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WASHINGTON: The Republican candidates seeking to replace US President Barack Obama face off Saturday in their first televised debate on foreign policy and are set to slam his handling of world affairs. The issue can define a presidency but is unlikely to decide the November 2012 elections: US voters are focused foremost on the sour economy, and Obama earns far higher marks on terrorism, Afghanistan and Iraq than on unemployment. That won't stop Republicans from slamming the president on those issues, his handling of Iran's suspect nuclear program, his often tense relations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or other...

Las Vegas-The slot machines jangle away with the promise of sudden riches, but many visitors to a job fair at a second-tier casino here are hoping merely for a minimum-wage job to snap their losing streak. The grim economy hasn't been the only disappointment of the past several years for those hoping to find work with the limousine companies, insurance agencies and home healthcare providers that have set up shop at this career fair. Ask Kimberly Howard who she voted for in 2008, and she glances sideways before confiding what appears to be a shameful secret. "Obama," she mutters. It's...

Testing a re-election theme, President Barack Obama is telling donors during a fundraising rich tour of three western states that the country is suffering from an economic crisis and from a political crisis. "People are crying out for action," he says. Pointing to elements of his $447 billion jobs plan rejected by Republican lawmakers, Obama said they would likely linger as campaign issues in 2012. "This is the fight that we're going to have right now, and I suspect this is the fight that we're going to have to have over the next year," Obama told about 240 donors at...

Wednesday’s so-called Twitter town hall meeting conducted by President Barack Obama was certainly unprecedented. But was it a sign of trouble at Obama reelection headquarters in Chicago? Over the past few weeks, Democrats in Washington, D.C., have been driving the message of “shared sacrificed” as it pertains to the federal government’s fiscal policy going forward in dealing with record deficit and debt issues. But in an appearance on Wednesday’s “The Laura Ingraham Show,” National Journal congressional correspondent Major Garrett explained there were some unresolved questions, especially when it comes to the question of what Americans are getting for their sacrifice....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama said on Sunday the U.S. economy was expanding but not at a robust enough pace and there was no "magic bullet" that will fix its problems. Obama said in an NBC interview that the batch of grim economic data over the past few weeks was something his administration had anticipated. ... "The economy is still growing, but it's not growing as fast as it needs to," Obama told NBC in the interview in New Orleans, where he stopped after a vacation on the Massachusetts island of Martha's Vineyard. Obama faces a dilemma in trying...

The U.S. economy faces even more difficult times ahead with chronic high unemployment rates and slow manufacturing growth hurting the recovery, Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf said on Thursday. The U.S. unemployment rate will not fall to around 5.0 percent until 2014, Elmendorf wrote in his blog about CBO's new economic and budget outlook. Without significant changes in U.S. tax and spending laws, the U.S. government will struggle to dig its way out of a fiscal deficit hole, the CBO said, and this may influence the outcome of the November 2 midterm congressional elections.

Utah Sen. Bob Bennett’s defeat Saturday underscored what many Republicans already know to be true: Their 2008 “yes” vote for the Troubled Asset Relief Program is no asset to their campaigns. The Wall Street bailout has turned into a millstone for many Republicans who voted for the $700 billion fund. The vote is proving to be a crushing burden in GOP primaries for those carrying it. Nowhere was it clearer than in Utah, where, as Bennett pleaded Saturday for the chance to serve a fourth term, a smattering of delegates at the Utah Republican convention serenaded him with the chant...

How the tables have turned. In September 2008, when GOP presidential nominee John McCain said "the fundamentals of our economy are strong," unemployment was 6.1 percent, the credit crunch had yet to reach the point that prompted President George W. Bush to propose a bailout, and Team Obama proclaimed that an out-of-touch McCain "just doesn't get it" on the economy. Now with unemployment at 8.1 percent, the $700 billion-plus Bush bailout has been followed by the $787 billion Obama stimulus package, and some D.C. Democrats already are arguing for another stimulus package because the first Obama stimulus bill didn't do...

TERRY GARDNER, a legal secretary in California, returned home from work recently to find two police officers waiting. They said her brother had told them he thought she might be having a breakdown because she had shaved her head. Ms. Gardner, 50, said in a telephone interview that she had told the officers that she was fine and had shaved her head for an advertising campaign by Air New Zealand, which had hired her to display a temporary tattoo. She turned around and showed them the message, written in henna on the back of her head: “Need A Change? Head...

