structurally by their governments, these churches held dominant positions in their countries for centuries. As they lost their privileged positions after the Second World War, religion itself lost its hold on people's loyalties.

Europeans can't vote, so a discussion of their views on religion in politics is academic, but it helps us understand why they view American politics differently than we do. I suspect that American presidents will continue to embrace religion and Europeans will continue to be amazed by that.

 Read more: Robert Bennett: Why Europe supports President Obama, not Mitt Romney | Deseret News

US Presidential Elections: Obama vs. Romney: What they think about abortion and Planned Parenthood

Get out your political boxing gloves and find your voting location, ladies. Women might determine who sits in the Oval Office for the next four years. You don’t have to be a feminist to feel uncomfortable with a woman's body being labeled as an "issue" in the political arena, and at the very least, we have the right to know exactly why politicians think our bodies are "issues" they get to make decisions about.

President Obama is 100 percent pro-choice, meaning he believes each and every woman has the right to decide for herself if she wants to get an abortion, regardless of circumstances surrounding a pregnancy. He pledges to uphold Roe v. Wade and ensure that abortions remain legal in the United States. Vice President Joe Biden is also pro-choice, citing in his recent debate against opponent Paul Ryan that he is personally against abortion for religious reasons, but that neither he nor anyone else has the right to inflict those beliefs on the the nation's women.

Though Romney previously supported abortion rights, he now says that the policy of a Romney administration would be to oppose abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or protecting the life of the mother. Romney's camp holds that life begins at conception. If Romney were elected, his administration would hold that Roe v. Wade should be overturned and that the issue of whether or not abortions are legal should be decided by individual state governments. It is estimated that more than 30 states would outlaw abortion under Romney's policy.

Read more: Obama vs. Romney: What they think about abortion and Planned Parenthood

US presidential elections: A missing topic in the debates: Obama’s handling of the European crisis - by Neil Irwin

The debates are done: Three face-offs between Mitt Romney and President Obama, totaling 4¹ / ₂ hours and combined transcripts of more than 50,000 words, longer than “The Great Gatsby.” But this was a novel with some glaring plot holes.

There were a startling range of issues that were never broached, a list that includes climate change, housing policy and appointments to the Federal Reserve. But one topic stands out for the mismatch between how much it has affected the economy — and how much of Obama’s time and energy it has claimed — relative to its nonexistence in the debates.

Europe’s financial woes have weighed on U.S. economic growth — driving down earnings among American companies that do business there and walloping financial markets on both sides of the Atlantic — amid persistent worries that the euro currency could unravel. It is impossible to know what the U.S. economy would have done over the past three years absent a fiscal crisis in Greece and other European countries (or if Germany and other financially stronger nations on the continent had responded to that crisis crisply and decisively). But it is easy to imagine that this was the difference between steady emergence from the nation’s deep doldrums and the muddling along that has occurred.

Read more: A missing topic in the debates: Obama’s handling of the European crisis - The Washington Post

US Presidential elections: 'With 'horses and bayonets,' Obama casts Romney as out of touch

President Barack Obama

If Mitt Romney’s foreign policy was an unknown to average voters, President Obama came to the table for the third presidential debate ready to sum it up in one word: dated.

In his final face-off against the former Massachusetts governor, Obama unleashed a series of zingers all casting Romney’s foreign policy ideas as old — sometimes really, really old.

Obama started by tearing into Romney’s description of Russia as a “No. 1 geopolitical foe.”

“And the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War's been over for 20 years,” Obama said, reviving a bit of snark he’s used on the campaign trail. “But, governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s.”

Obama reached quite a bit further back for his next, practiced attack. Answering Romney’s familiar critique about the Navy having fewer ships today than under past presidents, Obama said Romney “hasn't spent enough time looking at how our military works.”

“Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines,” he said. “And so the question is not a game of Battleship where we're counting ships. It's — it's what are our capabilities.”

Note EU-Digest: Last week to the surprise of many Christians and non-Christians but obviously to the delight of the Republicans  Billy Graham’s Evangelistic Association removed the word Mormon from its website, where it used to be listed along with Jehovah’s Witnesses and Scientology as a cult. The move comes just a week after Romney visited Graham at his home in North Carolina.


