The Presidential endorsements

[BayGBM]

The Columbus Dispatch

For president
Romney has real-world experience to lead nation out of economic malaise

After nearly four years of economic stagnation, massive unemployment, record-setting debt and government intrusions into the economy that have paralyzed the private sector, the United States needs a new direction. For this reason, The Dispatch urges voters to choose Republican Mitt Romney for president in the Nov. 6 election.

In 2008, The Dispatch warned of the problems that would result if Barack Obama were chosen as president. Noting the scant experience that Obama offered the nation in 2008 — eight unremarkable years in the Illinois Senate and less than one term in the U.S. Senate — the newspaper said:

“A resume containing so little evidence of leadership and accomplishment leaves in question Obama's ability to handle the most responsible and difficult job in the world, especially at a time when the nation faces a combination of problems so large and complex that they would challenge even the most seasoned leader.”

Four years later, the nation is in the grip of the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression.

The Dispatch also noted: “Nor does it seem likely that a man who has traveled in the left lane of American politics for his entire adult life really is the bipartisan centrist that he claims to be.”


The Dispatch accurately predicted what would happen if Obama were elected president while Democrats held a majority in the U.S. House and Senate: “A return to majority status is likely to unleash pent-up demand to enact a Democratic wish list of new and expensive social programs when the nation can't afford the ones it has.”

Indeed, the president’s first order of business was to ram through a massive, one-party overhaul of health care, thrusting the government into the driver’s seat for a sixth of the U.S. economy. This ham-fisted power play — accomplished with bald political bribery and backroom deals — was rebuked by voters just a few months later, when they fired dozens of Democratic members of Congress and handed the U.S. House back to the GOP. This put an end to further Democratic policy adventures.

Four years after promising hope and change, and after a deficit-driving $787 billion stimulus program, here is the result:

• 12.1 million unemployed, with an unemployment rate above 8 percent for 43 of the past 44 months.

• 8.6 million working part time because they can’t find full-time work

• 2.5 million who wanted to work, but have stopped looking for jobs.

• In 2009, real median household income was $52,195. By 2011, it had fallen to $50,054

• In 2009, the U.S. poverty rate was 14.3 percent. By 2011, the poverty rate climbed to 15 percent.

• On Obama’s watch, 12 million more Americans joined the food-stamp program, which has reached a record of more than 46 million enrollees.

• Annual federal budget deficits above $1 trillion for the past four years, increasing the national debt to an all-time high of $16 trillion.

On that last point, it was freshman U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, who said on March 16, 2006, as he prepared to vote against raising the debt ceiling to (a mere) $9 trillion:

“Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

Americans do deserve better, and the fact that the president now regrets his 2006 stand is another reason why he is unsuited to a second term.

Here is another: On Feb. 23, 2009, the year the federal deficit would total $1.4 trillion, Obama said, “Today I am pledging to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office. ... I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay, and that means taking responsibility right now, in this administration, for getting our spending under control."

Instead, he has given the nation $1 trillion annual deficits ever since.

Obama has failed. That is why Mitt Romney is the preferred choice for president. Romney’s adult life has been spent turning around troubled private and public institutions. These turnarounds include scores of companies acquired and restructured by Bain Capital, the investment firm he founded in 1984. Not all were successes, but that is because to a significant degree, many of the companies Bain took on were high-risk. In 1999, he was asked to take over the scandal-plagued and fiscally mismanaged 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. He quickly streamlined its management, fixed its finances and guaranteed its security, turning it into a success. As governor of Massachusetts, he made tough decisions to lead the state out of a budget deficit, and he did so in a state dominated by Democrats.

As a career businessman and former governor, Romney brings a wealth of executive experience in the private sector and the public sector that dwarfs that of Obama. From working both sides of the government/private-sector equation, he understands how that relationship can aid or impede prosperity. His election would be an immediate signal to the private sector that someone who knows what he is doing is managing the nation’s economic policy. The effect on business confidence would be dramatic and immediate, and business confidence is the vital ingredient needed to spur investment and hiring, the two things that the United States so desperately needs.

In 2008, Americans made a leap of faith when they elevated the inexperienced Obama to the White House. That faith was not rewarded. This time, voters should place their hopes for change in experience, by electing Romney.

[BayGBM]

Washington Post endorsement: Four more years for President Obama

MUCH OF THE 2012 presidential campaign has dwelt on the past, but the key questions are who could better lead the country during the next four years — and, most urgently, who is likelier to put the government on a sounder financial footing.

That second question will come rushing at the winner as soon as the votes are tallied. Absent any action, a series of tax hikes and spending cuts will take effect Jan. 1 that might well knock the country back into recession. This will be a moment of peril but also of opportunity. How the president-elect navigates it will go a long way toward determining the success of his presidency and the health of the nation.

President Barack Obama is better positioned to be that navigator than is his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

We come to that judgment with eyes open to the disappointments of Mr. Obama’s first term. He did not end, as he promised he would, “our chronic avoidance of tough decisions” on fiscal matters. But Mr. Obama is committed to the only approach that can succeed: a balance of entitlement reform and revenue increases. Mr. Romney, by contrast, has embraced his party’s reality-defying ideology that taxes can always go down but may never go up. Along that road lies a future in which interest payments crowd out everything else a government should do, from defending the nation to caring for its poor and sick to investing in its children. Mr. Romney’s future also is one in which an ever-greater share of the nation’s wealth resides with the nation’s wealthy, at a time when inequality already is growing.

Even granting the importance of the fiscal issue, a case might still be made for Mr. Romney if Mr. Obama’s first term had been a failure; if Mr. Romney were more likely to promote American security and leadership abroad; or if the challenger had shown himself superior in temperament, capacity and character. In fact, not one of these is true.

Start with the first-term record. We were disappointed that Mr. Obama allowed the bipartisan recommendations of his fiscal commission to wither and die and that he and Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) failed to seal a fiscal deal in the summer of 2011. Mr. Obama alienated Congress and business leaders by isolating himself inside a tight White House circle that manages to be both arrogant and thin-skinned. Too often his administration treats business as an obstacle rather than a partner. He hardly tried to achieve the immigration reform and climate-change policy he promised.

But economic head winds and an uncompromising opposition explain some of these failures — and render that much more impressive the substantial accomplishments of Mr. Obama’s first term.

Foremost among these is the president’s leadership in helping to steady an economy that was in free fall when he took office. It may be hard to recall how frightening that time was, as the nation’s finances were close to seizing up. President George W. Bush had taken the first steps away from the abyss, winning approval from a balky Congress for the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), but nonetheless he had bequeathed a mess to his successor.

With no time to catch his breath, Mr. Obama designed and won approval for a stimulus bill that slowed job loss and helped restore confidence. He engineered a rescue of the auto industry. The steady experts he put in charge of economic policy, notably Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, navigated between the Democratic Party’s left, which urged populist measures that would have been expensive and ineffectual, and an obstructionist Republican Party, which at times seemed content to inflict great harm on the country. The industrial-policy element of the recovery plan, favoring high-speed rail where it’s not needed and electric cars that consumers won’t buy, wasted a lot of money. But on balance the administration, working with the Federal Reserve, succeeded in its core mission. The rebound of the Dow Jones Industrial Average from 6,626 in March 2009 to above 13,000 today is no comfort to the many Americans who remain unemployed or poorer than before the crisis. But it reflects a recovery of the faith upon which every economy depends.

Mr. Obama’s second signal accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act, will go a long way when fully implemented toward ending the scandal of 45 million Americans being without health insurance. It also could slow the unaffordable rise in health-care costs, though it is hardly a full answer to that challenge.

Mr. Obama advanced the leading civil-rights struggle of the day when he ended the military’s discrimination against gay men and lesbians and declared his support for same-sex marriage. He took an important step against climate change by promulgating, and persuading industry to support, ambitious fuel-economy standards for cars and trucks.

Mr. Obama continued Mr. Bush’s generous campaign against HIV/AIDS, especially in Africa. He prodded states toward useful reforms in teacher accountability and school choice. Though he failed to champion immigration reform, his Justice Department stood up to the worst harassment of immigrants in Republican-governed states such as Arizona and Alabama. He peppered his Cabinet with leaders of substance, including Hillary Rodham Clinton at State and Arne Duncan at Education, and he nominated and won confirmation for two well-qualified Supreme Court justices.

Overseas, too, there were successes and failures. Mr. Obama’s administration vigorously pursued al-Qaeda and tracked down its leader, Osama bin Laden. He supported a popular uprising against Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi. He recognized the importance of bolstering allies in Asia against Chinese bullying, and he opened trade talks with Asian nations intended to encourage an alternative to China’s state-sponsored, often corrupt capitalism.

