Obama to try to make case for sticking with him

President Barack Obama speaks during a campaign stop at the Living History Farms Saturday, Sept. 1, 2012, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

President Barack Obama speaks during a campaign stop at the Living History Farms Saturday, Sept. 1, 2012, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

President Barack Obama greets the crowd during a campaign stop at the Living History Farms Saturday, Sept. 1, 2012, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

President Barack Obama speaks during a campaign stop at the Living History Farms Saturday, Sept. 1, 2012, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

President Barack Obama smiles during a campaign stop at the Living History Farms Saturday, Sept. 1, 2012, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

President Barack Obama speaks during a campaign stop at the Living History Farms Saturday, Sept. 1, 2012, in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) ? Don't expect President Barack Obama to try to reinvent himself next week at the Democratic Party's national convention. Instead, he and a slew of his defenders will seek to convince voters to stick with the president they know rather than gamble on someone new, a challenging task given that most Americans say the country is heading in the wrong direction.

"This Thursday, I will offer you what I believe is a better path forward, a path that grows this economy, creates more jobs and strengthens the middle class," Obama said Saturday in Des Moines, Iowa, previewing his pitch. "And the good news is, you get to choose which path we take."

While Democratic loyalists will fill the stadium where Obama accepts the nomination Thursday night, the president's target audience is the small sliver of undecided voters in battleground states who will be critical to the outcome of what polls show is a tight race with two months to go. His campaign also will try to revive some of its insurgent, grassroots appeal from 2008 by using technology to let people participate in the convention. That effort also will help Obama's team collect more data on voters.

Starting Tuesday, a parade of high-profile speakers will stand on a blue-carpeted stage in Charlotte's Time Warner Cable Arena to vouch for Obama's economic agenda, which his team says is focused on the middle class: ending tax cuts for the rich and reducing the debt, while spending more on education, energy and infrastructure. Several voters ? called "American Heroes" by Obama's team ? also will speak at and appear in videos at the convention, putting a human face on Obama's program.

The Democratic convention starts less than a week after Republicans gathered in Tampa, Fla., to nominate Mitt Romney as the party's presidential candidate. Democrats hope that by holding their convention second, Obama can emerge with momentum on his side as the race for the White House bounds into its final stretch.

Obama will largely be responsible for generating that momentum. He will close the convention Thursday night with a speech in an outdoor football stadium, just as he did in 2008. Mindful of the comparisons to four years ago, Obama's campaign is scrambling to ensure that the 74,000-seat stadium is filled to capacity. The largest crowd Obama has drawn during the 2012 campaign is about 14,000 people, far less than the jaw-dropping crowds he attracted in the 2008 campaign.

As in 2008, the campaign will use the large gathering to register voters and recruit new volunteers through text messaging and Twitter.

Aides say Obama won't ignore the economic woes that have defined his four years in the White House. But they say he plans to focus largely on the future, and why he believes his policies will succeed in a second term. Obama isn't expected to outline any new policy proposals. Instead, he plans to make the case for continuing what he has started. And he is expected to double down on agenda items, like immigration and tax reforms, that gained little traction during his four years in office.

"When the convention is over, folks with be left with a clear road map of where he thinks America needs to go," said Stephanie Cutter, Obama's deputy campaign manager. "And it will be clear what his focus will be in an Obama second term."

Working against Obama: the nation's 8.3 percent unemployment rate, sluggish economic growth and fears the economy could slip back into a recession.

There's also a general malaise. An Associated Press-GfK poll conducted earlier this month showed 60 percent of registered voters say the country is heading in the wrong direction, while just 35 percent say it is heading in the right direction.

The convention opens Tuesday with first lady Michelle Obama, whose popularity far surpasses her husband's, as a featured speaker. San Antonio, Texas, Mayor Julian Castro also is slated for that night. He will be the first Hispanic to deliver the Democratic convention's keynote address. Their roles on the convention's opening night are part of Democrats' efforts to shore up support among women and Hispanics, two crucial voting blocs where Obama holds an advantage over Romney.

Mrs. Obama is expected to make the case that Obama is the best candidate to advocate on behalf of the middle class because he has experienced their struggles himself.

Many voters already have heard Mrs. Obama's stories about her husband being raised by a single mother and his grandparents or having struggled to pay off student loans.

But she is emphasizing them again in this campaign in hopes of drawing a contrast with Romney's privileged upbringing.

Polls show voters think Obama understands the economic issues that are important to them better than Romney, even though the Republican has an edge on who voters believe is better suited to manage the economy.

