Jerome R. Corsi's Blog, page 317

The GOP's not-so-secret weapon on fiscal cliff

WASHINGTON – The only way to prevent the Obama administration from blaming Republicans in the fiscal cliff debate is to demand transparency by bringing in television cameras, says noted tax activist Grover Norquist.

What advice would Norquist give House Speaker John Boehner?

“Bring in C-SPAN and televise the negotiations,” Norquist, president and founder of Americans for Tax Reform told WND in an exclusive interview. “It’s the best way to expose the White House plan to build public pressure on Republicans to force House Speaker John Boehner to cave into at the eleventh hour to raise income-tax rates on the wealthiest Americans.

Norquist advised that Congressional Republicans should use the fiscal cliff crisis as an opportunity to make a vocal demand that President Obama must live up to his often repeated promise to make government transparent by opening up administration tax debates with Congress to C-SPAN cameras.

“The fiscal cliff is not a one-time crisis,” Norquist warned. “If Republicans in Congress play their cards right, we are facing four years of unpleasantness for Obama.

Norquist explained that immediately following the fiscal cliff argument over raising federal income-tax rates on the wealthiest Americans, there will be a renewed debate in Congress over raising the federal debt-ceiling level.

Then in March and April, the White House will have to return to Congress for continuing resolutions to keep the government functioning.

Without an annual budget, there is no way the Obama administration can keep the federal government operating unless Congress passes continuing resolutions.

“The continuing resolution battle is every bit as exciting a leverage point to control federal spending as is the debate over the federal debt ceiling,” Norquist argued.

“Two years ago, the Republicans in Congress passed continuing resolutions for two or three weeks at a time and made Obama pay for every continuing resolution with a small savings. Obama couldn’t shut the federal government down over $3 or $4 billion over a cut he already agreed to make, and the Republicans were moving down the field three yards at a time, and there’s nothing wrong with winning slowly.”

The strategy of passing a series of short-term continuing resolutions would allow the Republicans to negotiate in exchange a series of spending cuts that would provide victories for the GOP in Congress.

“If the Obama administration would implement a Simpson-Bowles reform that retiring federal employees should not get replaced by hiring a new employee, that would result in a quantifiable savings in federal spending that the Republicans in Congress,” Norquist pointed out.

“Forcing upon the administration reform measures that Obama has opposed in the past, the Republicans can get credit by claiming Republicans in Congress imposed by their will spending the president otherwise never would have made.”

WND has previously reported Norquist’s concern that the White House push to utilize the fiscal cliff crisis as an opportunity to force the Republicans to raise income-tax rates on the wealthiest Americans would be followed by Democratic efforts to pass a massive energy tax, as well as a value-added tax, or VAT, on the U.S. economy.

Norquist predicted Obama would push the fiscal cliff down to the wire.

“There is every reason to believe that Obama as a deliberate strategy wants to push the crisis over the fiscal cliff,” he speculated.

“Obama would like to be able to blame Republicans for the lousy economy that is already baked into the cake because of Obama administration regulations and tax increases the Obama administration has already passed through measures like Obamacare.”

But Norquist insisted the pressure on Boehner to cave only mounts if Obama manages to convince the American public that it’s the Republicans’ fault.

“That’s why I’m an advocate of putting the tax negotiations on C-SPAN,” Norquist insisted. “Otherwise the Obama administration and their friends in the mainstream media will work together in secret to write the narrative of the fiscal cliff debate that says the Republicans deserve the blame for a bad economy.”

Documents: Al-Qaida wielding power in Libya

WASHINGTON – Contrary to Obama administration claims, al-Qaida is alive and well, according to credible documents provided to WND by a group of anti al-Qaida Libyans in exile.

The documents indicate top-level al-Qaida operatives are functioning with impunity in Libya under a NATO-established provisional government, contrary to claims the Obama administration made even after the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

Working with Arabic-speaking former Muslim Brotherhood member Walid Shoebat, WND has examined an array of records obtained by the Libyan expatriates from top-level sources inside the Libyan government.

The purloined papers include passports of al-Qaida operatives and identification papers of terrorists from many nations, including Chad, Egypt and Pakistan, enabling them to enter Libya safely under what they called “government-appointed al-Qaida leaders.”

Shoebat, in coordination with WND, has turned over to the National Center for Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence documents obtained from the expatriate Libyans that show evidence of bribes and weapons-dealing by top-level officials of the Libyan provisional government. The documents also include copies of bank transactions showing the siphoning of funds to al-Qaida operatives in a pattern that suggests the Libyan provisional government functions subordinate to al-Qaida directives.