On the other hand, he was hesitant and inconstant in responding to the two greatest and most unexpected foreign-policy opportunities of his presidency, the pro-democracy uprising in Iran in 2009 and the Arab Spring two years later. Mr. Obama kept the United States on the sidelines as Syria plunged into civil war, costing more than 30,000 lives — most of them civilians — and breeding extremism that may destabilize a half-dozen countries. He failed to capitalize on America’s decade-long commitment to Iraq by securing a presence there after ending the U.S. military mission, and his ambivalence regarding Afghanistan — sending more troops, but with artificial deadlines and no clear commitment to their success — promises trouble in coming years.

Mr. Romney has criticized that record, often persuasively. But his policy prescriptions — on Afghanistan, Iran and Syria, to name three — hardly differ. Neither he nor his running mate has foreign-policy experience. And his unscripted moments have not inspired confidence: calling Russia America’s greatest foe, for example, or delivering intemperate outbursts while the United States was trying to negotiate an exit for a human rights activist in China or when its diplomats in the Middle East came under attack. Mr. Romney has offered no evidence that he would do better in the world.

Which brings us to the third test: What kind of case has Mr. Romney made for himself? He promises, appropriately, to focus on recovery and job creation. Though his political résumé is thin, his business record is impressive and he has managed a disciplined campaign. Perhaps his administration would be more pragmatic than his campaign rhetoric suggests. Surely he understands the risks of further widening the deficit. Would “moderate Mitt” occupy the White House?

The sad answer is there is no way to know what Mr. Romney really believes. His unguarded expression of contempt for 47 percent of the population seems as sincere as anything else we’ve heard, but that’s only conjecture. At times he has advocated a muscular, John McCain-style foreign policy, but in the final presidential debate he positioned himself as a dove. Before he passionately supported a fetus’s right to life, he supported a woman’s right to abortion. His swings have been dramatic on gay rights, gun rights, health care, climate change and immigration. His ugly embrace of “self-deportation” during the Republican primary campaign, and his demolition of a primary opponent, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, for having left open a door of opportunity for illegal-immigrant children, bespeaks a willingness to say just about anything to win. Every politician changes his mind sometimes; you’d worry if not. But rarely has a politician gotten so far with only one evident immutable belief: his conviction in his own fitness for higher office.

So voters are left with the centerpiece of Mr. Romney’s campaign: promised tax cuts that would blow a much bigger hole in the federal budget while worsening economic inequality. His claims that he could avoid those negative effects, which defy math and which he refuses to back up with actual proposals, are more insulting than reassuring.

By contrast, the president understands the urgency of the problems as well as anyone in the country and is committed to solving them in a balanced way. In a second term, working with an opposition that we hope would be chastened by the failure of its scorched-earth campaign against him, he is far more likely than his opponent to succeed. That makes Mr. Obama by far the superior choice.

[BayGBM]

The Durango Hearald

Re-elect Obama

President handled a tough situation fairly well; Romney offers no credible alternative

The question before presidential voters is simple: Who will better serve this country for the next four years, Mitt Romney or Barack Obama? When couched in straightforward terms, the answer is clear: President Obama should be re-elected.

Obama has done a reasonably good job handling an almost unprecedented economic mess – a situation that has proved far worse than anyone knew as it developed. Still, there is room for debate about the direction the country is headed.

Unfortunately, the Republican Party has offered no credible alternative. Its platform consists of little more than nostalgia for the 1950s, and its presidential candidate largely remains a mystery.

Romney has publicly demonstrated no core convictions beyond his obvious belief that he should be president. He apparently thinks that simply not being Obama is qualification enough.

It is not.

When Barack Obama took office, the country was mired in two wars, one pointless and neither properly funded. The economy was tanking and jobs were disappearing by the thousands. The automotive industry was on the verge of collapse – threatening to take with it the entire upper Midwest. And, while no one knew it at the time, the Middle East was about to explode into chaos and confusion.

On balance, Obama’s handling of all that has been good. U.S. forces have left Iraq and the end is in sight in Afghanistan. Muammar Gadhafi was ousted with no American troops involved. Democracy has a tenuous but real toehold in some Arab countries. And while the U.S. economy is recovering too slowly, it is recovering. As Vice President Joe Biden put it, Osama bin Laden is dead and GM is alive.

Amid all that, Obama kept a campaign promise and signed into law a sweeping health-care reform package.

All told, that is not a bad record. But in considering the way forward, Americans are always interested in alternative visions.

Mitt Romney, however, has not effectively offered one. Instead, this race has been presented as a referendum on the economy and the president’s personal style. Romney has failed to explain himself or his agenda, and the voters still do not really know who he is or how he would govern.

By all accounts, Romney’s Mormon faith is central to who he is. To listen to him campaign, however, one would never know that. His business acumen is touted as his core competence, but he will not release his tax records for more than a couple of years. He promises to cut taxes, increase defense spending, lower the deficit and make the seemingly impossible math work out by reforming the tax code. But he cannot, or will not, explain what those tax changes might be.

Romney rails against Obamacare, although it was modeled on the program he enacted as governor of Massachusetts. He governed that state as a moderate, but won the presidential nomination describing himself as “severely conservative.”

He has gone from supporting reproductive rights when running for the Senate in 1994 to saying in 2007 that he would gladly ban abortion in all cases. He now says he would allow exceptions for rape, incest and the health of the mother.

Romney has shown some consistency on other women’s health issues. He has repeatedly said he would strip Planned Parenthood of all funding and allow employers to exclude contraception from health-insurance coverage. He wants to talk about the economy but fails to understand that reproductive autonomy is an economic issue for women.

Barack Obama is an imperfect president, of course, and to what extent he can achieve his goals for the nation remains to be seen. But he has and can articulate a vision for a better, fairer, more successful America. His opponent offers nothing of the sort.

Vote to re-elect Barack Obama.

[BayGBM]

Tampa Tribune

Tribune editorial: Mitt Romney for president


Mitt Romney is the man who can lead the nation out of its lingering economic doldrums and restore faith in the United States.

A successful executive in the public and private sector, Romney is a committed capitalist who understands that the nation's prosperity is driven by free enterprise, not government.

Under President Barack Obama's liberal and inconsistent leadership, the country has limped along, barely a step ahead of another recession.

The deficit soared, government expanded and the prospects of more regulations and taxes chilled corporate investment.

Just as we warned four years ago, this master orator has pushed "America toward a European-style social democracy."

We don't question Obama's motives. The president sincerely believes in the inviolable ability of the federal government to make all things right. But Americans should see that this top-down approach doesn't work.

Romney, in contrast, would capitalize on individuals' ingenuity, not Washington directives.

The contrast in their approaches is seen in the president's insistence on increasing tax rates for the rich so they will "pay their fair share."

But the wealthy already pay most of the country's tax bills. The richest 10 percent pay 71 percent of federal income taxes.

Any such tax increase would likely hurt small business owners, most of whom are hardly well off even if their incomes are higher than $200,000.

The president's plan would also increase the tax on capital gains for those with higher incomes, which could discourage investments and knock the wind out of a recovering stock market, and thus damage the savings of retirees.

Romney understands a reformed tax code, one that closes loopholes but lowers overall rates, would help businesses and consumers. A growing economy can generate more revenue, even with lower rates.

It is only a slight exaggeration to say the president trusts taxes, federal regulators and unions while Romney trusts the marketplace.

We acknowledge President Obama's successes, notably the killing of Osama bin Laden. Until the Libya debacle, the president seemed fairly reliable on foreign policy and cautious about costly overseas commitments. He supports free trade.

We even give him a bit of credit for the much-detested stimulus plan. When the president took office he faced a plummeting economy that many economists believed required an emergency boost that only the federal government could provide.

The stimulus included some worthy projects, such as the connector toll road between Interstate 4 and the Port of Tampa, and research indicates it did some good.

But the president did little to prevent Congress from padding the haphazard spending plan with pork. It is no wonder the spending failed to generate the predicted number of jobs.

The stimulus, however flawed, was nothing compared to what would follow. As Romney pointed out to devastating effect in the opening debate, with the economy still gasping and Americans desperate for work, Obama turned his attention to a monstrous health care plan full of hidden taxes and government commands.

The result outraged citizens, terrified business owners and caused an even harsher partisan divide in Washington.

The president then bypassed a chance to move to the middle and regain bipartisan support when he was presented with the Bowles-Simpson recommendations. After asking the panel to develop a workable deficit-reduction plan, he ignored its tough proposals, which included both budget cuts and tax increases.

Instead, he engaged in histrionic spending showdowns with an obdurate Congress. Now the nation faces a "fiscal cliff" of automatic tax increases and spending cuts. If compromise is not reached before the end-of-the-year deadline, the nation's military defense could be compromised and the economy could nosedive. So much for leadership.

Romney's record as a determined, detail-oriented leader who demands results strongly suggests he would find a workable middle ground in such conflicts.

When he took over the faltering organization charged with putting on the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, he restored order and a sense of mission in a hurry. As governor of Massachusetts he worked effectively with Democrats.

You can trust him to fulfill his pledge to slash the overabundance of federal regulations. We expect he will tackle the growth of entitlement spending methodically, understanding caution is necessary when revising important programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

A few of Romney's stands trouble us. He can be bellicose on foreign affairs. His gushing enthusiasm for oil drilling and fossil fuels is a worry in Florida, where drilling off our Gulf of Mexico beaches would be a disaster.

