First Lady Wows Convention

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – First lady Michelle Obama set out to do for Democrats Tuesday exactly what Republicans wanted Ann Romney to do: humanize her husband, making him more appealing and accessible to voters whose connection has wavered.

Without ever directly attacking, Obama built an attack on Romney that called on simple details — rusted cars, student loans, a grandmother passed over for a promotion — that drew an implicit contrast with the privileged upbringing of the Republican nominee that Ann Romney could only gloss over last week in Tampa.

Obama said it was that life experience that made her husband appreciate the struggles of working Americans, and makes him the candidate to elect to keep working for them come November.

It was a surprisingly biographical speech about a man who’s already been president nearly four years, but his wife’s job was to make an emotional connection between Obama and voters that Barack Obama himself has struggled to create. She tried to argue that Obama’s rather unusual upbringing — with stops that included Hawaii and Indonesia — was really no different from hers. “When Barack started telling me about his family – that’s when I knew I had found a kindred spirit, someone whose values and upbringing were so much like mine.”

Her message was simple: We are you.

And she aimed to give a resounding “Yes” to one of the biggest questions hanging over Obama — whether he “gets” the economic struggles Americans are facing.

“I’ve gotten to see up close and personal what being president really looks like,” she said. “At the end of the day, when it comes time to make that decision, as president, all you have to guide you are your values, and your vision, and the life experiences that make you who you are.”

Democratic strategist Donna Brazile said on ABC that the first lady “ filled in many of the blanks that Democrats have been longing to hear what this president has been fighting for.”

With “we love Michelle” signs waving during applause lines, Obama mixed personal stories with a broader discussion of what her husband believes in, with some oblique jabs at Mitt Romney.

“We learned about honesty and integrity – that the truth matters, that you don’t take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules,” she said. “And success doesn’t count unless you earn it fair and square.” Without being explicit about her husband’s argument that a background in business doesn’t translate into having the skills to be president, Obama said she watches her husband make decisions on "problems where no amount of data or numbers will get you to the right answer.”

Listening to his values, she said, he has made the right decisions – whether on preventing the economy from diving into a depression, advocating for health care reform, or wanting to do all he can to help the ordinary Americans he encounters across the country.

The president “get[s] all kinds of advice from all kinds of people,” Obama said, but he has at times bucked the advice of his top political aides in favor of following his own sense of what’s right.

Most notably, the first lady said Obama did it in working to pass his health care law — something she pushed for even as some of the president’s top political hands urged him to stay away.

“When it comes to the health of our families, Barack refused to listen to all those folks who told him to leave health reform for another day, another president,” she said, airing a level of frustration with her husband’s political advisers that she’s rarely shown when in the public spotlight. “He didn’t care whether it was the easy thing to do politically – that’s not how he was raised – he cared that it was the right thing to do.”

The first lady has several roles on the campaign trail this fall, including appealing to the Democratic grassroots and to middle class Americans unsure of whether the president’s values truly align with their own.

Mixing her own story of parents who fought for the best for their children with her husband’s more exotic – but just as tough, if not tougher — biography, she stressed that the president is someone advocating for the middle class.

“Barack and I were both raised by families who didn’t have much in the way of money or material possessions but who had given us something far more valuable — their unconditional love, their unflinching sacrifice, and the chance to go places they had never imagined for themselves,” she said, telling the same stories she often includes in her stump speech, about her father’s struggles with multiple sclerosis and her husband’s grandmother’s experience hitting a glass ceiling in her bank career.

Ann Romney, by contrast, recounted “very special days” when her husband was a student, and they lived in a basement apartment, eating pasta and tuna fish. But she didn’t have stories of economic struggles to tell as she tried to assure voters of her husband’s values. Instead, she focused on their love, and his romancing of her.

Republicans complimented the speech, but took issue with the substance.

Karl Rove said on Fox News that the speech was “very well delivered,” though it was “sort of jarring” to hear her list her husband’s policy achievements.

Former Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer didn’t criticize Obama but did take a jab at her audience, saying on CNN that “some speeches are much more effective in a hall of zealots.”

The first lady spoke briefly of first getting to know the man who would become her husband, but focused more on the bigger picture. The highest-profile woman campaigning for her husband, Obama worked Tuesday to pull even more women voters into the Obama camp.