Abdul Wahhab Hassan Qayad, right; his deceased brother Yahya al-Libi, left

The Libyan expatriate sources have told WND the Sept. 11 attack on Stevens in Benghazi was an al-Qaida-organized terrorist strike designed to seek vengeance for U.S. drone strike in June that destroyed his vehicle and killed Abu Yahya al-Libi at a militant compound in North Waziristan, Pakistan, that left 15 dead.

According to the Libyan expatriates, Libi’s brother, Abdul Wahhab Hassan Qayad, now works in the Libyan Interior Ministry in charge of Border Control and Strategic Institutions. The position allows him to arrange open border passage for al-Qaida operatives, facilitating not only the flow of terrorists into Libya, but also al-Qaida efforts to transport terrorists and weapons into Syria from Libya via Turkey.

Libyan Islamic jihadistAbdul Hakim Belhaj

Abdul Hakim Belhaj is the al-Qaida operative that the Libyan expatriates claim was the principal organizer who directed the Sept. 11 terrorist attack in Benghazi. Financing, they say, was provided by Mohammad Abdullah Aqil, the wealthy owner of a Mercedes car dealership in Tripoli that the Libyan expatriates name as the principal funder of al-Qaida in Libya.

Belhaj broke his silence on Radio Darnah on the Samir Shalwi program, one day after Stevens was killed, proclaiming:

I am indeed a member of the fighting in Jemmah Islamiyah; I’m proud of it; I will not deny that. For this, I have spent the best years of my life in the prisons, under torture and I’m still a member of this group. I will not give up on its edicts.

Everyone must know this in the West, before the East. I’ve committed Jihad operations in all parts of the globe from Morrocco to Yemen to Somalia to Algeria, even to Afghanistan and Pakistan. I give great respect to Sheik Ayman al-Zawahri and to the first teacher, Abu Musaab al-Zarkawi. I was saddened when Hassan al-Qaidi in Pakistan was martyred.

Me and my brothers Sheik Khalid al-Sharif, Sheik Al-Mahdi, Al-Haradi, Sheik Hassem, Baher, Abdul Rauf, Karah have formed a committee in Tripoli and we will not allow any foreigner, no matter who he is, to dictate what we do.

We give thanks to the Mujahed, Sheik Ismail al-Salabi, for his daring proclamation to the Darnah television station, and we tell him that we are with you in every word you spoke, that there is no place for America, Great Britain and all the West in Libya. Libya is a nation of Islam and Jihad.

The light of Islam will shine forth from it despite the noses of everyone. The weapons are here and the Mujahedeen from every corner of the earth are here with us and we have all the weaponry – that was prohibited before – with us now. We will not hesitate to use it against anyone who touches the land of Libya and that is the end of this discussion.

Shoebat believes the weapons Belhaj discussed appear to be the same weapons President Obama referenced when signing in March a “presidential finding” authorizing the CIA to conduct secret operations to support rebel forces then seeking to oust Libyan leader. The weapons possibly included as many as 20,000 surface-to-air missiles that were stolen from unguarded military warehouses and remain missing.

Shoebat concludes that the classified documents released by the Libyan expatriates “reveal that Belhaj actually controls most of the Libyan government, which are puppets under the control of the Islamists.”

“The Obama administration is knowingly supporting al-Qaida control in Libya and North Africa,” he says.

Several documents released to WND by the Libyan expatriates indicate Belhaj received funding from the provisional government currently ruling Libya to support rebel activity in Syria, supplementing funding Belhaj received from Qatar and Saudi Arabia for the same purpose.

Belhaj, a Libyan terrorist allied with the anti-Gadhafi Libyan Islamic Fighting Group exiled in Afghanistan in 1988, was arrested in 2004 at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia and transferred to Bangkok, where he was placed under the custody of the CIA. He ultimately was handed over to the Gadhafi regime in 2004, only to be released from a Libyan prison by Gadhafi in a 2010 attempt to reconcile with Islamic radicals and retain power.

A fake passport was created for Belhaj that the Libyan expatriates provided WND, further documenting his tie to the leadership in Libya.

Libyan fake passport for Abdul Hakim Belhaj

Among the documents released to WND was a letter in which Belhaj appealed to the Turkish government to return to him 16 kilos of gold the Turks seized when a Belhaj runner was making a connecting flight through Istanbul Airport to Qatar to fund Jihadists.