Former President Bill Clinton, who is emerging as one of the campaign's most effective surrogates, will headline the convention Wednesday and formally nominate Obama. He hopes to remind voters of the flush economy he presided over and make the case that Obama's policies will lead to similar results.

Vice President Joe Biden and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry will address the large stadium crowd Thursday night before Obama speaks.

Kerry, seen as a potential second-term secretary of state under Obama, will try to capitalize on the Democratic Party's rare advantage on national security issues. He is expected to trumpet Obama's decision to order the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and the president's plan to end the Afghanistan war, a sharp contrast to Republicans who rarely mentioned the war during their convention or the tens of thousands of troops still engaged in combat.

Obama's young daughters start school in Washington next week and are not expected to have a formal role at the convention. But they could come to Charlotte Thursday night for the president's acceptance speech.

Obama picked Charlotte as his convention site in part to help boost his chances of holding onto North Carolina, a state he moved into the Democratic column in 2008 for the first time in decades. Democrats acknowledge that the political landscape in North Carolina has shifted back toward the Republicans, though they hope the convention will help them reverse that course.

"We know that Republicans want to win it back," Cutter said. "But that's one of the reasons we chose Charlotte to host the convention. It's a pretty big investment in that state, and it gives us an advantage."

Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan, will seek to steal some of the spotlight from Democrats when he campaigns in Greensboro, N.C., on Monday. Romney will spend next week preparing for debates. He has no public events scheduled.

___

Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2012-09-01-Obama's%20Convention/id-6f8b6612b53f4a879f39d75288403d6b

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Isaac provides relief to U.S. drought, cleanup begins

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - The remnants of Hurricane Isaac caused headaches on Friday, bringing heavy rainfall and the threat of flash flooding to the Mississippi Valley as Gulf Coast residents began cleaning up.

The first hurricane to hit the United States this year will be remembered for striking New Orleans on the anniversary of 2005's deadly Hurricane Katrina - and providing a first, successful test of the city's new $14.5 billion flood controls.

Now a tropical depression, Isaac can still trigger tornadoes as it passes over the central U.S. Midwest states, the National Hurricane Center said - among the final acts of a storm that often confounded forecasters and punched above its weight in terms of damage.

One bright spot: rain that is a godsend to Midwest farmers suffering from the worst drought in more than 50 years, even if too late for many of this season's crops.

Isaac caused widespread flooding and property damage in the U.S. Gulf Coast region, mostly because of its heavy and persistent rainfall. The system lingered near New Orleans for the better part of two days, sometimes moving as slowly as five miles an hour (8 km per hour).

Through it all New Orleans sustained mostly cosmetic damage such as downed trees and street lights.

Life was beginning to returning to normal in New Orleans on Friday, although most of the city did not have power after what utility Entergy Corp described as the fourth-largest storm it had ever faced.

National Guard troops had opened three sites around the city to distribute water and ice to residents.

New Orleans International Airport reopened early on Friday morning with the first flights scheduled to resume by midmorning local time.

Downtown and in the French Quarter, businesses were opening, some with generators or without electricity. Most stores had removed boards from windows, and some commuters headed to work.

DOWNED LIMBS, UPROOTED TREES

In residential areas outside the city center, streets were littered with downed limbs and some trees were uprooted. Residents were out clearing debris.

"I am surprised how much debris there is everywhere," said David Doucet, 55, a member of the Grammy award-winning Cajun band Beau Soleil, as he walked his dog in downtown New Orleans on Friday. "The trees have had seven years to grow since Katrina, but they didn't grow all that strong."

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, fresh from his party's convention in Tampa, Florida, was to visit Louisiana on Friday to view storm damage.

The storm caused anywhere from $700 million to $2 billion in insured onshore losses, disaster modeler AIR Worldwide said late Thursday.

That would still leave Isaac, which came onshore as a Category 1 hurricane, well outside the 10 most costly U.S. hurricanes.

New Orleans' Audubon Park recorded 18.7 inches of rain in a 24-hour period during Isaac. That exceeded records dating back to 1871, said Jeff Masters of Weather Underground. Many other locations in Louisiana and Mississippi logged more than 10 inches of rain.

Surrounding areas, though, without the new protective federal flood barriers, did not fare as well from the relentless rain and huge storm surges.

Some of the worst flooding was in Plaquemines Parish, southwest of New Orleans, where flood waters overtopped at least one levee and left many homes under about 12 feet of water.

The state advised residents of flooded neighborhoods to boil tap water before drinking it.