She pointed to some of the president’s strongest signs of support for women-specific issues: that he signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act soon after taking office and that “he believes that women are more than capable of making our own choices about our bodies and our health care.”

She also offered an appeal “not just as first lady and not just as a wife,” but as “mom-in-chief,” which is still “my most important title.”

“My daughters are still the heart of my heart and the center of my world,” she said, getting teary-eyed. Though she worried about her daughters’ well being before getting into the White House, she no longer has those concerns because her husband is working to make the future better for all daughters and sons, the first lady said in a rousing finale.

“I know from experience that if I truly want to leave a better world for my daughters, and all of our sons and daughters; and if we want to give all our children a foundation for their dreams and opportunities worthy of their promise; if we want to give them that sense of limitless possibility – that belief that here in America, there is always something better out there if you’re willing to work for it, then we must work like never before,” she said, applause building in the hall as she spoke.

“And we must once again come together and stand together for the man we can trust to keep moving this great country forward my husband, our president, President Barack Obama,” the crowd breaking out into roaring cheers.

Obama Has One Job to Save: His Own

The President becomes one more American this week, officially and in front of the country, trying to keep his job.

He knows he is talking to so many who don’t have jobs and can’t find jobs. Or have taken lesser jobs, sometimes two, to somehow make ends meet. Still: In Foreclosure America, Barack Obama tries to persuade those who voted for him last time and those he needs to vote for him this time why he shouldn’t get kicked out of the White House.

Most people about to get fired don’t get the chance to talk their way out of it. President Obama tries to do that in Charlotte on Thursday night, then all the way to November 6, trying not to become the first incumbent to lose his job since George H.W. Bush.

“Speeches got me here,” he said in private one day, early in his first term. But even he has to know it will take more than speeches to save him this time, no matter what kind of soaring rhetoric he offers at the Democratic Convention.

Mitt Romney gave his own speech, at his own convention, last Thursday night in Tampa. Romney is not the orator that Obama is, does not have the words, often comes across as somebody trying to sell you prime waterfront property. And yet in the middle of that speech in Tampa, after Clint Eastwood stopped bumping into furniture he wasn’t talking to, Romney actually identified what he wants this campaign to be about.

“If you felt that excitement when you voted for Barack Obama, shouldn’t you feel that way now that he’s President Obama?” he said. “You know there’s something wrong with the kind of job he’s done as president when the best feeling you had was the day you voted for him.”

Romney isn’t selling you property there, he is telling you that the other salesman in this race overpromised and under-delivered. Maybe Romney can’t make that stand up over the next two months, has no chance in the debates. Maybe Obama can stitch together just enough of his 2008 coalition of minorities and kids to hold on in enough swing states to hang on to his job.

He is sure going to have his work cut out for him, convincing the country that things aren’t as bad as they seem. He will talk about how members of SEAL Team Six killed Osama bin Laden, however they did it, and has a right to claim that as a victory. It will only go so far with Americans with an economy killing them.

Maybe this President, inheriting the economy he did and two bad wars, was doomed to disappoint, because too many voted for speeches and dreams and ideals, and still remember the way finally putting a black man in the White House made everybody feel.

Maybe he and his advisors should have known better than to promise they would get unemployment under 8 percent. And maybe he should have done a better job explaining to the country why the stimulus wasn’t the joke it was made out to be, or the failure, that it is actually working. In a way, that might be the most striking part of Barack Obama’s first term, that he has so often done such a terrible job explaining the successes he’s had.

Just because he is supposed to be the one with the words.

He talks directly to his supporters, through mass e-mails, about the lies from the other side, starting with the whopper about how he is the champion of big government even though the public sector grew four percent under George W. Bush and has shrunk three percent under Obama.
And the President talks constantly about how badly he is being outspent. And he is being outspent, Romney having the backing of rich old white men who have been obsessed with getting the first black President out of office since the night he was elected.

Congress was no better, Sen. Mitch McConnell, that lump, being the first to say that the Republicans’ only goal was to defeat Obama this year. Not make a better country. Just make sure he didn't get a second term.

