President Barack Obama will take to the podium at the Democratic National Convention to try to reinvigorate an electorate that has grown weary and say they face the “clearest choice” in a generation.

Mr. Obama, according to excerpts released ahead of his speech, will say that in the coming years the country faces tough challenges on everything from energy policy to war. “But when all is said and done—when you pick up that ballot to vote—you will face the clearest choice of any time in a generation,” he will say.

“I won’t pretend the path I’m offering is quick or easy,” Mr. Obama will say. He will call on the country to rally around a set of goals on manufacturing, education and his plan to grow the economy and remind people that despite the country’s problems, the U.S. can overcome them. Read more →

The Obama administration is stepping up measures against Iran, both to force Tehran to negotiate over its nuclear program and to mute Israeli leadership’s ongoing drumbeat for a military strike against Iran.

According to a New York Times report yesterday, the US is set to hold a large-scale minesweeping naval exercise later this month in the Persian Gulf, and is accelerating efforts to complete a new radar system in Qatar that, in combination with existing radar in Turkey and Israel, would create broad antimissile coverage around and against Iran. The programs are meant to that closing the Gulf and developing nuclear weapons would be largely futile.

The Times adds that the US is also reluctantly considering previously rejected covert action against Iran, including air strikes on power plants and other sites that could impact Iranian civilian populations, as well as a “clandestine” strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, much like the strike Israel launched against Syria in 2007.

In his warm-up for the Democratic National Convention, President Barack Obama is tangling with a couple of rivals, only one named Mitt. The other is voter apathy, especially among the young.

Obama’s pre-convention tour of battleground states has been heavy on college crowds, where he’s implored supporters to register and vote by painting the choice in stark terms: It’s his education tax credits versus Mitt Romney’s tax breaks for the rich; his “Obamacare” versus “Romney doesn’t care,” his “forward” versus “same old.”

And when those crowds boo the references to Romney, Obama tells them to convert that negative energy into votes Election Day.

Obama addresses a United Auto Workers Labor Day rally in Toledo on Monday before getting his first look at the aftermath of Hurricane Isaac in a stricken parish outside New Orleans. He’s to meet emergency personnel who’ve been laboring since the storm hit last week to restore power and tend thousands of evacuees from flooded lands.

In Boulder, Colo., on Sunday, Obama warned a college crowd that “the other side is going to spend more money than we’ve ever seen in our lives, with an avalanche of attack ads and insults and making stuff up, just making stuff up.”

Big crowds cheered both of the presidential candidates on Saturday as Mitt Romney began a cross-country campaign swing here testing his momentum coming out of the Republican convention, and President Obama started his own tour heading into his convention this week.

A line of people that stretched for five city blocks awaited Mr. Romney as his motorcade pulled into Union Terminal here.

And inside there were so many people that the campaign had to redirect a few hundred of them into a small overflow room, where they crammed in shoulder to shoulder.

Later, thousands in Jacksonville, Fla., filled a courtyard and gave Mr. Romney and his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, a spirited reception.

Mr. Romney has often failed to spark much of a connection with his audiences, and along the campaign trail enthusiasm has sometimes been in short supply.

But inside a soaring Art Deco-style rotunda here, the candidate, joined by John A. Boehner, the speaker of the House, and Senator Rob Portman, delivered a vigorous and sharply focused speech — complete with fresh punch lines — that sent the audience into earsplitting roars.

Echoing a criticism of the president that he has been making more powerfully lately, Mr. Romney denounced Mr. Obama’s first term as one of betrayed promises and failed leadership.

Speaking to the Republican National Convention, Ayotte, a first-term senator from New Hampshire, contrasted the record of President Obama and GOP nominee Mitt Romney. Obama came up short across the board, including experience running a very, very small business.

“In both the private sector and as governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney always asked, ‘How can I help small businesses grow, innovate and compete?’ It is the right question and it’s a question that this administration never thinks to ask.

“But why should we be surprised? President Obama has never even run a lemonade stand. And you know what? It shows.”

Her speech was devoted to the theme of the evening — in fact, the theme of the Romney campaign: “We did build it!” The campaign has seized on Obama’s remarks in Virginia recently that business owners rely on government help in the form of roads, bridges and schools, and if they started a business, “You didn’t build that.” Republicans have interpreted that as a slap at business owners, suggesting they aren’t responsible for their own success.

In fact, Obama’s own voice echoed through the hall more than once during the evening, repeating those words and prompting lusty boos.

Ayotte spoke about her own husband’s landscaping and snow-plowing business, and complained that small-business owners have been burdened by an increase in regulation under Obama.

The moderate earthquake was also felt in Yuma. Several residents posted their experiences on the Yuma Sun Facebook page.

Christina Urquidez Figueroa felt the couch shake. “My two pit bulls and two Chihuahuas were barking (and) acting crazy.”

“I thought I was imagining it,” Debbie Brewer Escamilla said. “Sitting in my chair, felt like it was swaying side to side, lightly.”

Cristal Rodriguez was playing with her son when her mom yelled, “Earthquake!”

“I didn’t feel it but (the) blinds were shaking,” she noted.

The U.S. Geological Survey recorded one of the biggest tremors at 1:58 p.m. It had a magnitude of 5.5 on the Richter scale and hit two miles south-southwest of Brawley and 11 miles north of El Centro. It originated 5.5 miles below the surface of the ground.

An earlier quake of magnitude 5.3 struck at 12:31 p.m. three miles northwest of Brawley and 16 miles north of El Centro. It had a depth of 5.8 miles, according to the USGS.

President Barack Obama said Mitt Romney has locked himself into “extreme positions” on economic and social issues and would surely impose them if elected, trying to discredit his Republican rival at the biggest political moment of his life.
In an interview with The Associated Press just before the GOP convention, Obama said Romney lacks serious ideas, refuses to “own up” to the responsibilities of what it takes to be president, and deals in factually dishonest arguments that could soon haunt him in face-to-face debates.
Obama also offered a glimpse of how he would govern in a second term of divided government, insisting that the forces of the election would help break Washington’s stalemate. He said he would be willing to make a range of compromises with Republicans, confident there are some who would rather make deals than remain part of “one of the least productive Congresses in American history.”
Obama set up a contrast between Romney, whom he cast as an extremist pushing staunchly conservative policies, and himself, by saying he would work across party lines.
Obama depicted his opponent as having accumulated ideas far outside the mainstream with no room to turn back. “He has signed up for positions, extreme positions, that are very consistent with positions that a number of House Republicans have taken,” Obama said. “And whether he actually believes in those or not, I have no doubt that he would carry forward some of the things that he’s talked about.”