But we are reassured by Romney's history as a deliberate leader of strong conservative values who will listen to others and carefully evaluate the facts.

President Obama may have good intentions, but he is simply taking the nation in the wrong direction.

Seasoned executive Romney would come to office ready to put the country on the course to more freedom and prosperity.

The Tampa Tribune, with confidence and enthusiasm, endorses Mitt Romney for president.

[BayGBM]

Endorsement: Barack Obama for president
By The Denver Post

With the nation mired in two wars and amid an economic meltdown, we endorsed a largely untested young senator from Illinois for president in 2008.

Four years later, the Iraq war is over, the war in Afghanistan has a conclusion in sight, and the economy has made demonstrable — though hardly remarkable — progress.

As President Barack Obama campaigns for re-election, it would be a stretch to say we are bullish on the entirety of his first term. There have been notable accomplishments: rescuing the nation's auto industry, passing comprehensive (though contentious) health-care reform, and delivering justice to Osama bin Laden. But those accomplishments are juxtaposed against a sluggish economy and less impressive performances in tackling the federal debt and deficits, reducing unemployment and bolstering the housing market.

A largely intransigent Republican Party shares in the blame, however, particularly because of unwillingness to cede any ground to Obama in the last two years on policies — such as the president's American Jobs Act — that attempt to bolster the economy.

And though there is much in Mitt Romney's résumé to suggest he is a capable problem-solver, the Republican nominee has not presented himself as a leader who will bring his party closer to the center at a time when that is what this country needs.

His comments on the 47 percent of Americans who refuse to "take personal responsibility and care for their lives" were a telling insight into his views and a low point of the campaign.

Obama, on the other hand, has shown throughout his term that he is a steady leader who keeps the interests of a broad array of Americans in mind.

We urge Coloradans to re-elect him to a second term.

Regardless of the outcome on Nov. 6, America is once again confronted with a daunting economic picture that requires bold action even before the next president takes the oath of office.

This time, politicians cannot blame Wall Street for our plight. Instead, both parties are guilty of pushing our country too close to the so-called fiscal cliff while hoping voters would endorse their view of government come Election Day.

Romney's approach is one of tax cuts for all, drastic Medicare reform, increased defense spending, and what would be catastrophic cuts to other discretionary programs. In the Republican primary, he said he couldn't support a plan that included even $10 in cuts for every $1 in new revenue. To expect the country to balance its budget without additional revenue, in our view, is nothing short of fantasy.

The president's most recent plan for budget-cutting is closer to being the right recipe in that it includes a mix of revenue increases and spending cuts. That said, Obama's plan is overly reliant upon the windfall from letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire while counting "savings" from fighting wars that he repeatedly reminds us were put on the credit card.

Avoiding a severe recession

Before the start of the new year, the president and Congress must craft a budget plan that addresses the looming expiration of the Bush tax cuts and $109 billion in mandatory cuts to defense and discretionary spending. Failure to do so promises to drag a fragile economy back into a severe recession.

It is past time for lawmakers from both sides to agree to a sizeable plan of spending cuts, tax revenue increases and — perhaps most important — longer-term entitlement reforms. Doing so would send a signal to the markets, to businesses and to other countries that we are responsible enough to set the table for sustained economic growth in the decades to come.

A bipartisan group is pushing the idea of such a "grand bargain" in the Senate, which we support. The nation needs a president who can lead that charge to push that deal across the finish line, and we believe Obama is committed to seeing it done.

The president was willing to concede on the issue of entitlements in a deal reached with House Speaker John Boehner in 2011. But Boehner couldn't sell their agreement to Tea Party conservatives in the House. We expect Obama will stand up to liberals in his party to compromise on the sacred cow of entitlement reform as part of a larger budget deal shortly after Election Day.

There is less reason to believe that Romney would attempt to — or even could — manage a similar feat in challenging the Tea Party wing of his party on tax revenues.

The Obama administration can be fairly criticized for leaning too heavily on regulations that hamper business, but on balance we have seen enough to believe the president will pursue policies — and compromise, when necessary — that protect the vulnerable, invest in the middle class, and deliver an economy that drives us to a better future.

Obama has moved the country in the right direction on school reform. On higher education, he has taken steps to address affordability through increasing Pell Grants and streamlining the student-loan process. His executive order that allows qualified illegal immigrants brought here as children a chance to pursue college degrees is a positive step — though much remains to be done on immigration reform.

As commander in chief, he has demonstrated himself capable in a tough situation. He eliminated the military's discriminatory "don't ask don't tell" policy, limited this country's involvement in Libya while still playing a role in the ouster of Moammar Khadafy, and hasn't allowed the U.S. to be drawn into the Syrian civil war. He has remained a friend to Israel, but isn't engaging in war talk over the Iranian nuclear issue. Moving forward, the administration owes the American public a thorough explanation of the troubling events surrounding the murder of four Americans in Benghazi last month.

We know that many have a different view, and point to Romney's record in Massachusetts as ample reason for his election. Unfortunately, he never seriously campaigned as a centrist alternative to Obama.

From running to the far right on immigration and women's health in the primary and then saddling his campaign with Rep. Paul Ryan's extreme and unrealistic budget, the Romney of this election cycle is not the man elected in Massachusetts.

Instead, we must judge him on the menu of options he has repeatedly put forward during this campaign. On policies ranging from tax reform to immigration, from health care to higher education, none of Romney's numbers add up. Moreover, he has been unwilling or unable to outline for voters specifics that demonstrate his math works — probably because it doesn't.

Romney has said he will repeal Obamacare, yet insists he can keep its most popular provisions without fully explaining how he would pay for it.

He's calling for 20 percent tax rate cuts across the board. Independent analysts say the government can't come close to making up for that lost revenue without closing popular deductions like those for home-mortgage interest and charitable contributions. Romney's explanations for how he would do that don't wash.

And his pledge to create 12 million jobs in four years sounds good, but Moody's Analytics has predicted that type of job growth regardless of who is elected.

Drill-at-all-costs wrong

Romney notes correctly that North America is poised to become an energy exporter. But the drill-at-all-costs mantra he is pushing runs counter to the predominant view in Colorado, which is one that balances energy and environment — particularly when it comes to public land. And, unlike the Republican nominee, we believe our nation's energy portfolio must include government investment in renewable sources such as wind and solar — both of which can become sources of more power and more jobs in the future.

Republicans are right to remind voters that one month after taking office, President Obama promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. But the country's economic malaise turned out to be much deeper than was known at the time. As recently pointed out by Politico, Obama's pledge came when it was estimated that the economy shrank at a rate of 6.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008. In August 2009, the rate was readjusted to a negative 8.9 percent — the worst single-quarter decline in half a century.

With unemployment dropping below 8 percent and following 30 months of private-sector job growth, now is the time for him to make good on that promise of deficit reduction.

This is an election that begs the candidates to demonstrate what they plan to do moving forward. Neither has done enough to lead us to think voters on Nov. 6 aren't, to a certain degree, being asked to make a leap of faith. But Obama's record of accomplishment under trying circumstances and his blueprint for a second term make him the best pick to move the nation forward.

[Shockwave]

Impressive job posting both sides of the story Bay.

Shockwave approved.

[BayGBM]

On the basis of sound leadership, re-elect Obama: endorsement editorial
By The Plain Dealer Editorial Board

Four years ago, this newspaper's editorial board enthusiastically endorsed Barack Obama, then a young senator from Illinois, for president of the United States. As much as we admired the long and courageous service of his Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, we believed that the nation needed fresh ideas and the fresh start that a leader with Obama's charisma and only-in-America backstory could provide.

Today, we recommend President Obama's re-election. He has led the nation back from the brink of depression. Ohio in particular has benefited from his bold decision to revive the domestic auto industry. Because of his determination to fulfill a decades-old dream of Democrats, 30 million more Americans will soon have health insurance. His Race to the Top initiative seeded many of the education reforms embodied in Cleveland's Transformation Plan. He ended the war in Iraq and refocused the battle to disrupt al-Qaida and its terrorist allies. He ordered the risky attack inside Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden.

And yet our endorsement this year comes with less enthusiasm or optimism.

Obama has changed -- and it's more than gray hair. The unifier of 2008 now engages in relentless attacks on his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. The big dreamer of 2008 offers little in the way of a second-term agenda. There is a world-weariness unseen four years ago.

In fairness, the Obama of 2008 often warned his swooning audiences that change would be slow and painstaking. The four years since then surely have been far more trying than he or almost anyone could have imagined.

We wish President Obama had used this campaign to showcase a more substantial vision for the many challenges that still confront America. The nation needs to get more people back to work. It needs to get its financial house in order, reform its tax code and streamline -- though not gut -- regulation in order to reassure business and speed recovery. It needs to invest in infrastructure, education and job training. It needs to expand exports and engage the world.