The President is not asked to introduce himself to the country on Thursday. He did that a long time ago, his first important speech, at the Democratic Convention of 2004, before riding the promise of a better country past Hillary Clinton and John McCain four years later.

No. This time Barack Obama is asked to convince the country that he has been nearly as good a President as he was a candidate. In that way, this isn’t a speech in Charlotte. It’s an accounting.


Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/bam-job-save-article-1.1151225#ixzz25bJ2iVU0

Not THAT Castro

In his leadership at City Hall, Mayor Julián Castro is decidedly nonpartisan. But based on an advance copy of some of the remarks he'll give in Charlotte, N.C. tonight, San Antonio's favorite son will show he's quite comfortable swaying into Democratic Party rhetoric.

Castro is scheduled to present his keynote address at about 9 p.m. local time, marking the first time a Latino — or a San Antonian — has presented the headliner speech at a Democratic National Convention.

During his address, Castro will tell the nation about his family story, one that he says is not unique.
“What's special is the America that makes our story possible,” he'll say.

He'll talk about investing “in opportunity today for prosperity tomorrow.” Castro will also use remarks from last week's Republican National Convention to contrast Democratic Party values.
“Now, like many of you, I watched last week's Republican Convention. They told a few stories of individual success,” he'll say. “We all celebrate individual success.”

But, he'll ask, “How do we multiply that success?

“The answer is President Barack Obama.”

As Castro moves deeper into the speech, he'll directly target GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.
“Mitt Romney, quite simply, doesn't get it. A few months ago, he visited a university in Ohio and gave the students there a little entrepreneurial advice,” Castro will note. “‘Start a business,' he said. But how? ‘Borrow money if you have to from your parents,' he told them. Gee — why didn't I think of that?”

Calling on the ubiquitous catchphrase that “freedom isn't free,” Castro will say that the GOP ticket doesn't understand that “neither is opportunity.”

“Republicans tell us that if the most prosperous among us do even better, that somehow the rest of us will too. Folks, we've heard that before,” his speech reads. “First they called it ‘trickle-down.' Then ‘supply side.' Now it's ‘Romney/Ryan.' Or is it ‘Ryan/Romney?' Either way, their theory has been tested. It failed. Our economy failed. The middle class paid the price. Your family paid the price. Mitt Romney just doesn't get it.”

Castro will also make a hard sell for Obama's re-election. He'll paint an image of Obama's successes over the past four years, despite the shape of the country when he took the reins.

“Four years ago, America stood on the brink of a depression. Despite incredible odds and united Republican opposition, our president took action. And now we've seen 4.5 million new jobs,” Castro writes. “He knows better than anyone that there's more hard work to do. But we're making progress. And now we need to make a choice. It's a choice between a country where the middle class pays more, so that millionaires can pay less — or a country where everybody pays their fair share. It's a choice between a nation that slashes funding for our schools and guts Pell grants, or a nation that invests more in education. It's a choice between a politician who rewards companies that ship American jobs overseas, or a leader who brings jobs back home.

“This is the choice before us. And to me, to my generation, and for all the generations that will come after us, our choice is clear,” he continues. “Our choice is a man who's always chosen us — a man who already is our president — Barack Obama.”

After tonight's speech, Castro will spend his days until Nov. 6 campaigning on two very different fronts. He'll head to swing states and try to invigorate Latino populations to go to the polls for Obama. And at home, he'll try to convince fiscal conservatives to approve a 1/8-cent sales tax to fund a pre-kindergarten education initiative, dubbed Pre-K 4 SA, on which he's staked his entire mayoral tenure.


Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Speech-Castro-to-swing-at-GOP-3839250.php#ixzz25bHgIXc9

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Crackdown on Medical Marijuana in Santa Barbara

The latest actions include three asset forfeiture lawsuits filed against properties housing marijuana operations and warning letters sent to people associated with 10 cannabis dispensaries deemed "illegal marijuana stores," federal officials said.

"All known marijuana stores in Santa Barbara County are now the subject of federal enforcement actions," a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles said.

The moves on Santa Barbara storefronts and cultivation facilities mark the fourth such sweep in recent months in the seven-county California region that ranks as the largest federal law-enforcement district in the nation, U.S. attorney spokesman Thom Mrozek said.

