US Election 2012

September 17th, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

Over the next 50 days, the Telegraph will be checking in regularly with
the people of Dunkirk,
Ohio, to get a view from the ground as the race for the White House unfolds.

We will hear what one small town in the American heartland makes of the three
presidential debates, whether the barrage of attack ads has any impact and
if either candidate can tell a story to which they can relate. From
the town mayor to the struggling young family, the people of Dunkirk
will offer a new perspective on the election the whole world is watching.

Our first video from Dunkirk,
an interview with Pastor Gregg King.

17.55 (12.55) On a completely unrelated note: Fox Friends invited
a struggling recent graduate onto their show this morning to describe why he
was no longer supporting Obama. The interviewee turned
out to be an amateur comedian, who wasn’t entirely obliging to Fox’s Gretchen
Carlson. Asked why he was changing his vote, he replied that he met
Obama in third grade but was now supporting Romney because he lost a bet.

17.48 (12.48) We’re into the trade complaint section of his speech now:

17.40 (12.40) Obama is reprising his tax cuts riff from Charlotte,
where mockingly describes “tax breaks for millionaires” as
the Republicans’ only policy solution.

Tax cuts in good times. Tax cuts in bad times. Tax cuts when we’re at
peace. Tax cuts when we’re at war. You want to make a restaurant reservation
or book a flight? You don’t need a new iPhone, try a tax cut. Want to drop a
few extra pounds? Try a tax cut. They’ve got one answer for everything. I’ve
cut taxes too – for folks who need it. We’re not going back to trickledown.
We’re not going back to top-down-your-on-your-own economics.

17.30 (12.30) On Air Force One en route to Ohio, Josh Earnest,
Obama’s deputy press secretary, argued that the timing of the China trade
complaint was not political, saying it had been in the works for months and
that the White House has a long record of bringing complaints against China.
“The president doesn’t believe that we should delay these kinds of important
actions merely because we’re in the middle of a campaign,” he
says. Obama is about to take the stage in Cincinnati.

17.15 (12.15) The Romney campaign has finished its conference call
about its new direction, promising that we’ll see more detail about the
Republican’s policies in the coming days and weeks. “We do think the
timing is right at this moment to reinforce more specifics,” said Ed
Gillespie. However, he also said that we’re not going to see a raft of
new policies being announced, which would have suggested a campaign in total
panic.

Team Romney also released this video of Mitt speaking almost directly to
camera as he makes an urgent case for turning around the nation’s economic
policy.

–

16.15 (11.15) John McCain, the former presidential candidate and a
Republican with whom Democrats have long been able to do business, is
calling for talks to avoid the “sequestration” – a series of
brutal and budget cuts that will automatically begin early next year if
politicians are unable to reach a deal on spending.

Chief among the Republican concerns are the $55 billion slated to be cut from
the defence budget next year if no deal is made.

16.00 (11.00) The Obama campaign has released excerpts of the nakedly
political announcement the President is going to make on the China trade
complaint. Here’s a flavour:

Now, I understand my opponent has been running around Ohio claiming he’s
going to roll up his sleeves and take the fight to China. But here’s the
thing: his experience has been owning companies that were called ‘pioneers’
in the business of outsourcing jobs to countries like China. Pioneers! Ohio,
you can’t stand up to China when all you’ve done is send them our jobs.

“You can talk a good game, or you can play one – and my experience has been
waking up every single day doing everything I can to give American workers a
fair shot in the global economy. When other countries don’t play by the
rules, we’ve done something about it. We’ve brought more trade cases against
China in one term than the previous administration did in two – and we’ve
won. When Governor Romney said stopping an unfair surge in Chinese tires
would be bad for our workers, we did it anyway – and we got over 1,000
Americans back to work.

15.10 (10.10) This is an ad by Citizens Against Government Waste,
a conservative group that was aggressively involved in the 2010 mid-term
elections that propelled the Tea Party into Congress. Although the ad is two
years old it pretty much captures how China is viewed by many on the Right –
a menace that will one day overwhelm the United States if American doesn’t
return to its first principles.

15.00 (10.00) The other theme of the day is China, the rising
superpower that sometimes looms like a bogeyman over this election. Obama is
due to travel to Ohio today, an industrial state and a key election
battleground, today where he will announce he’s filing a
trade complaint against China’s subsidies for its domestic car industry.
It’s a move designed to show he’s sticking up for American workers and industries
and unafraid to stand up to the dragon of the East.

But as the Romney camp rightly points out, it’s a pretty shameless bit of
electioneering. Romney says this:

President Obama has spent 43 months failing to confront China’s unfair
trade practices. Campaign-season trade cases may sound good on the stump,
but it is too little, too late for American businesses and middle-class
families. President Obama’s credibility on this issue has long since
vanished. I will not wait until the last months of my presidency to stand up
to China, or do so only when votes are at stake

14.50 (09.50) We’re expecting a conference call with Ed Gillespie,
a senior Romney adviser, at 11am EST (4pm BST) where he will announce that
the campaign is broadening its focus beyond the narrow scope of the economy
and will challenge Obama on all fronts – from foreign policy, to China, to
the state of politics – under the enveloping theme of “status quo vs
change”.

It’s a concession that the original strategy of blaming Obama for the weak
economy and waiting for the voters to boot him out is not going to work.

14.40 (09.40) The big narrative of the day is the Romney camp
appearing turning to inward on itself after a difficult couple of weeks.
Romney emerged from the Republican convention with no “bounce” in
the polls, was unable to capitalise on a bad
August jobs report, and was widely criticised for his partisan
response to the deaths of four Americans in Libya last week.

Last night Politico published
a long story where several Romney aides and senior Republicans
dumped on the campaign’s leadership and especially on Stuart Stevens, Mitt’s
idiosyncratic chief strategist. They key revelation in the story was the
Stevens scrapped two versions of Romney’s acceptance speech in Tampa,
preferring instead to pen his own version – which sank largely without
notice and was criticised for failing to mention the troops or the war in
Afghanistan.

But more than any single factual nugget, the story captured a sense of
discontent bordering on panic at the Romney camp’s Boston headquarters.
Here’s a sample:

Romney’s convention stumbles have provoked weeks of public griping and
internal sniping about not only Romney but also his mercurial campaign muse,
Stevens. Viewed warily by conservatives, known for his impulsiveness and
described by a colleague as a “tortured artist,” Stevens has become the
leading staff scapegoat for a campaign that suddenly is behind in a race
that had been expected to stay neck and neck through Nov. 6.

This article is based on accounts from Romney aides, advisers and friends,
most of whom refused to speak on the record because they were recounting
private discussions and offering direct criticism of the candidate and his
staff, Stevens in particular.

14.30 (09.30) Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the US
Election at Telegraph.co.uk.

US election 2012: September 11 – as it happened

Campaign
trail: September 10 as it happened

Democratic
National Convention – September 04 as it happened

Democratic
National Convention – September 03 as it happened

Republican
National Convention – August 30 as it happened

Republican National Convention – August 29 as it
happened

Republican
National Convention: August 28 as it happened