Not only do we still believe this president can do those things, we think he can do it with policies most likely to lift Ohio and Ohioans. Obama's leadership has made a difference when it mattered most. His stimulus package helped avert an even worse economic collapse and initiated investments in education, manufacturing and green energy that should yet pay dividends. His commitment to a balanced path toward deficit reduction won't please the most zealous members of either party, but it makes sense for the nation.

Much of what beset America during Obama's first term lay outside his direct control. The bobsled slide into recession was in full motion when he took office. The economic calamity has been global; recovery, sporadic and weak. Obama's attempts to reach across the aisle politically were met with unbending resistance, even belligerence.

And yet, Obama has often been his own worst enemy.

On stimulus and health care, in particular, he ceded too much freedom to doctrinaire Democrats on Capitol Hill and failed to engage the American people. When Republicans regained control of the House in 2010, he was slow to show that he had heard the angry cry from voters. Presented with a balanced plan to reduce the deficit by a bipartisan commission he appointed, he offered only a tepid embrace. He needlessly alienated business leaders whose buy-in the nation needs to restore prosperity.

This litany of missed opportunities, as much as the grim economic statistics that have become America's unacceptable new normal, left us sorely tempted to endorse Gov. Romney this fall. Like President Obama, he is a man of public achievement and private honor. He was born to wealth and power, but used those advantages well: building a prosperous business; rescuing the 2002 Winter Olympics; being a leader in his church and serving as an effective governor. It is the track record of a man who gets things done. No wonder so many frustrated Americans appear eager to elect him.
But which Romney would they elect? The rather liberal one who ran for the Senate in 1994? The pragmatic governor? The sharply conservative candidate of this year's GOP primaries? The reborn moderate of recent weeks?

All politicians change positions over time -- Obama in 2008 shifted his position on health care reform more to the center. But Romney's frequent changes raise questions about his core principles and make his lack of policy details all the more troubling. They make you wonder if he would stand up to the more extreme elements in his own party, especially to the House Republicans who undercut Ohioan John Boehner's attempts to negotiate a deficit and debt deal.

Romney's tendency to bluster on foreign policy provides more cause for doubt. With tens of thousands of young Americans still in harm's way in Afghanistan, the United States cannot afford to be drawn into new wars without clear national interests at stake or to sap its resources in further open-ended conflicts. The Benghazi killings reveal the risks of an "Arab Spring" in which terrorists have gained new weaponry and new freedom to operate. But these challenges require inventive diplomacy and international engagement, not slogans or swagger.

Obama has shown that he favors engagement over bluster, and practical solutions over easy bromides. That's what the country needs.

Consider a defining moment early in Obama's first term -- one with special resonance in Ohio: The outgoing Bush administration had used TARP funds to throw a lifeline to General Motors and Chrysler, but the two automakers were still at death's door. They wanted more cash and offered vague promises to change their ways. Public opinion opposed another bailout. Romney urged the companies to file for traditional bankruptcy -- at a time when private-sector credit was frozen even for healthy firms.

Obama told the companies to restructure using the Bankruptcy Court and set conditions for government financing: GM's chairman had to go. Excess plants and dealerships had to close. Chrysler had to be bought out by Fiat. Contracts had to be renegotiated.

It was unpopular but gutsy. And it worked. Ohioans today are making cars in Lordstown and Toledo. They're making parts and steel for Ford, Honda and other automakers. They're back on the job.

That's leadership that deserves a chance to finish the job. Re-elect President Obama.

[BayGBM]

OPINION: Mitt Romney for president
By Tribune-Review

It sounds cliched, but it is a truism: America is at a crossroads. It can continue down the path of Leviathan government and an increasing dependence on it, or America can return to the path of limited government and the kind of prosperity-producing independence on which the Founders based this great republic.

The choice is yours. Our choice is the latter. And that’s why we enthusiastically endorse Republican Mitt Romney for president of the United States.

He’s an exceptionally good and decent man who is a proven leader, administrator and deft politician.

Four years ago, we warned of the dangers of a Barack Obama presidency. We predicted everything from his economic policy of unprecedented and recovery-retarding taxing and spending to a weak foreign policy of deferentialism that has endangered America and invited aggression.

What we could not have predicted, however, was how scandal-ridden Mr. Obama’s administration would be.

There’s the prevaricating attorney general who, promoting the rule of lawlessness, was found in contempt of Congress (think of the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal). There are the executive orders that exceeded presidential authority (think of the broad amnesty for illegal aliens). And then there’s the rank abuse of the government pulpit for political ends (think of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ unpunished violations of the Hatch Act), among other unsavory behavior.

And while President Obama argues that it is imprudent to change horses in midstream, that he is deserving of four more years to complete his agenda, the American people know you can’t reach the opposite bank on a drowning horse.

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, has excelled in service private and public, showing great mastery in keeping the steed steady and in some quite unfriendly and even treacherous waters.

He helped restructure numerous companies and saved many jobs as the head of Bain Capital.

Using his considerable financial acumen, organizational skills and persuasive verve, he rescued the scandal-plagued 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

And he showed great political adroitness in working with a Democrat legislature as governor of Massachusetts for the betterment of all Bay State residents.

Mitt Romney offers a seasoned, strategic and mature public policy mind so sorely needed in the White House and so necessary to enable our great nation and its people to excel.

It’s time to begin restoring America. It’s time to elect Mitt Romney as president of the United States.

[BayGBM]

Obama for president
The nation has been well served by President Obama's steady leadership. And Mitt Romney has demonstrated clearly that he's the wrong choice.
by the LA Times

When he was elected president in 2008, Barack Obama was untried and untested. Just four years out of the Illinois state Senate, he had not yet proved himself as either a manager or a leader. He had emerged from relative obscurity as the result of a single convention speech and was voted into office only a few years later on a tidal wave of hope, breezing past several opponents with far more experience and far clearer claims on the job.

Today, Obama is a very different candidate. He has confronted two inherited wars and the deepest recession since the Great Depression. He brought America's misguided adventure in Iraq to an end and arrested the economic downturn (though he did not fully reverse it) with the 2009 fiscal stimulus and a high-risk strategy to save the U.S. automobile industry. He secured passage of a historic healthcare reform law — the most important social legislation since Medicare.

Just as important, Obama brought a certain levelheadedness to the White House that had been in short supply during the previous eight years. While his opponents assailed him as a socialist and a Muslim and repeatedly challenged the location of his birthplace in an effort to call into question his legitimacy as president, he showed himself to be an adult, less an ideologue than a pragmatist, more cautious than cocky. Despite Republicans' persistent obstructionism, he pushed for — and enacted — stronger safeguards against another Wall Street meltdown and abusive financial industry practices. He cut the cost of student loans, persuaded auto manufacturers to take an almost unimaginable leap in fuel efficiency by 2025 and offered a temporary reprieve from deportation to young immigrants brought into the country illegally by their parents. He ended the morally bankrupt "don't ask, don't tell" policy that had institutionalized discrimination against gays in the military.

The nation has been well served by President Obama's steady leadership. He deserves a second term.

His record is by no means perfect. His expansive use of executive power is troubling, as is his continuation of some of the indefensible national security policies of the George W. Bush administration. This page has faulted him for not pushing harder for a comprehensive overhaul of immigration laws. Obama swept into office as a transformative figure, but the expectations built up by the long campaign thudded back to earth amid an unexpectedly steep recession and hyperbolic opposition from the right. That the GOP has sought to block his agenda wherever possible is undeniable, but truly great leaders find ways to bring opposing factions together when the times demand it; Obama has not yet been able to do so.

Republicans have sought to make the presidential election an up-or-down vote on Obama, hoping that voters will hold him accountable for the country's stubbornly high unemployment and sluggish economy. But this election isn't a referendum on one candidate, it's a choice between two. And unfortunately for the GOP, its candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, has demonstrated clearly that he's the wrong choice. He's wrong on the issues, from immigration to tax policy to the use of American power to gay rights and beyond. And his shifting positions and willingness to pander have raised questions about who he is and what he stands for.

On economic issues, the race between Obama and Romney presents a stark choice. Romney wants to cut taxes, spending and regulations in the hope that the mix of stimulus and austerity will spark growth and reduce the federal deficit. Obama wants to trim spending but raise taxes on high-income Americans, shrinking the deficit without sacrificing investments in the country's productive capacity or curtailing Washington's role in protecting the vulnerable.

The centerpiece of Romney's campaign is his plan to cut tax rates 20% below the Bush-era cuts while eliminating enough tax breaks to make up for the loss in revenue, after factoring in economic growth. But the plan lacks credibility, in no small part because Romney has declined to specify how he'd make the numbers work. The risk is that his tax reform will drive up costs for the very middle-income Americans he says he wants to protect, who are the biggest beneficiaries of those tax breaks.