According to Shoebat, credible sources report the Turkish government ultimately returned the gold that successfully arrived in Qatar and was used ultimately to fund rebels in Syria.

Coming: '$3 trillion tax increase on middle class'

WASHINGTON – Getting Republicans to agree to a tax increase on “the rich” is not the ultimate aim of the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress, says noted tax activist Grover Norquist.

“This is just the first act of a two- or three-act play,” Norquist said in an exclusive interview with WND.

Norquist, president and founder of Americans for Tax Reform, said the first act “is to get congressional Republicans to put their fingerprints on what amounts to a minor tax increase.”

“After raising taxes on the rich a little bit, the Democrats will come back for serious tax revenue,” he said.

“In acts two and three, the Democrats will come back for the real money – an energy tax and a value-added tax that will impact everybody, especially the middle class.”

Norquist insisted Democrats in Congress and the establishment press are playing an elaborate game designed to blame Republicans for budget deficits and keep serious discussion of spending cuts and entitlement reform off the table.

“Congressional Democrats know raising taxes on the rich will not produce enough tax revenue to reduce significantly the trillion-dollar annual budget deficits being run by the Obama White House,” he said.

“The reason the Democrats scream ‘tax the rich, tax the rich,’ is because they are going to pivot very soon to place a 3 trillion-dollar tax increase on the middle class, and they want ringing in the public’s ears that there wouldn’t have had to do this if the Republicans in Congress had acted right away to place a decent size tax on the rich.”

Norquist believes the Democrat strategy risks a tax revolt.

“The size of Tea Party Two is going to dwarf Tea Party One,” he predicted.

Norquist contends Obama is “overstating his mandate.”

“Four years ago, he was convinced he was king,” Norquist said. “He took a 70-percent approval down to 50 percent and lost a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives in the process. Now, Obama starts at 52 percent and he is going not only to spend too much but also too tax too much.”

Nevertheless, in the current “fiscal cliff” negotiations regarding the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, Norquist has been criticized in the establishment press as a hindrance to reaching an agreement.

At the center of criticism is the anti-tax pledge that Norquist has persuaded 95 percent of Republican lawmakers to sign.

“Attacking me and the anti-tax pledge is the same old tactic the Democrats used two years ago in the debate over the debt ceiling,” he said.

The difference this time, however, is that Democrats “have no intention, whatsoever, in seriously talking about spending restraint.”

“So this time,” he said, “it becomes even more important to misdirect the attention of the American people, to say the only reason Republicans preventing a grand bargain by opposing tax increases is because Grover Norquist is telling Republicans what to do.”

In a front page article last Tuesday, Washington Post reporter Aaron Blake claimed Norquist and his anti-tax pledge are “in danger of becoming Washington relics as more and more defectors inch toward accepting tax increases” to avoid going over the fiscal cliff.

“Week after week, Democratic leaders have bashed Republicans for pledging fealty to Norquist rather than working independently,” Blake wrote.

Norquist dismissed such statements as an attempt to misdirect the attention of the American public from the real issue at hand: runaway federal spending, not a failure to raise taxes.

He doesn’t see any evidence his anti-tax pledge is losing its potency. The Washington Post article, he noted, produced as evidence a claim House Majority Leader Eric Cantor had suggested that the anti-tax pledge would not dictate GOP strategy on the fiscal cliff.

“So we get this headline, ‘Cantor Denounces Pledge,’ but that’s not what Cantor said,” Norquist countered. “What Cantor really said was that even without the pledge, the Republicans in Congress would be against raising taxes. Why? Because raising taxes would be bad for the economy.”

Norquist argued Republicans in Congress learned it is risky to increase taxes when President George H. W. Bush went down to defeat in 1992 after violating his “read my lips” pledge.

He insists the anti-tax pledge he promotes through Americans for Tax Reform is not the real issue in the fiscal cliff debate.

“If I became a Buddhist monk, it wouldn’t change anything,” he said, arguing it’s a pledge congressional Republicans make to voters, not to him.

“Republicans in Congress would still be against raising taxes because raising taxes never works,” he said.

Democrats are playing a game of three-card monte, Norquist asserted.

“Because the Democrats in Congress have no intention of talking about entitlement reform,” he said, “the liberal press rolls out the usual list of Republican compromisers who will say raising taxes would be acceptable if the Democrats engage in spending cuts the Democrats have no intention of ever making.”

Norquist predicts Congress will not raise taxes to avoid going over the fiscal cliff, because the Republican majority in the House is the last line of defense.