“This much is clear: Barack Obama and William Ayers were friends before that relationship became a political embarrassment for the Illinois Senator–Obama did pal around with a terrorist. According to his campaign, Barack Obama no longer believes Ayers has been rehabilitated. And William Ayers did target his own country. So what part of Governor’s Palin’s remarks are ‘beyond the pale.’ Perhaps Mr. Plouffe does not like Governor Palin’s inference that Barack Obama palled around with Ayers because Barack Obama has a different view of America than most of us. Yet the Obama campaign has offered no alternate explanation–they have not...

I am baffled why it is racist to inquire about the racist Rev. Wright when Obama himself not so long ago boasted of the value of his friendship with Wright, and sympathetic journalists saw the radical Wright as a sort of proof of Obama's leftwing fides. And while we are battered by economic news, and Wright becomes a "distraction", that defensive argument is largely used out of embarrassment, since at one time most in the Obama circle once saw Wright, in the mode of the Ayers friendship and the ACORN patronage, as a definite plus. Only when he became a...

The media is ferociously attacking the McCain campaign’s new Web-based ad linking Barack Obama and Bill Ayers. The ad is very short: Obama's blind ambition. When convenient, he worked with terrorist Bill Ayers. When discovered, he lied. Obama. Blind ambition. Bad judgment. Congressional liberals fought for risky subprime loans. Congressional liberals fought against more regulation. Then, the housing market collapsed costing you billions. In crisis, we need leadership, not bad judgment. A second longer ad released on the Web at the same time continues this point and argues: Barack Obama and Bill Ayers, friends. They have worked together for years,...

To listen to the Obama spin-masters you’d think that the McCain campaign’s questioning of their candidate’s association with unrepentant terrorist bomber Bill Ayers is a smear tactic falsely elevating a casual relationship between the two men into one where they worked together in promoting Ayers’ far-left goals. Their reaction to the continuing revelations that disprove that claim is one of sheer panic – and they have a good reason to be scared witless that any in-depth probe of what went on between the two comrades will reveal Obama’s true colors – all of them dark red!

If the election for President and Vice President were held today and you had to make a choice for whom would you vote?

Does Barack Obama have Kenyan citizenship? No. He held both U.S. and Kenyan citizenship as a child, but lost his Kenyan citizenship automatically on his 21st birthday.

McCain: Ayers will come up in debate By: Andy Barr October 14, 2008 11:05 AM EST John McCain said Tuesday that Barack Obama is “probably ensured” that his association with 1960s radical William Ayers will come up in Wednesday’s debate. “I was astonished to hear him say that he was surprised that I didn’t have the guts” to bring up Ayers, McCain said on KMOX, a St. Louis radio station. “I think he is probably ensured that it will come up this time.” McCain was responding to Obama’s charge last week that the Arizona senator was willing to make attacks...

In another piece of bad news for the McCain campaign, Sen. Barack Obama has taken a solid lead in four large battleground states, a new set of polls indicates. Sen. Obama has double-digit leads in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. He leads by a slightly smaller margin in Colorado, according to new Quinnipiac University polls conducted in conjunction with The Wall Street Journal and Washingtonpost.com. His prospects have improved in the wake of two debates with Sen. John McCain, and are enhanced by the fact that the electorate that views him as better prepared to deal with the economy. Sen. Obama...

Urgent request to all Freepers to help Stanley Kurtz gain access to embargoed Chicago Annenberg Challenge documents. Documents pertaining to Barack Obama's unknown relationship with William Ayers, unrepentant terrorist.

With Election Day now in sight, John McCain and Sarah Palin need to turn up the heat. Frustrated conservatives are waiting for some spirit and energy. This race is far from over. In fact, these final three weeks are the most critical of the campaign. What the McCain/Palin ticket needs to do is to genuinely address and capitalize on the tremendous level of disgust, distrust and dissatisfaction of the American people towards our government. As I wrote in my new book “Ted, White and Blue,” a May 20, 2008 Rasmussen poll found that 62% of the American public support fewer...

Leftist bloggers in an effort to denounce growing Internet claims that Barack Obama was a full-fledged member of the DSA & ACORN founded New Party, have claimed that uncovered New Party press releases were misleading. In the effort to denounce the claims on sites such as Daily Kos, fringe left sites have denounced the claims by pointing to the claims in the press releases that Danny Davis was a prominent member of the New Party. The argument by the fringe left, in an effort to suppress the story, is simply that Davis is a member of the Democratic Party and...