In fact, it's irresponsible to seek a deep, permanent tax cut when the government is deeply in the red. And Romney would exacerbate the situation by spending extravagantly on defense even as the last of the Bush-era wars ends. His main proposal for reducing the deficit is to cap federal spending at 20% of the economy. With Social Security and Medicare commitments growing in tandem with the rising population of retirees, however, such a cap would inevitably force draconian cuts in federal programs that are vital to productivity, such as higher education, transportation and research.

It's hard to analyze the effect of Romney's plans because he's left so many blanks to be filled in after the election. For example, he wants to replace the healthcare and financial regulatory reforms enacted in 2010, but he won't say with what exactly. He's also advocated rolling back the clock on clean energy, overturning Roe v. Wade and leaving women's reproductive rights at the mercy of state legislators and abandoning efforts to help distressed borrowers keep their homes. And he has sounded bellicose on foreign policy, particularly in regard to the complex challenges posed by Iran, Russia and China, with which he appears determined to start a trade war.

The most troubling aspect of Romney's candidacy is that we still don't know what his principles are. Is he the relatively moderate Republican who was governor of Massachusetts, the "severely conservative" one on display in the GOP primaries or the more reasonable-sounding fellow who reappeared at the presidential debates? His modulating positions on his own tax plan, healthcare reform, financial regulation, Medicare, immigration and the national safety net add to the impression that the only thing he really stands for is his own election.

Voters face a momentous choice in November between two candidates offering sharply different prescriptions for what ails the country. Obama's recalls the successful formula of the 1990s, when the government raised taxes and slowed spending to close the deficit. The alternative offered by Romney would neglect the country's infrastructure and human resources for the sake of yet another tax cut and a larger defense budget than even the Pentagon is seeking. The Times urges voters to reelect Obama.

[BayGBM]

Our pick for president: Romney
by the Orlando Sentinel

Two days after his lackluster first debate performance, President Barack Obama's re-election hopes got a timely boost. The government's monthly jobless report for September showed the nation's unemployment rate fell below 8 percent for the first time since he took office.

If that were the only metric that mattered, the president might credibly argue that the U.S. economy was finally on the right track. Unfortunately for him, and for the American people, he can't.

Economic growth, three years into the recovery, is anemic. Family incomes are down, poverty is up. Obama's Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, highlighted these and other hard truths in this week's second debate.

Even the September jobless numbers deserve an asterisk, because more than 4 million Americans have given up looking for work since January 2009.

And while the nation's economy is still sputtering nearly four years after Obama took office, the federal government is more than $5 trillion deeper in debt. It just racked up its fourth straight 13-figure shortfall.

We have little confidence that Obama would be more successful managing the economy and the budget in the next four years. For that reason, though we endorsed him in 2008, we are recommending Romney in this race.

Obama's defenders would argue that he inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression, and would have made more progress if not for obstruction from Republicans in Congress. But Democrats held strong majorities in the House and Senate during his first two years.

Other presidents have succeeded even with the other party controlling Capitol Hill. Democrat Bill Clinton presided over an economic boom and balanced the budget working with Republicans. Leaders find a way.

With Obama in charge, the federal government came perilously close to a default last year. Now it's lurching toward another crisis with the impending arrival of massive tax hikes and spending cuts on Jan. 1.

The next president is likely to be dealing with a Congress where at least one, if not both, chambers are controlled by Republicans. It verges on magical thinking to expect Obama to get different results in the next four years.

Two years ago, a bipartisan panel the president appointed recommended a 10-year, $4 trillion deficit-reduction plan. Rather than embrace it and sell it to the American people, Obama took his own, less ambitious plan to Congress, where it was largely ignored by both parties.

Now the president and his supporters are attacking Romney because his long-term budget blueprint calls for money-saving reforms to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, three of the biggest drivers of deficit spending. Obama would be more credible in critiquing the proposal if he had a serious alternative for bringing entitlement spending under control. He doesn't.

Romney is not our ideal candidate for president. We've been turned off by his appeals to social conservatives and immigration extremists. Like most presidential hopefuls, including Obama four years ago, Romney faces a steep learning curve on foreign policy.

But the core of Romney's campaign platform, his five-point plan, at least shows he understands that reviving the economy and repairing the government's balance sheet are imperative — now, not four years in the future.

Romney has a strong record of leadership to run on. He built a successful business. He rescued the 2002 Winter Olympics from scandal and mismanagement. As governor of Massachusetts, he worked with a Democrat-dominated legislature to close a $3billion budget deficit without borrowing or raising taxes, and pass the health plan that became a national model.

This is Romney's time to lead, again. If he doesn't produce results — even with a hostile Senate — we'll be ready in 2016 to get behind someone else who will.

We reject the innuendo that some critics have heaped on the president. We don't think he's a business-hating socialist. We don't think he's intent on weakening the American military. We don't think he's unpatriotic. And, no, we don't think he was born outside the United States.

But after reflecting on his four years in the White House, we also don't think that he's the best qualified candidate in this race.

We endorse Mitt Romney for president.

[BayGBM]

Presidential endorsement: Obama's agenda gives steady hand to economic growth
by the Arizona Daily Star

When we look at Southern Arizona we see many families struggling. The metro area is the sixth-poorest in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. One in three children here are in poverty. Before the Great Recession hit, it was one in five.

To the south we see evidence of a broken immigration system with no national consensus on how to fix it. Instead we have politically charged rhetoric lacking in solutions. The required dialogue of leadership must inspire a comprehensive immigration agenda.

To the north, at the Arizona Capitol, state lawmakers cut funding for education, child protection and health care. In Washington, D.C., we see a political system riven with an intransigence that flourishes at great cost to the American people.

The nation's focus on economic recovery, job creation, health care, support for education, America's position in the world and the national debt of $16 trillion weighs heavy.

But we are resilient. We have choices in leadership. We are at a crossroads.

We have a choice between the Democratic team of President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, and the Republican ticket of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan. All are passionate about America, but have very different views of the American agenda.

When we look back four years, we see the steps we've made, not as quickly as anyone would like, but there is progress in health care, job creation and tax policy. It's not an easy road.

Changing course would undercut that progress and create further uncertainty - two things we cannot afford. We can and must move ahead. And no matter who we elect to the White House, we'll still have a divided Congress. Anything possible and good must first come through consensus-building leadership in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate. No president will be successful without one unified American agenda.

Principled leadership, consensus and time are required. Obama's accomplishments and positions on health care, higher education, and economic and social issues continue to make him the best choice for the interests at home in Southern Arizona and in our country.

This is why the Arizona Daily Star endorses Barack Obama for a second term.

President Obama put these building blocks in place:

• Obama ended the Iraq War, as he said he would. American involvement in Afghanistan is winding down.

• Osama bin Laden is dead.

• The economy is beginning to turn around. Unemployment is the lowest it's been since Obama took office; the country has had 31 straight months of job growth and the creation of more than 5 million private-sector jobs. Obama's decision to save Detroit automakers preserved a million American jobs. Reformed financial regulations better protect consumers when they use credit cards or invest their money.

• Money from the Recovery Act has helped Southern Arizonans refinance their mortgages, aided local schools, paid for infrastructure projects and boosted high-tech research and businesses. Roughly $46 million has been spent on projects just within the 85705 ZIP code, one of central Tucson's poorest areas.

Obama has demonstrated leadership by signing equal-pay legislation, creating a $10,000 college-tuition tax credit, ending "don't ask, don't tell" and including contraception in medical coverage provided by nonreligious employers. Obama understands that reproductive health-care choices belong to an individual and her medical provider, not politicians.

Obama sees so-called "women's issues" as what they are: economic, family and community issues.

And when Obama has changed a position, as he did this spring when he announced his support of same-sex marriage equality, for example, he explained his reasons clearly. America needs a leader with a strong moral compass who is steadfast but not rigid - a leader whose views evolve within a consistent and inclusive world view.

The foundation Obama has built has kept the nation steady.

Obama projects a vivid image of hope. We still have that hope in his leadership. Hope is by nature an ambitious agenda. Hope 2.0 requires a renewed American purpose that lifts an economy as much as it lifts the people and businesses making it possible.

Recovery is an American responsibility and not that of one man.

Four years ago we said in our endorsement of Obama, "Like a race car driver going into a turn, a leader must see not only what confronts our nation today but envision where we come out on the other side."

Our journey on that road has been slowed by economic obstacles, but our nation will press forward.

The Arizona Daily Star endorses Barack Obama for president.

[BayGBM]

For president, Barack Obama
The Santa Fe New Mexican

President Barack Obama has earned four more years.

He inherited an unholy mess — an economy teetering on the edge of a second Great Depression and two foreign wars top the list of disasters. Slowly, steadily and with his eye fixed firmly on the needs of the country, the president has worked hard every day to improve our collective good. It was President Obama who bailed out the auto industry, salvaging 1.1 million jobs and keeping manufacturing alive in this country. It was President Obama who made the gutsy call to invade a compound in Pakistan, tracking down and killing Osama bin Laden. It was President Obama who finally signed comprehensive health reform so that no American has to fear bankruptcy because of a medical catastrophe. More work remains for a second term.