He said authorities have gone after 150 pot stores in the district since October, when federal prosecutors announced a statewide crackdown on what they called a massive network of illegal cannabis suppliers established under the guise of California's medical marijuana law. Most of those stores have been closed, Mrozek said.

Similar crackdowns have been launched in other states as well, notably Colorado, Montana and Washington, in an escalation of friction between the federal government and states that have decriminalized marijuana for medical purposes.

California was the first to do so - in 1996 - and 15 other states and the District of Columbia have enacted similar statutes, though marijuana remains classified as an illegal narcotic under federal law.
Mrozek said federal authorities also conducted raids on a dispensary, on an indoor pot farm and on the homes of people identified as operators of those two facilities.

"No one's been arrested, nor do I anticipate anyone being arrested," Mrozek said, adding that the actions taken on Tuesday and Wednesday amounted to non-criminal enforcement.

One dispensary was hit with an asset forfeiture notice for operating as a not-for-profit business even though it lacks non-profit status for tax purposes, officials said. A warehouse run as an indoor cultivation center was singled out for using substandard and unpermitted electrical equipment.

Chinese Dissident Makes Plea to Congress

The Chinese dissident at the center of a political firestorm called a hearing Thursday and told lawmakers he wants to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng called a hearing set up to explore his efforts to leave China and escape persecution—apparently from a Chinese hospital room.
"I want to meet with Secretary Clinton," he said on the phone. "I hope I can get more help from her. I also want to thank her face to face."
Chen added that he is most concerned with his family, and said, "I really want to know what's going on with them."

"I want to thank all of you for your care and your love," he added, through a translation by Pastor Bob Fu, Founder and President, ChinaAid Association. Fu was a witness at Thursday's hearing of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.

Chen is at the center of a diplomatic row between the U.S. and China that has become a political liability for President Obama. Chen was under house arrest for several months for protesting China's one-child policy, but escaped to the U.S. Embassy, where he stayed for several days.

The U.S. and China appeared to reach a deal Wednesday that allowed Chen to remain in China, where he said he wished to stay.
But after Chen was released to a Chinese hospital to have his injuries treated, the dissident said he did not want to stay in China and requested political asylum in the U.S.
Administration officials insisted they did not pressure Chen to stay in China and that he decided on his own initially that he wanted to remain in his country.
But the about-face has led to criticism from Republicans that U.S. officials never should have allowed him to leave the U.S. embassy.
Commission Chairman Chris Smith (R-N.J.) spent the hearing arguing that the U.S. needs to ensure Chen's safety, and even GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney said it is a "day of shame" for the Obama administration if they did leave him with Chinese officials.

The call from Chen to Smith's hearing came after the chairman complained that that the Obama administration failed to get him in touch with Chen via phone earlier in the week.