Late on Thursday, local officials confirmed the death of a man and a woman in the parish town of Braithwaite. They apparently drowned in their kitchen as flood waters surged in. Earlier, a Mississippi man died after being hit by a falling tree.

Slidell, a town of about 27,000 people northeast of New Orleans, took the brunt of a storm surge from Lake Pontchartrain, which left some neighborhoods under about a foot of water.

"You'd have never made me believe a Category 1 would dump this much water," said Sam Caruso, 71, a former mayor of Slidell who toured the town in his pickup truck on Thursday.

As the flood waters rose, some residents, including Caruso, wondered whether the new federal levee system had shored up New Orleans at the expense of low-lying neighboring parishes outside the system's protection - a debate that is likely to continue.

Isaac killed at least 23 people in Haiti and the Dominican Republic before taking aim at the United States.

Brent crude oil was up 55 cents to $113.20 a barrel on Friday, although major oil facilities on the Gulf of Mexico made it through Isaac mostly unscathed.

Louisiana oil refineries began to power back up and most other oil and gas companies in the U.S. Gulf Coast region were preparing to restart.

Storm watchers have turned to Tropical Storm Leslie, currently 940 miles east of the Leeward Islands with wind speeds picking up. Leslie could become a hurricane later on Friday, posing a potential threat to Bermuda early next week.

(Additional reporting by Chris Baltimore in Houston, Sam Nelson in Chicago; Writing by Ros Krasny; Editing by David Adams and Vicki Allen)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/waning-isaac-heads-north-eyes-turn-stricken-dam-002242230.html

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GOP rabbi calls Adelsons "heroes to our community" after getting $500,000 for super PAC

By Michael Isikoff, NBC News

Just hours before the Republican National Convention played a campaign video Wednesday night showing Mitt Romney at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, his single-biggest financial backer -- billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson -- made a rare public appearance, telling reporters at a Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) event that the GOP presidential candidate is ?very pro-Israel? and is ?going to defend what he thinks is best for the relationship? between Israel and the United States.

Sheldon Adelson and wife Miriam arrive at the Republican Jewish Coalition's event in Tampa on August 29th, 2012. Adelson is greeted by U.S. Senate candidate Ted Cruz, of Texas.

But Adelson, who with his wife has given $10 million to the pro-Romney Restore Our Future super PAC, never had the chance to expand on his views about the Middle East or respond to questions about his mega donations to the GOP cause. As soon as the frail but feisty 79-year-old chairman of the Las Vegas Sands Corp. sat down -- after making a grand entrance clutching a cane and assisted by his Israeli-born wife -- RJC coalition organizers chased away members of the media, repeatedly shouting: ?The event is over! We?re going to close this down!?

(Later that evening, a producer with the radio show Democracy Now sought to question Adelson ?? being accompanied by Karl Rove ? while he was being taken by wheel chair to a fourth floor corporate skybox at the convention. In an incident caught on videotape here, the producer, Mike Burke, reported that a woman identified as Adelson?s daughter grabbed his camera, took it into the skybox and threw it on the ground. Burke said the daughter later apologized.)?

Lior Mizrahi / Getty Images

U.S. gaming tycoon Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam arrive to hear Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney delivers foreign policy remarks on July 29, 2012 in Jerusalem, Israel.

The brief appearance by Adelson came at a spirited event where top members of Congress rubbed elbows with wealthy GOP donors and ?Obama ... Oy Vey!? buttons were freely distributed to attendees. At the same time, new details emerged about Adelson?s role in steering supersize checks to groups working to defeat the president and elect Republican members of Congress.

Shortly before Adelson arrived, celebrity rabbi Shmuley Boteach, author of ?Kosher Sex? and a one-time spiritual adviser to Michael Jackson who is now running as a Republican candidate for Congress from New Jersey, boasted that Adelson and his wife had recently given $500,000 to ?my super PAC? and that they were ?heroes of our community.?

Boteach later told reporters that he had then dined with Adelson this week during the RNC convention. ?Well, I mean, look they?re friends,? he said of Adelson and his wife. ?They don?t need me to tell them where to give their money. They?re very savvy political donors.?

As for the super PAC, called ?Patriot Prosperity PAC,? Boteach at first said that, while ?we obviously don?t have any contact with them,? it was ?set up by the professionals who run my campaign.??

NBC's Michael Isikoff reports on Republican VP pick Paul Ryan's meeting last night in Las Vegas with some big-dollar GOP donors, including casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson, for a private talk about the campaign.