Despite 31 months of consecutive job growth, too many Americans still need jobs. Despite ending the war in Iraq, the United States still must leave Afghanistan and repurpose our military strength. Despite passing the Affordable Care Act, we need a President Obama in office to ensure that citizens do not lose their dearly won access to health care. Despite progress on equal rights — passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act ensuring equal pay for women, ending “don’t ask, don’t tell” in the military so that gay and lesbian troops can serve openly and announcing his support for equal marriage — more progress is needed.

And it is that word — progress — that we urge voters to keep in mind when casting their ballots. Voters are not simply choosing between two men — President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney — they are selecting two philosophies of governing and of life.

In the world of Barack Obama, raised by a single mother and grandparents, propelled to the top through his own hard work, intelligence and drive, we all do better when we come together. He has never forgotten the struggles of his youth, understanding better than most the necessity of individual initiative. To Obama, government is not the enemy. It is not dispenser of all wisdom or wealth, either. Government is the safety net that catches the weak, the sick, the old and the very poor. It is also our collective will in action — building, defending and securing our nation. Obama will not privatize Social Security or reduce Medicare to a voucher system that costs too much while not guaranteeing treatment. He understands that Medicaid, which underwrites medical care for the very poor, must be protected from budget slashers who think nothing of leaving sick people at the emergency room door while asking for more tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.

Mitt Romney’s world is very different, one of privilege and wealth, where in his view, 47 percent of all citizens are takers who won’t assume responsibility for their lives. He had the good fortune to be born in a two-parent home, and should be credited for taking his comfortable start and building a fortune with it. He is a model of a citizen, a good father, husband and church member, contributing to his greater community with both his time and treasure. However, his vision for the United States — with almost half the population moochers — will not lift the least of us up. Instead, it will continue to divide the country along class lines, further splitting us between the haves-a-lot and everyone else.

This election — aren’t they all? — is an important one.

The next president will appoint one, perhaps two Supreme Court justices. Those unelected justices, as the entire country knows, extend the influence of a president long after his term ends; we much prefer a Sotomayor or a Kagan to a Scalia or Thomas.

The next president must continue navigating the dangerous shoals of the Middle East — it is disconcerting to realize that many of Gov. Romney’s foreign policy advisers are the same people who drew us into the unnecessary war in Iraq. They seem hellbent on attacking Iran, another disastrous war the country does not need. The next president must cut spending and raise revenues, smartly and with precision, so that the nation continues necessary investments in education, infrastructure and innovation, while at the same time reducing the deficit. The next president must pass comprehensive immigration reform, finding a path to citizenship for the many people now living in the shadows, while at the same time securing our borders.

So much accomplished in four years. So much remaining to be done.

[BayGBM]

Powell endorses Obama again.

[dario73]

Sun Sentinel endorses Mitt Romney for president
 
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board endorses former Gov. Mitt Romney for president. (Marc Serota / October 26, 2012)
 

Related
 
4:27 a.m. EDT, October 26, 2012
Brush away all the rhetoric, all the vitriol, all the divisiveness from the presidential campaign. To most Americans, only one thing matters — the economy.

Four years into Barack Obama’s presidency, economic growth is sputtering. Family incomes are down. Poverty is up. Business owners are reluctant to assume risk in the face of unending uncertainty. Many are holding on by their fingernails, desperate for signs of an economic recovery that will help them provide for themselves, their employees, their customers and their communities.

When President Obama came into office in 2009, the economy was in freefall and though untested, he inspired us with his promise of hope and change. Now, four years later, we have little reason to believe he can turn things around.

So while we endorsed Obama in 2008, we recommend voters choose Republican Mitt Romney on Nov. 6.

Yes, the jobless numbers from September showed a drop to 7.8 percent unemployed, the first time in almost four years that it’s been below 8 percent. But the numbers are deceiving because more than 4 million Americans have given up looking for work since January 2009.

[BayGBM]

Dario73, I’m not sure why you only provided an excerpt rather than the entire editorial but the Sentinel’s endorsement is inconsistent to put it mildly.  For example the full editorial (seen here http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sfl-mitt-romney-presidential-endorsment-sun-sentinel-20121025,0,1757975.story) mentions that the US is “a war-weary nation, and while the Middle East remains a powder keg, diplomacy must remain the first, second and third tools in our toolbox; military might the last” but Romney has made it clear over many months that he is ready to take aggressive (military) action against Iran.  His rhetoric in this area is worrisome because the very people advising him are some of the same GOP counselors who help take us into Iraq.  Romney has to lean on those hawks because he, himself, is not well versed in foreign policy.

The editorial goes on to say that “the next president will likely affect the makeup of the Supreme Court, as four justices are in their 70s. Whether that will put women’s rights and other policies in danger is something voters need to consider.”  Even the Sentinel editors seem to recognize that women’s current reproductive rights will be at risk under a Romney appointed Supreme Court.  Remember we are living in time when GOP men are talking about “legitimate rape” and explicitly saying that a child born of rape is god’s will.  How anyone with a mother, sister, wife, or daughter could endorse this is beyond me.

Romney talking out of both sides of his mouth is well known, but what he says when he (thinks he) is behind closed doors is particularly worrisome.  Recall his comment about the 47%, "...it's not my job to worry about those people."

Bush cut taxes at the very time the US treasury needed money to prosecute the wars he initiated.  Now that the debt from those wars is actually on the US balance sheet Romney wants to cut taxes—again.  Even though the debt from those wars has not been addressed.

I lived in Massachusetts when Romney was governor, and I recall very well that he left office after one term deeply unpopular.  He didn’t run for reelection because he did not have a prayer of being reelected.  That aside, I can sum up his disqualification in three words: Swiss Bank Account (SBA).

I think I am safe in observing that most Americans do not personally know anyone with a SBA.  Indeed most people only know of SBA though movies, television, and news reports.  When these accounts are held by US citizens it is almost always in connection with someone trying to hide money (from being taxed), launder money, or otherwise engage in criminal activity.  Were there not enough banks in the US that Romney had to take his money to Switzerland?  Like a number of Americans I have had money in foreign banks, but that is because I am either from that country or I was living there for a time (work or study abroad for example).  Do I even have to mention that Romney had money in the Caymen Islands?  Any voter who believes that a wealthy person who had money in a SBA and the Caymen Islands has their best interest, or America's best interest, at heart is in for a very rude awakening. 

[BayGBM]

Chronicle recommends: Re-elect Obama

Four years ago, candidate Barack Obama projected an optimistic aura of possibility for a nation that was mired in two wars and watching its economy teeter on the brink of collapse. His promise of hope and change has been tempered by the magnitude of the mess he inherited, the surprises and partisan blockade he confronted - and, in some cases, the opportunities he missed to apply his political capital to big issues of our times.
 
Still, by most measures, this nation is better off than it was four years ago. The economy is still struggling, but is showing signs of recovery - and new safeguards are in place to restrain the Wall Street recklessness that nearly led us to disaster. The U.S. auto industry is back from the abyss. One war has ended, and the other is winding down. A health care overhaul promises to bring coverage to tens of millions of Americans.

President Obama has disappointed some partisans on the left with his hawkishness on foreign affairs and his willingness to compromise on fiscal issues. Partisans on the right routinely sound the alarm at what they are convinced is Obama's dedication to a big government that will suffocate the free markets and individual liberties that have defined this nation.

Neither critique captures the essence of the Obama presidency. This nation needed - and received - a steady, measured president who is neither beholden to ideological dogma nor fearful of taking risks for what is right. This is a president who was willing to send Navy SEALs on a daring mission to kill terrorist leader Osama bin Laden and to take a stand for marriage equality. This is a Democrat who will push against the party base for trade agreements and education reform.

Critics can justifiably point to the lack of discipline in the $787 billion stimulus program and the sheer weight and regulatory meddling of the Affordable Care Act. But unemployment and access to health care were undeniably reaching a crisis point without government intervention - and Obama's leadership helped push these measures, however imperfect, through a polarized Capitol.

Our main problem with Obama is that he has not made a priority of four issues that should transcend party lines: climate change, comprehensive immigration reform, the soaring national deficit and the long-term sustainability of Social Security and Medicare. Those issues, along with a revamping of the impossibly complex and convoluted tax code, must be among his priorities if elected to a second term. Progress on any of them will require far greater bipartisanship than we saw in his first term. Yes, there are Republicans who seemed hell-bent to stymie him at every turn. But he's the president - his job is to set the tone.

Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, offers no better course on any of those critical issues. He openly mocked concern about global warming during his convention speech, he has danced and dodged on the tough points of immigration policy, proposed tax and spending policies that will expand the deficit, and effectively avoided any meaningful proposals to keep the entitlement programs solvent.

The three presidential debates - as well as the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan - have presented Americans with real choices that go beyond the platitudes and the dispiriting negativity that has dominated the ad wars. The lines on the social issues are clearly drawn: The Obama administration would continue its course of expanding gay rights and preserving women's access to abortion and contraception.