Read more: With 'horses and bayonets,' Obama casts Romney as out of touch - latimes.com

Romney election triumph would sink US reputation in Europe, poll finds - by Ewen MacAskill

The reputation of the US in Europe risks sinking back to Bush-era levels of unpopularity if Mitt Romney becomes president, according to new international polling published on Tuesday.

Only around one in 20 of those surveyed in Britain, France and Germany by YouGov held a positive view of the Republican presidential nominee.

The poll of more than 12,000 people across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan and China was prepared for the YouGov-Cambridge forum this week at which the Guardian is a media partner.

The results are a sign that affection for Barack Obama has diminished little since his 2008 speech in Berlin in which he promised to restore America's reputation on the world stage, even though, four years on, Guantánamo remains open and the US is still engaged in military action in Afghanistan.

But while Europeans had a strongly negative reaction to Romney, the prospect of him winning the White House was greeted with less dismay in Pakistan, where about 13% of respondents said it would make them more favourable to the US, compared to just 9% who said it would make them less favorable.

French daily Le Figaro, normally staunch conservative, ran a blog with the headline: 'Is Mitt Romney a loser?' In Poland, he was criticised by the Solidarity movement for being anti-unions.
A negative poll among Europeans can easily be brushed aside by the Romney campaign, as their views are unlikely to have any impact on the election. Indeed, he might even regard the results as helpful since many Americans, at least in public, claim to be disdainful about European views.


Read more: Romney election triumph would sink US reputation in Europe, poll finds | World news | guardian.co.uk

US Presidential Elections: A conservative split over Middle East - by Fareed Zakaria

Mitt Romney's speech on foreign affairs this week was surprisingly moderate. Rhetorically it was full of sound and fury but, on closer examination, it signified no major change of policy.

Romney affirmed the timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan; he did not propose sending troops back into Iraq and did not advocate military strikes on Iran. He pledged to work toward a two-state solution in the Middle East. He even left out the belligerence toward China that had been a staple of his speeches in recent months.

Romney proposed one policy shift, toward Syria. But even there -- in a carefully worded, passive construction -- he did not announce that as president, he would arm the Syrian opposition, merely that he would "ensure they obtain the arms they need". The "they" is "those members of the opposition who share our values". So, Romney's sole divergence from current policy is that we should try harder to find non-Islamists among the Syrian rebels and encourage Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to give them more arms.

Romney's moderation is partly a continuation of his pivot to the centre. But it also reflects the lack of consensus among conservatives on what to do about the turmoil in the Middle East.

Read more: A conservative split over Middle East - Columnist - New Straits Times

US Presidential Elections: International Policy:Romney offers sweeping critique of Obama foreign policy and wants to arm Syrian Rebels

Romney departed from his focus on the U.S. economy to talk about how he would handle foreign policy if elected November 6. The speech allowed Romney to lay out his national security positions ahead of his October 16 debate with Obama, which will include discussion of foreign policy.

His aim was to portray himself as having the presidential stature needed for the world stage, and he sought to convince Americans that he would project strong American leadership around the world but not rush blindly into armed conflict.

The address was intended to reframe Romney's approach following the harsh criticism he drew last month for inserting campaign politics into the killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and after a gaffe-filled trip to Britain, Israel and Poland in July.

Romney pledged that his administration would work to find elements of the Syrian opposition who share U.S. values and ensure they obtain weapons needed to defeat Syrian President Bashir al-Assad's forces and end his crackdown. 

EU-Digest

Europe on edge after Romney's strong debate showing - "Obama needs running shoes not flip-flops"

While a lot can change before the November 6 vote, and Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney will go head to head twice more before then, polling conducted immediately after the debate showed Romney came out overwhelmingly on top.

In Europe, where leaders and finance officials have worked closely with the Obama administration over the past 2-1/2 years trying to resolve the euro area debt crisis, there was particular consternation at Romney's singling out of deficit-ridden Spain as a poorly administered economy.

"Romney is making analogies that aren't based on reality," Foreign Affairs Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo told reporters after a meeting of his centre-right party.

Leading Spanish daily El Pais highlighted the fact that Spain was the only European country mentioned, and contrasted Romney's negative depiction of it with Obama's praise for Spain's renewable energy policies during the 2008 campaign.  "Spain has never been mentioned in a presidential debate as a symbol of failure," the left-leaning newspaper lamented. "What happened last night makes history. And not in a good way."