“The Republicans in House of Representatives are survivors,” he said. “The Democrats have already thrown at them everything you can imagine, and the Republicans in the House are still a majority, serving in districts that will not be redrawn for another 10 years. The Republicans in the House can defend themselves against everything the Democrats throw against them.”

Norquist suggested in the final analysis, the House Republicans could simply pass the plan proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., proving to the American public that federal budget deficits can be reduced without raising taxes on the rich.

The Ryan plan was passed by the House April 15 by a vote of 235 to 193, with no votes from Democrats. The Democrat-controlled Senate voted it down a month later, 57–40. The bill sought to reduce the 10-year federal deficit by capping discretionary spending and dismantling Obamacare.

Romney foiled by computers, consultants?

WASHINGTON – Did the failure of Mitt Romney’s campaign ground game cost the GOP the White House?

With more than six weeks to go before Obama’s second inaugural, the mid-term 2014 election season appears to have already kicked off, anticipating an equally unprecedented early start to the 2016 presidential campaign.

WND has learned that beginning next week, top Republican donors will be conducting their own “autopsy” of the Romney campaign in an effort to determine how better to spend their precious resources to extend a Republican majority in the House of Representatives and win a Republican majority in the Senate in 2014 as a prelude to recapturing the White House in 2016.

The initial stages of the GOP post-mortem of the Romney presidential campaign defeat have focused on what Erik Erickson, writing in Red State has described as a group of consultants – including Crossroads Media, a media services firm tied to the American Crossroads Super PAC championed by Karl Rove – engaging in incestuous bleeding of the Republican Party. It’s a debacle Ben Howe, also writing in Red State, has less generously described as a “con job.”

The idea of a group of ineffective Republican “consultants” feeding off generous campaign contributions is certain to offend GOP donors who sought victory in backing Romney.

But the GOP embarrassment includes the realization that Romney, a candidate who predicated much of his election hopes on touting a successful business career, was outdone by Barack Obama, at best a “community organizer,” in the mechanics of managing what political pros call “GOTV,” or “Get Out the Vote.”

Romney campaign chief strategist Stuart Stevens, in an opinion piece published Wednesday in the Washington Post, rejected the proposition Obama defeated Romney because of superior voter intelligence technology, describing Obama as “a charismatic African-American president with a billion dollars, no primary and media that often felt morally conflicted about being critical.”

On Thursday, Stevens was more direct in rejecting the contention the computer-generated GOTV system devised by Obama consultants Jim Messina and David Plouffe was responsible for Obama’s successful reelection campaign, pointing out that Obama received 4.5 million voters fewer in 2012 than in 2008.

“At face value, when they turned out more voters four years ago than they did this time, I would give them more credit for their message in those states rather than just their ground game,” Stevens told the CBS “This Morning” show, as reported by Politico. “I think it’s somewhat underselling what the Obama campaign did with their messaging campaign.”

In both statements, Stevens insisted Romney won every income group above $50,000-a-year, achieved a 17-point swing among voters younger than 30 and carried seniors by a large margin.

As WND reported, Stevens and the Romney campaign went into Election Day confident of victory, not anticipating that their computer-based GOTV system, code-named OCRA, had crashed, leaving thousands of volunteers in the field unable to bring to the polls likely Romney supporters who had not yet voted.

“We know OCRA was not tested properly because it failed,” computer expert John Ekdahl, who has published a scathing review of the Romney GOTV computer system, told WND in an exclusive interview.

“The Romney campaign did not properly train the volunteers how to use the OCRA system,” he said. “Remarkably, the program was not made operative until Election Day.”

Ekdahl was particularly critical of the Romney campaign’s assumption that the computerized GOTV system would work flawlessly on Election Day, even though no one had bothered to proof out fundamental practical realities.

“Sure, the Romney campaign held training sessions and there were conference calls, but that’s not enough,” he explained. “You need to have people in the field play with the system in advance, so they and you know technically the system works. The Romney campaign did no checking into how technically advanced the volunteer users were. The campaign didn’t even bother to find out if the volunteers had iPads.”

Mack Shwab, a partner at VoterIntel, a computerized GOTV field system being developed in Louisville, Ky., also provided insight into why the Romney team failed.

“An effective GOTV system has to start in the field,” Shwab told WND. “Campaign field workers have to be able to hold in their hands easy-to-use technology that allows them to accomplish the most basic campaign field operations, starting with canvassing precincts on foot to contact prospective voters in person.”