Perhaps the biggest distinction between the two is their contrasting views on the size and role of government. Romney has called for a smaller, more streamlined federal government that delegates more safety-net responsibilities to the states. He has called for deep cuts in nondefense discretionary spending - though he is vague about where he might find those savings, aside from his sound-bite shots at Planned Parenthood and public broadcasting. He would count on tax cuts and regulation relief to spur economic growth.

Obama possesses a more traditional Democratic view that government has a role, indeed a duty, to provide ladders of opportunity. Such sensibility is important in this era of widening gap between rich and poor in this nation. He rightly observes that the middle class has taken a beating in the Great Recession - and its purchasing power is vital to a healthy economy.

On foreign policy, one measure of the effectiveness of Obama's stewardship was how relatively modestly it was challenged by Romney in Monday's final debate. Obama's approach of enlisting allies to tighten the vise of sanctions on Iran has vindicated one of the mantras of his 2008 campaign: Pursuit of international cooperation is not a sign of weakness, it is a way to advance U.S. interests. But he also showed the courage and wisdom to fulfill another campaign promise in acting unilaterally to pursue bin Laden at his sanctuary in Pakistan.

Romney's myriad transformations leave Americans wondering exactly what they would get if he were elected president. Absence of a consistent core is an unsettling proposition for a leader who would guide everything from war and the economy to Supreme Court appointments that could shape its direction for a generation.

Obama's leadership has had a stabilizing effect on the economy and on foreign policy. One thing is certain: While challenges remain, the White House is in wiser, steadier hands than it was four years ago.
President Obama should be re-elected.

[Hugo Chavez]

good idea for a thread. thanks Bay.

[Dos Equis]

Dario73, I’m not sure why you only provided an excerpt rather than the entire editorial but the Sentinel’s endorsement is inconsistent to put it mildly.  For example the full editorial (seen here http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sfl-mitt-romney-presidential-endorsment-sun-sentinel-20121025,0,1757975.story) mentions that the US is “a war-weary nation, and while the Middle East remains a powder keg, diplomacy must remain the first, second and third tools in our toolbox; military might the last” but Romney has made it clear over many months that he is ready to take aggressive (military) action against Iran.  His rhetoric in this area is worrisome because the very people advising him are some of the same GOP counselors who help take us into Iraq.  Romney has to lean on those hawks because he, himself, is not well versed in foreign policy.

The editorial goes on to say that “the next president will likely affect the makeup of the Supreme Court, as four justices are in their 70s. Whether that will put women’s rights and other policies in danger is something voters need to consider.”  Even the Sentinel editors seem to recognize that women’s current reproductive rights will be at risk under a Romney appointed Supreme Court.  Remember we are living in time when GOP men are talking about “legitimate rape” and explicitly saying that a child born of rape is god’s will.  How anyone with a mother, sister, wife, or daughter could endorse this is beyond me.

Romney talking out of both sides of his mouth is well known, but what he says when he (thinks he) is behind closed doors is particularly worrisome.  Recall his comment about the 47%, "...it's not my job to worry about those people."

Bush cut taxes at the very time the US treasury needed money to prosecute the wars he initiated.  Now that the debt from those wars is actually on the US balance sheet Romney wants to cut taxes—again.  Even though the debt from those wars has not been addressed.

I lived in Massachusetts when Romney was governor, and I recall very well that he left office after one term deeply unpopular.  He didn’t run for reelection because he did not have a prayer of being reelected.  That aside, I can sum up his disqualification in three words: Swiss Bank Account (SBA).

I think I am safe in observing that most Americans do not personally know anyone with a SBA.  Indeed most people only know of SBA though movies, television, and news reports.  When these accounts are held by US citizens it is almost always in connection with someone trying to hide money (from being taxed), launder money, or otherwise engage in criminal activity.  Were there not enough banks in the US that Romney had to take his money to Switzerland?  Like a number of Americans I have had money in foreign banks, but that is because I am either from that country or I was living there for a time (work or study abroad for example).  Do I even have to mention that Romney had money in the Caymen Islands?  Any voter who believes that a wealthy person who had money in a SBA and the Caymen Islands has their best interest, or America's best interest, at heart is in for a very rude awakening. 

I know people with money in foreign banks.  Not a big deal.  The voters don't care. 

[tonymctones]

Impressive job posting both sides of the story Bay.

Shockwave approved.

indeed cudos

[Soul Crusher]

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20121027/OPINION03/121026026/The-Register-endorsement-Mitt-Romney-offers-a-fresh-economic-vision?Frontpage&nclick_check=1


First since Nixon 

[abijahmaniaco]

i read it all. i've read everything.

[Soul Crusher]

Los Angeles News Group Endorsement: Mitt Romney for president {PASADENA STAR NEWS!}
PASADENA STAR NEWS ^ | 10/27/12 | Los Angeles News Group "Pasadena Star News"
Posted on October 28, 2012 6:11:08 PM EDT by Republic Rocker

Four years ago, as America faced serious trouble at home and abroad, this news organization embraced the need for bold change to a different brand of leadership and endorsed Barack Obama for president. That assessment of the depth of the nation's problems and the most promising solution was correct in 2008. Regrettably, it applies no less in 2012, after nearly a full term of Obama's administration. This is why the editorial board urges voters to choose Mitt Romney for president in the Nov. 6 election. He is the leader this country needs for the future.

Read more: http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/opinions/ci_21855603/endorsement-mitt-romney-president#ixzz2AdN26OTW

[BayGBM]

The NY Times

Barack Obama for Re-election
The economy is slowly recovering from the 2008 meltdown, and the country could suffer another recession if the wrong policies take hold. The United States is embroiled in unstable regions that could easily explode into full-blown disaster. An ideological assault from the right has started to undermine the vital health reform law passed in 2010. Those forces are eroding women’s access to health care, and their right to control their lives. Nearly 50 years after passage of the Civil Rights Act, all Americans’ rights are cheapened by the right wing’s determination to deny marriage benefits to a selected group of us. Astonishingly, even the very right to vote is being challenged.

That is the context for the Nov. 6 election, and as stark as it is, the choice is just as clear.

President Obama has shown a firm commitment to using government to help foster growth. He has formed sensible budget policies that are not dedicated to protecting the powerful, and has worked to save the social safety net to protect the powerless. Mr. Obama has impressive achievements despite the implacable wall of refusal erected by Congressional Republicans so intent on stopping him that they risked pushing the nation into depression, held its credit rating hostage, and hobbled economic recovery.

Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, has gotten this far with a guile that allows him to say whatever he thinks an audience wants to hear. But he has tied himself to the ultraconservative forces that control the Republican Party and embraced their policies, including reckless budget cuts and 30-year-old, discredited trickle-down ideas. Voters may still be confused about Mr. Romney’s true identity, but they know the Republican Party, and a Romney administration would reflect its agenda. Mr. Romney’s choice of Representative Paul Ryan as his running mate says volumes about that.

We have criticized individual policy choices that Mr. Obama has made over the last four years, and have been impatient with his unwillingness to throw himself into the political fight. But he has shaken off the hesitancy that cost him the first debate, and he approaches the election clearly ready for the partisan battles that would follow his victory.

We are confident he would challenge the Republicans in the “fiscal cliff” battle even if it meant calling their bluff, letting the Bush tax cuts expire and forcing them to confront the budget sequester they created. Electing Mr. Romney would eliminate any hope of deficit reduction that included increased revenues.

In the poisonous atmosphere of this campaign, it may be easy to overlook Mr. Obama’s many important achievements, including carrying out the economic stimulus, saving the auto industry, improving fuel efficiency standards, and making two very fine Supreme Court appointments.

Health Care
Mr. Obama has achieved the most sweeping health care reforms since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. The reform law takes a big step toward universal health coverage, a final piece in the social contract.

It was astonishing that Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Congress were able to get a bill past the Republican opposition. But the Republicans’ propagandistic distortions of the new law helped them wrest back control of the House, and they are determined now to repeal the law.

That would eliminate the many benefits the reform has already brought: allowing children under 26 to stay on their parents’ policies; lower drug costs for people on Medicare who are heavy users of prescription drugs; free immunizations, mammograms and contraceptives; a ban on lifetime limits on insurance payments. Insurance companies cannot deny coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. Starting in 2014, insurers must accept all applicants. Once fully in effect, the new law would start to control health care costs.

Mr. Romney has no plan for covering the uninsured beyond his callous assumption that they will use emergency rooms. He wants to use voucher programs to shift more Medicare costs to beneficiaries and block grants to shift more Medicaid costs to the states.

The Economy
Mr. Obama prevented another Great Depression. The economy was cratering when he took office in January 2009. By that June it was growing, and it has been ever since (although at a rate that disappoints everyone), thanks in large part to interventions Mr. Obama championed, like the $840 billion stimulus bill. Republicans say it failed, but it created and preserved 2.5 million jobs and prevented unemployment from reaching 12 percent. Poverty would have been much worse without the billions spent on Medicaid, food stamps and jobless benefits.