Political commentators in France and Germany registered surprise at Obama's underwhelming performance, saying the election could be much tighter as a result.

"Obama showed a lack of desire to be president, which could put him on shaky ground as a presidential candidate," said liberal German news magazine Der Spiegel.

"It's now clear that to get back into the White House the U.S. president needs running shoes, not flip-flops."

EU-Digest

US Presidential Elections: Romney Tax Plan on Table. Debt Collapses Table - by Ezra Klein

I can describe Mitt Romney’s tax policy promises in two words: mathematically impossible.

Those aren’t my words. They’re the words of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, which has conducted the most comprehensive analysis to date of Romney’s tax plan and which bent over backward to make his promises add up. They’re perhaps the two most important words that have been written during this U.S. presidential election.

If you were to distill the presumptive Republican nominee’s campaign to a few sentences, you could hardly do better than this statement of purpose from the speech Romney delivered in Detroit, outlining his plan for the economy: “I believe the American people are ready for real leadership. I believe they deserve a bold, conservative plan for reform and economic growth. Unlike President Obama, I actually have one -- and I’m not afraid to put it on the table.”

The truth is that Romney is afraid to put his plan on the table. He has promised to reduce the deficit, but refused to identify the spending he would cut. He has promised to reform the tax code, but refused to identify the deductions and loopholes he would eliminate. The only thing he has put on the table is dessert: a promise to cut marginal tax rates by 20 percent across the board and to do so without raising the deficit or reducing the taxes paid by the top 1 percent.

Read more: Romney Tax Plan on Table. Debt Collapses Table. - Bloomberg

US Presidential Elections: Mitt Romney Comes Out Swinging in First Presidential Debate - "but his investment promises are mathematically impossible""

The debate in Denver was the first of three debates the two candidates will have between them over the next four weeks before Election Day. Their initial meeting was wonky in its discussion of policy details and failed to produce any real fireworks, with both candidates returning to well tread talking points.

Romney appeared more relaxed than Obama, who spent much of his time explaining policies he would likely rather be done selling by now. He hardly looked Romney in the eye during the debate.

There is one critical caveat, of course, in determining the winner of a debate: It's difficult to know how the millions of voters, whose prisms are radically different than those of mainstream reporters, took in the debate. But, at minimum, Romney cleared the most critical bar, by appearing presidential.

Still, one issue continued to plague Romney: details. While he said he would end Obama programs, he was vague on how he would do so without eliminating a host of components he pledged to keep.
"At some point, you have to ask, is he keeping all these plans to replace [programs] secret because they're too good?" Obama said. "Families are going benefit too much from them?"

Though there was no knock-out punch, observers rated Romney as the stronger debater tonight. 

EU-Digest

US Presidential elections: Middle East - Romney says Obama has led America to "atrophy"

Mitt Romney is out with a foreign-policy focused op-ed where he criticizes President Obama's strategy in the Middle East for lacking coherence and resolve. In his prescription for success, Romney connects success overseas with economic success domestically.

"President Obama has allowed our leadership to atrophy," Romney wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

"Our military, tested by a decade of war, is facing devastating cuts thanks to the budgetary games played by the White House. Finally, our values have been misapplied--and misunderstood--by a president who thinks that weakness will win favor with our adversaries," Romney wrote.

Tying in the importance of domestic economic security to international defense, Romney bashes the current state of economic affairs. "Our economy is stuck in a 'recovery' that barely deserves the name. Our national debt has risen to record levels," he wrote.

Pointing to ongoing challenges in the Middle East, including the civil war in Syria, the election of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and Iran's progress toward a nuclear weapon, Romney wrote that the U.S.'s standing in the world matters, calling recent developments "dangerous."

Note EU-Digest: obviously the question is what alternative plan does Mr. Romney have? Start another war? For the 92 % of those who do not know the meaning of the word  atrophy it means "to waste away; wither or deteriorate".

Read more

US Presidential Elections: New Wave of Polls Gives Obama the Advantage - by Christina Bellantoni and Terence Burlij

Whether you take the national view or go state-by-state, the polls all seem to show the same thing: President Obama has the advantage over Mitt Romney 48 days from Election Day.

The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday showed the president leading nationally among likely voters, 50 percent to 45 percent. It's the first time he has hit 50 percent in the survey since March.