Russia Threatens Missle Attack

Russia's top military officer warned Thursday that Moscow would strike NATO missile-defense sites in Eastern Europe before they are ready for action, if the U.S. pushes ahead with deployment.
"A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the situation worsens," Russian Chief of General Staff Nikolai Makarov said at an international missile-defense conference in Moscow attended by senior U.S. and NATO officials.
Gen. Makarov made the threat amid an apparent stalemate in talks between U.S. and Russian negotiators over the missile-defense system, part of President Obama's policy to "reset" relations with Moscow. The threat also elicited shock and derision from Western missile-defense analysts.
"It's remarkable," said James Ludes of the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University in Newport, R.I. "That Makarov would make this kind of threat in a public forum is chilling."
"He must have been drunk," said Barry Blechman, a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center think tank.
Calling the threat "crazy," he said, "I hope the Russian political leadership takes him to task for it."
But that seemed unlikely Thursday as Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov dismissed the missile-defense talks as fruitless.
"We have not been able to find mutually acceptable solutions at this point, and the situation is practically at a dead end," he said.
The press office at the Russian Embassy in Washington did not return phone calls or emails seeking comment.
The U.S. repeatedly has said the European missile-defense system is designed to fend off an attack by Iran, but Russia has insisted that the system would blunt its own arsenal. Moscow has proposed to jointly operate the missile shield, but NATO has rejected the offer.
Ellen Tauscher, the U.S. special envoy for strategic stability and missile defense, insisted the talks on NATO plans for a missile-defense system using radar and ground-based interceptor missiles stationed in Poland, Romania and Turkey are not stalemated.
But she acknowledged Wednesday in Moscow that recent elections in Russia and upcoming elections in the U.S. make it "pretty clear that this is a year in which we're probably not going to achieve any sort of a breakthrough."
In March, Mr. Obama privately told outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have more "flexibility" to make a deal on missile defense after the election in November. Mr. Obama's comment was captured accidentally by a live microphone during a summit in Seoul.
Many critics interpreted the remark as a promise by Mr. Obama to give in to Russian demands once the political danger of doing so during an election campaign had passed.
Ms. Tauscher did not answer a question about the meaning of the president's Korea comment, but said the two leaders agreed in Seoul to continue technical-level discussions.
"We'll spend the next nine to 10 months trying to work through some of these technical aspects of what's a very complex proposal," she said.
She reiterated that the U.S.-built system is designed to shoot down only Iranian intermediate-range missiles that could hit Europe, and would not be effective against Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
In the initial stages, the system will use radar based in Turkey and ship-based Aegis missiles. In the later stages, new radar stations and ground-based interceptors in Poland and Romania will be integrated into the system.
The system, which still is being developed, is a scaled-back version of the missile shield proposed during the George W. Bush administration.
But Russian officials insist the missile-defense system will rob their nuclear deterrent of its credibility and destabilize the balance of mutually assured destruction that has persisted since the Cold War.
"A thorough analysis by the Defense Ministry's research organizations showed that once the third and fourth stages are deployed, the capability to intercept Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles will be real," Gen. Makarov said.
Robert L. Pfaltzgraff Jr., a professor of international security studies at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, noted that while ICBMs fly faster than shorter-range missiles and the technology to intercept them is different, the Kremlin sees these deployments as providing a basis for a better system later.
"The Russian concern is that these systems could be upgraded in the future," he said.
But Mr. Pfaltzgraff said the fact that Moscow is thinking in these terms proves Russia is not a U.S. ally and has "divergent interests from us and to pretend otherwise to try and placate them is a fool's errand.
"Russia wants a deterrent relationship with the United States," he said. "Why? Is Canada worried that they don't have an effective deterrent against our nuclear weapons?"
In Moscow, Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov indicated that the "red line" for Russia would be the deployment of ground-based interceptor missiles, estimated to happen in 2018 at the earliest.
"Red lines are a dangerous game," said Mr. Ludes. "This has been simmering for years."
"The Russians have opposed U.S. plans, whether offered by the Bush administration or the Obama administration. But the fact that they would make this kind of public threat gives us an idea of just how strongly they feel about it," Mr. Ludes said.
Gen. Makarov said the Russians have set "only one condition [to agree to NATO deployment of the system]: the zone of possible interception for current and future missile-defense weapon systems should not cross the border of Russia."
U.S. officials have rejected any deal that would put limits on the capabilities of the system, or on how many would be deployed.
"We've made very clear that we will not accept any limitations on either the number or the capabilities of these [missile-defense] systems," said Madelyn Creedon, the Pentagon's assistant secretary of defense for global strategic affairs.
Ms. Tauscher also said the U.S. and its allies are not interested in a treaty or similar arrangement that would limit the use of the system and that they will push ahead with testing and deployment.
"We cannot and will not make any legally binding agreement that includes limitations on our ability to protect ourselves," she said, before Gen. Makarov spoke. "There is nothing I can imagine that will stop us from making those deployments on time."
Responding to the general's comments, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the United States has "made clear for many years now that there's no intent, desire or capability [for missile defense] to undermine Russia's strategic deterrent."
Asked whether he was "alarmed" by the general's threat, Mr. Toner replied: "I think we're just going to redouble our efforts to seek common ground on this and to seek understanding."
Meanwhile, Sen. John McCain, traveling in Lithuania, accused the Russians of using missile defense as an "excuse to have a military buildup in this part of the world, which is at peace."
The Arizona Republican, who once referred to the look in longtime Russian strongman Vladimir Putin's eyes as spelling out "K-G-B," called Kremlin saber-rattling"an egregious example of what might be even viewed as paranoia on the part of Vladimir Putin."