Although the half-million dollar donation by Adelson and his wife to the ?Patriot Prosperity PAC? had already been reported, Boteach?s? reference to ?my super PAC? and his reference to it being ?set up? by his campaign ?professionals?? seemed to raise fresh questions about whether the donations complied with federal election laws. Those laws bar campaign committees from coordinating their activities with supposedly independent super PACs -- which are allowed to take unlimited donations.

But when pressed by reporters about his comments about the origins of the group, the rabbi corrected himself.

?No, no, no, no, no, no, no,? he said when asked if his campaign staff had set up the super PAC donations. ?Let?s not pull me into something that I am not -- I said the people who run my campaign are the ones who tell me what we?re allowed to do and what we?re not allowed to do. And we are allowed to tell the people who support us that if they want to support us, there was a super PAC. And that?s what we did. That?s exactly what I meant.?

Adelson?s contributions in the 2012 election --- now, combined with those of his wife, total more than $40 million -- have stirred controversy, in part because of his hardline views on Israel (he is a close friend of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu) but also because of ongoing federal investigations into his gambling empire over allegations that it has paid bribes to Chinese officials.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a candidate for U.S. Congress from New Jersey, discusses Sheldon Adelson's gift to the Super PAC supporting Boteach's campaign.

Also this week, Bloomberg News reported that Adelson?s Sands Corp. -- which generates more than half of its multibillion-dollar revenues from four casinos in Macau -- could see its profits soar if Romney were elected and fulfills his pledge to demand that China loosen currency restrictions, allowing the value of the yuan to rise against the dollar.

Adelson?s appearance was the highlight of the RJC event -- partly sponsored by Comcast (owner of NBC News) -- which was attended by other big GOP donors such as hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer. Also present: GOP Sens. John Thune of South Dakota and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and Reps. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Allen West of Florida, Ed Royce of California and Renee Ellmers of North Carolina.

The event -- briefly interrupted by two protesters who loudly denounced Israeli policies towards the Palestinians and were quickly evicted -- was marked by multiple denunciations of Obama?s policies to Israel.

?I don?t know how there are any Democratic Jews,? said GOP Rep. Billy Long of Missouri. ?The way the president has treated [Israeli Prime Minister] Bibi Netanyahu and the land of Israel, I don?t know how any Democratic Jew can still be a Democrat.?

NBC?s Jamie Novogrod also contributed to this story.

Source: http://pheedo.msnbc.msn.com/click.phdo?i=d78f0a1d62f4f041e6281c6c85b73862

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Flamebait Friday Debate ? Which game universes would you like to ...

Street Fighter X Tekken came out earlier this year, and it was a pretty rock solid merger of two unique fighting universes, into one package. It?s not the first time that certain game properties have joined forces, but those mergers usually occur with fighting games only for some reason. So what if other gaming worlds decided to hop over the licensing border? Which properties would you pay good money to see happen?

Would your dreams come true if Ubisoft and Rockstar teamed up to make an Assassin?s Creed game set in the world of Red Dead Redemption, or would you die happy knowing that Need For Speed was partnering up with Mortal Kombat for some vehicular fatalities? There?s an almost endless supply of great games out there, but doing a fusion dance with them, could make that inventory infinite. Let us know below in the comments what some of your ideas are.

Source: http://www.lazygamer.net/flamebait-friday-debate/flamebait-friday-debate-which-game-universes-would-you-like-to-see-collide/

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Do Your Friends Add Up? Dr Stephanie

Photo by NBC

A friend of mine was recently telling me about a tough time she had been having for the last several months. She told me about her stressors with some health issues, some financial concerns she and her partner were having, and the annoyance she was feeling about her poorly-behaved dog.? After she explained all these ailments, she noted that as bad as those were, her ?friends? were even worse.

?You wouldn?t believe how they drain me!? she said.? ?I realized that far too many of my friends take and take from me, and I never get anything back!?? She explained that on her journey back towards mental health, she forced herself to take stock of her relationships, assigning each person a point value. Negative values were assigned to those who made her feel bad, unhappy, or poorly about herself.? Positive values were assigned to those who helped her feel more like the person she wanted to be (kind, strong, loving, intelligent).

Now, it may sound a little harsh, scoring your friends on what they add or subtract from your life, but I love her idea.? Too often we hang onto relationships we wish would be better, hope would be closer, or feel desperate to change.? And I?m not just talking about romantic relationships ? more often these are friendships with old high school friends, a neighbor, or a parent of a child?s friend.