The president had closed the gap with Romney on the question of which candidate would do a better job of handling the economy, with the two men now tied at 43 percent. The Republican presidential nominee held a six-point lead on that measure in July.

At the same time, views about the economy also improved. Forty-two percent of Americans said they think the economy will get better in the next 12 months, a six-point uptick since last month, while 18 percent responded they expected it to get worse. About a third of respondents said the economy would stay about the same.

The president also appeared to be in better shape in the battleground states that will ultimately decide the fall campaign.

A batch of swing-state surveys released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News showed the president with a six-point lead in Wisconsin (51 percent to 45 percent), a four-point advantage in Virginia (50-46) and a narrow edge in Colorado (48-47).

Mr. Obama made his first remarks on Romney's comments to David Letterman on Tuesday night. He pointedly needled his rival for saying that 47 percent of Americans would not vote for the Republican.
"I can tell you this. When I won in 2008, 47 percent of the American people voted for John McCain," Mr. Obama said. "They didn't vote for me. What I said on election night was even though you didn't vote for me, I hear your voices and I'm going as work as hard as I can to be your president. One of the things I've learned as president is you represent the entire country. And when I meet Republicans as I'm traveling around the country, they are hardworking family people who care deeply about this country. And my expectation is if you want to be president you've got to work for everybody, not just for some."

A new Democratic ad being aired which says, "Mitt Romney isn't the solution, he's the problem." is probably one that hits the nail on the head for the gafs Romney has been making.

Read more: New Wave of Polls Gives Obama the Advantage | PBS NewsHour

US Presidential Elections: Slipping in the polls, Romney looks to shift direction of race - Kasie Hunt and Ken Thomas

With momentum on President Barack Obama’s side, Mitt Romney sought Monday to explain to voters more clearly what he would do as president as he looked to right his struggling campaign and ease worries in Republican circles about its state seven weeks before Election Day.

“My plan is to help the middle class,” the Republican nominee says in a new TV ad in which he promises to cut the deficit, balance the budget, reduce spending and help small business. Also, he adds: “We’ll add 12 million new jobs in four years.”

It was one of two new commercials he was launching in the most competitive states – the other assails Mr. Obama as bad for middle-class families – while also re-focusing his campaign appearances on his previously released five-point economic plan and starting a new effort to try to narrow Mr. Obama’s advantage with Hispanic voters.

Paul J. Quirk, a U.S. citizen and lifelong resident until he joined the University of British Columbia as the Phil Lind Chair in U.S. Politics and Representation noted: “Romney shot himself in the foot last week, then re-loaded, and shot the other foot. First, he said he would keep parts of Obama's health care reform. After saying thousands of times that he would repeal Obamacare, with no qualifications, he offended conservatives and left his position on health care badly confused.

“Second, he attacked Obama for a statement on the Libyan crisis that a) most people will approve of and b) Obama himself did not even make. He appeared to many observers too political and too reckless for the presidency.

“Both episodes provide material for Democratic advertising and for embarrassing challenges during the presidential debates. The sad thing about all this, from a Republican standpoint, is that desperation is not yet warranted. Romney is throwing ‘Hail Marys,’ very likely to be intercepted, in the third quarter of the game.”

"Bottom line he just isn't Presidential material".

Read more: Slipping in the polls, Romney looks to shift direction of race - The Globe and

Middle East violence presents foreign policy challenges for both Obama, Romney - by Lee-Anne Goodman

A sudden eruption of anti-American turmoil in the Middle East poses challenges for both U.S. President Barack Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney, with both men facing tough questions about their foreign policy know-how less than 60 days before the Nov. 6 vote.

Romney was still on the hot seat Thursday for his assertion that the Obama administration sympathized with the forces storming Middle East U.S. embassies this week, while the president was facing even tougher, more substantive questions.

Does the United States have an intelligence gap in Libya that resulted in the slaying of U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens? Why was security seemingly so lax at U.S. diplomatic buildings in Libya and Egypt?

Was it a mistake for the U.S. to nudge Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, a longtime American ally, out of power? Why is the U.S. still regarded so poorly in the Muslim world after supporting pro-democracy rebels during the Arab Spring?

At a campaign stop in Colorado, Obama vowed again to catch those responsible for the deaths of Stevens and three other American diplomats, but didn't delve into the bigger issues at hand.

For more: Middle East violence presents foreign policy challenges for both Obama, Romne