Last year, Mr. Obama introduced a jobs plan that included spending on school renovations, repair projects for roads and bridges, aid to states, and more. It was stymied by Republicans. Contrary to Mr. Romney’s claims, Mr. Obama has done good things for small businesses — like pushing through more tax write-offs for new equipment and temporary tax cuts for hiring the unemployed.

The Dodd-Frank financial regulation was an important milestone. It is still a work in progress, but it established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, initiated reform of the derivatives market, and imposed higher capital requirements for banks. Mr. Romney wants to repeal it.

If re-elected, Mr. Obama would be in position to shape the “grand bargain” that could finally combine stimulus like the jobs bill with long-term deficit reduction that includes letting the high-end Bush-era tax cuts expire. Stimulus should come first, and deficit reduction as the economy strengthens. Mr. Obama has not been as aggressive as we would have liked in addressing the housing crisis, but he has increased efforts in refinancing and loan modifications.

Mr. Romney’s economic plan, as much as we know about it, is regressive, relying on big tax cuts and deregulation. That kind of plan was not the answer after the financial crisis, and it will not create broad prosperity.

Foreign Affairs
Mr. Obama and his administration have been resolute in attacking Al Qaeda’s leadership, including the killing of Osama bin Laden. He has ended the war in Iraq. Mr. Romney, however, has said he would have insisted on leaving thousands of American soldiers there. He has surrounded himself with Bush administration neocons who helped to engineer the Iraq war, and adopted their militaristic talk in a way that makes a Romney administration’s foreign policies a frightening prospect.

Mr. Obama negotiated a much tougher regime of multilateral economic sanctions on Iran. Mr. Romney likes to say the president was ineffective on Iran, but at the final debate he agreed with Mr. Obama’s policies. Mr. Obama deserves credit for his handling of the Arab Spring. The killing goes on in Syria, but the administration is working to identify and support moderate insurgent forces there. At the last debate, Mr. Romney talked about funneling arms through Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which are funneling arms to jihadist groups.

Mr. Obama gathered international backing for airstrikes during the Libyan uprising, and kept American military forces in a background role. It was smart policy.

In the broadest terms, he introduced a measure of military restraint after the Bush years and helped repair America’s badly damaged reputation in many countries from the low levels to which it had sunk by 2008.

The Supreme Court
The future of the nation’s highest court hangs in the balance in this election — and along with it, reproductive freedom for American women and voting rights for all, to name just two issues. Whoever is president after the election will make at least one appointment to the court, and many more to federal appeals courts and district courts.

Mr. Obama, who appointed the impressive Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, understands how severely damaging conservative activism has been in areas like campaign spending. He would appoint justices and judges who understand that landmarks of equality like the Voting Rights Act must be defended against the steady attack from the right.

Mr. Romney’s campaign Web site says he will “nominate judges in the mold of Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito,” among the most conservative justices in the past 75 years. There is no doubt that he would appoint justices who would seek to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Civil Rights
The extraordinary fact of Mr. Obama’s 2008 election did not usher in a new post-racial era. In fact, the steady undercurrent of racism in national politics is truly disturbing. Mr. Obama, however, has reversed Bush administration policies that chipped away at minorities’ voting rights and has fought laws, like the ones in Arizona, that seek to turn undocumented immigrants into a class of criminals.

The military’s odious “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule was finally legislated out of existence, under the Obama administration’s leadership. There are still big hurdles to equality to be brought down, including the Defense of Marriage Act, the outrageous federal law that undermines the rights of gay men and lesbians, even in states that recognize those rights.

Though it took Mr. Obama some time to do it, he overcame his hesitation about same-sex marriage and declared his support. That support has helped spur marriage-equality movements around the country. His Justice Department has also stopped defending the Defense of Marriage Act against constitutional challenges.

Mr. Romney opposes same-sex marriage and supports the federal act, which not only denies federal benefits and recognition to same-sex couples but allows states to ignore marriages made in other states. His campaign declared that Mr. Romney would not object if states also banned adoption by same-sex couples and restricted their rights to hospital visitation and other privileges.

Mr. Romney has been careful to avoid the efforts of some Republicans to criminalize abortion even in the case of women who had been raped, including by family members. He says he is not opposed to contraception, but he has promised to deny federal money to Planned Parenthood, on which millions of women depend for family planning.

For these and many other reasons, we enthusiastically endorse President Barack Obama for a second term, and express the hope that his victory will be accompanied by a new Congress willing to work for policies that Americans need.

[SOMEPARTS]

Totally shocked the Columbus Dispatch has a pro-Romney write up.

[BayGBM]

Bloomberg Endorses Obama, Citing Climate Change
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ

In a surprise announcement, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Thursday that Hurricane Sandy had reshaped his thinking about the presidential campaign and that as a result he was endorsing President Obama.

Mr. Bloomberg, a political independent in his third term leading New York City, has been sharply critical of both Mr. Obama, a Democrat, and Mitt Romney, the president’s Republican rival, saying that both men have failed to candidly confront the problems afflicting the nation. But he said he had decided over the past several days that Mr. Obama was the best candidate to tackle the global climate change that the mayor believes contributed to the violent storm, which took the lives of at least 38 New Yorkers and caused billions of dollars in damage.

“The devastation that Hurricane Sandy brought to New York City and much of the Northeast — in lost lives, lost homes and lost business — brought the stakes of next Tuesday’s presidential election into sharp relief,” Mr. Bloomberg wrote in an editorial for Bloomberg View.

“Our climate is changing,” he wrote. “And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it may be — given the devastation it is wreaking — should be enough to compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.”

Mr. Bloomberg’s announcement is another indication that Hurricane Sandy has influenced the presidential campaign. The storm, and the destruction it left in its wake, has dominated news coverage, transfixing the nation and prompting the candidates to halt their campaigning briefly.

More than that, it appears to have given a new level of urgency to a central issue in the presidential campaign: the appropriate size and role of government.

As the Federal Emergency Management Agency began undertaking relief efforts across the Northeast, Mr. Romney found himself in the tough position of having to clarify a statement he made last year in which he appeared to back giving the states a larger share of the federal government’s role in disaster response.

But Mr. Bloomberg’s endorsement was largely unexpected. For months, the Obama and Romney campaigns have sought the mayor’s endorsement, in large part because they believe he could influence independent voters around the country.

Mr. Bloomberg has steadfastly withheld his support, largely because he had grown frustrated with the tone and substance of the presidential campaign – recently deriding as “gibberish” the answers that Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney gave during a debate to a question about an assault weapons ban. He has expressed disappointment with Mr. Obama’s performance over the past few years, and concern about what he has described as Mr. Romney’s shifts in views over time.

In announcing his endorsement, Mr. Bloomberg listed the various steps Mr. Obama had taken over the last four years to confront the issue of climate change, including pushing regulations that seek to curtail emissions from cars and power plants. But the mayor cited other reasons for endorsing Mr. Obama, including the president’s support for abortion rights and for same-sex couples, two high-priority issues for the mayor.

At the same time, Mr. Bloomberg said he might have endorsed Mr. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, except for the fact that the Republican had abandoned positions he once publicly held.

“In the past he has taken sensible positions on immigration, illegal guns, abortion rights and health care – but he has reversed course on all of them, and is even running against the very health care model he signed into law in Massachusetts,” the mayor said of Mr. Romney.

Mr. Bloomberg did not endorse a presidential candidate in 2008, when Mr. Obama ran against Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona.

Even in his endorsement, the mayor continued to express criticism of the president. He said that Mr. Obama had fallen short of his 2008 campaign promise to be a problem-solver and consensus builder, noting that he “devoted little time” to creating a coalition of centrists in Washington who could find common ground on important issues like illegal guns, immigration, tax reform and deficit reduction.

“Rather than uniting the country around a message of shared sacrifice,” Mr. Bloomberg said of Mr. Obama, “he engaged in partisan attacks and has embraced a divisive populist agenda focused more on redistributing income than creating it.”

In a statement, Mr. Obama said he was “honored to have Mayor Bloomberg’s endorsement.” The president acknowledged Mr. Bloomberg’s chief concern, saying climate change was “a threat to our children’s future, and we owe it to them to do something about it.”

“While we may not agree on every issue,” the president added, “Mayor Bloomberg and I agree on the most important issues of our time.”

And, alluding to the damage from the hurricane, Mr. Obama said: “He has my continued commitment that this country will stand by New York in its time of need. And New Yorkers have my word that we will recover, we will rebuild, and we will come back stronger.”

The endorsement is the latest effort by Mr. Bloomberg to affect the national political debate as he nears the twilight of his tenure in City Hall.

Last month, the mayor announced that he was creating his own “super PAC” to support candidates from either party, as well as independents, who he believed are devoted to his brand of nonideological problem solving, and who supported same-sex marriage, tougher gun laws or school reform. A billionaire, Mr. Bloomberg said he would spend from $10 million to $15 million of his money in highly competitive state, local and Congressional races.