No relationship is perfect, but one that drains for a long period of time can be downright damaging.? Maybe it?s time to take stock of the people in your life and see how they add up?

Tags: counselor erie, creating mental health, dr stephanie smith, friendship and mental health, friendship and stress, healthy friendships, healthy relationships, my friends are hurting me, psychologist colorado, psychologist erie, therapist erie

Source: http://www.drstephaniesmith.com/?p=817

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HTC Proto goes under spycam, reveals secret identity: the Desire X

It seems the newest member of HTC's mid-range smartphone line-up -- previously known as the Proto -- is actually the Desire X, according to several Scandinavian retailers (see coverage). Also, Hong Kong blog ePrice, who gave the new model the blurrycam treatment, claims that the specs line up with all the rumors: a 4-inch, 800 x 480 display, Android 4.0 with Sense 4.0, Beats Audio, dual-core 1Ghz processor and 5-megapixel camera. HTC should formally out the phone this week at IFA, but its European presence and similarity to the China-only New Desire V means it's likely an international version -- without the continental sticker shock.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

HTC Proto goes under spycam, reveals secret identity: the Desire X originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Aug 2012 03:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/28/htc-proto-is-desire-x-blurrycam/

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Postcards from Mars show rover's key science targets

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Mon Aug 27, 2012 10:57pm EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA on Monday showed off the first high-resolution, color portrait images taken by the Mars rover Curiosity, detailing a mound of layered rock where scientists plan to focus their search for the chemical ingredients of life on the Red Planet.

The stunning images reveal distinct tiers near the base of the 3-mile- (5-km-)tall mountain that rises from the floor of the vast, ancient impact basin known as Gale Crater, where Curiosity landed on August 6 to begin its two-year mission.

Scientists estimate it will be a year before the six-wheeled, nuclear-powered rover, about the size of a small car, physically reaches the layers of interest at the foot of the mountain, 6.2 miles away from the landing site.

From earlier orbital imagery, the layers appear to contain clays and other hydrated minerals that form in the presence of water.

While previous missions to Mars have uncovered strong evidence for vast amounts of water flowing over its surface in the past, Curiosity was dispatched to hunt for organic materials and other chemistry considered necessary for microbial life to evolve.

The $2.5 billion Curiosity project, NASA's first astrobiology mission since the 1970s-era Viking probes to Mars, is the first to bring all the tools of a state-of-the-art geochemistry laboratory to the surface of a distant planet.

But the latest images from Curiosity, taken at a distance from its primary target of exploration, already have given scientists a new view of the formation's structure.

The layers above where scientists expect to find hydrated minerals show sharp tilts, offering a strong hint of dramatic changes in Gale Crater, located in the planet's southern hemisphere near its equator.

SLANTED LAYERS EXPOSED

Mount Sharp, the name given to the towering formation at the center of the crater, is believed to be the remains of sediment that once completely filled the 96-mile- (154-km-) wide basin.

"This is a spectacular feature that we're seeing very early," project scientist John Grotzinger, with the California Institute of Technology, told reporters on Monday. "We can sense that there is a big change on Mount Sharp."

The higher layers are steeply slanted relative to the layers of underlying rock, the reverse of similar features found in Earth's Grand Canyon.

"The layers are tilted in the Grand Canyon due to plate tectonics, so it's typical to see older layers be more deformed and more rotated than the ones above them," Grotzinger said. "In this case, you have flat-line layers on Mars overlaid by tilted layers. The science team, of course, is deliberating over what this means."

He added: "This thing just kind of jumped out at us as being something very different from what we ever expected."

Absent plate tectonics, the most likely explanation for the angled layers has to do with the physical manner in which they were built up, such as being deposited by wind or by water.

"On Earth, there's a whole host of mechanisms that can generate inclined strata," Grotzinger said. "Probably we're going to have to drive up there to see what those strata are made of."

Also Monday, NASA said it used the rover to broadcast a message of congratulations to the Curiosity team from NASA chief Charles Bolden, a demonstration of the high bandwidth available through a pair of U.S. science satellites orbiting Mars.

"This is the first time that we've had a human voice transmitted back from another planet" beyond the moon, said Chad Edwards, chief telecommunications engineer for NASA's Mars missions at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"We aren't quite yet at the point where we actually have a human present on the surface of Mars ... it is a small step," Edwards said.

(Editing by Steve Gorman and Philip Barbara)

Source: http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/scienceNews/~3/gwRxw8zuKpg/us-usa-mars-idUSBRE87R03620120828

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