Using handheld tablet and smart phone technology, the VoterIntel system gives campaign field canvassers a portable technology that permits them to locate prospective voters and input data on voter demographics, voter preferences and opinions.

From there, the VoterIntel system can integrate with more conventional census-derived voter demographics, as well as data from polls and information gathered from social networking sites, including Facebook and Twitter.

Still, the focus is on developing a practical technology that is adapted to the realities of campaign GOTV efforts in the field.

“Not all field volunteers in a campaign are made equal,” Shwab emphasized.

“Differing physical capabilities equate to differing walking rates. Less physically fit volunteers may not visit all homes assigned. Less engaged volunteers may abandon the walk altogether, leaving gaps in the data gathered. Motivated and physically fit volunteers may finish their assigned work early, leaving potential volunteer hours on the table.”

But by designing the computer-based GOTV system from the ground up, the VoterIntel system emphasizes the handheld technology the volunteer takes into the field, not the sophistication of the computer database system in the campaign headquarters.

Shwab believes that designing the system from the field up avoids the problem Romney had when volunteers were left not knowing what to do after the headquarters computer crashed.

“What we are trying to do is to computerize the traditional walk book by applying computer technology so specific homes are assigned to specific volunteers who have participated in creating the database from the ground up,” Shwab stressed.

Granted, Romney got more votes than McCain did running against Obama, but still the total came up short.

In the final analysis, the Obama team did a superior job of knowing who their voters were and how to get them to the polls.

Despite the much-touted computer sophistication of the Obama team, the Obama victory strategy did not deviate far from traditional interest group, bottom-up politics.

Obama voters were an identifiable modern-day version of the FDR coalition – inner city minorities, Hispanics, union workers and single women.

These are precisely the type of voters Democratic Party precinct bosses in the Windy City have been successful for decades in getting to the polls with shoe-leather politics, long before computers were invented.

In contrast, the Romney campaign is left with having invested millions of dollars into a GOTV computer system so flawed that no post-mortem is likely to figure out which high-priced consultant should bear the brunt of the blame.

Now Obama wants your 401(k)

NEW YORK – Two years ago, as WND reported, the Obama administration was proceeding with a novel way to finance trillion-dollar budget deficits by forcing IRA and 401(k) holders to buy Treasury bonds by mandating the placement of government-structured annuities in their retirement accounts.

Remarkably, those financial professionals specializing in private retirement savings and the U.S. citizens investing in private retirement plans now face the possibility the Obama administration and its allies on the political left will impose rules and regulations that effectively abolish the private retirement savings and investment markets.

Recent evidence suggests government officials continue to eye the multi-trillion dollar private retirement savings market, including IRAs and 401(k) plans, eyeing the opportunity to redistribute private retirement savings to less affluent Americans and to force the retirement savings out of the private market and into government-controlled programs investing in government-issued debt.

Government takeover?

An Investment Company Institute study published this month found that U.S. retirement assets totaled $18.5 trillion at the end of the second quarter 2012, of which 3.5 trillion was in IRAs and $5.1 trillion was in 401(k) plans.

Since 2010, the U.S. Treasury Department and the Department of Labor have been holding combined hearings on various plans designed to introduce government-mandated retirement plans and investment options, including government annuities invested primarily in U.S. Treasury debt, into the private retirement savings market.

“This hearing was set up to explore why Americans are not saving as much for their retirement as they could,” explained National Seniors Council National Director Robert Crone, describing a recent Treasury-Labor hearing held in the Labor Department’s main auditorium.

“However it is clear that his is just the first step toward a government takeover. It feels like the beginning of the debate over health care and we all know how that ended up.”

‘Automatic IRA’

With the issuance of the White House 256-page Budget Proposal for Fiscal Year 2013, the Obama administration endorsed “Automatic IRAs,” a plan introduced into Congress in 2010 by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass, and Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., in which private companies would be automatically enrolled into government-mandated IRAs, forcing those businesses to contribute on behalf of their employees a “default amount” equal to 3 percent of an employees pay, unless an employee specifically opts out of the plan.

The FY 2013 Budget proposal notes that currently 78 million working Americans, roughly half of the work force, lack employer-based retirement plans.

According to testimony given by David C. John of the Heritage Foundation to the House Committee on Ways and Means on April 17, most of the 78 million working Americans not participating in employer-based retirement plans are part-time employees of smaller businesses, women, members of minority groups or all three.

The remedy proposed on page 147 of the FY 2012 Budget Proposal is “a system of automatic work-place pensions that will expand access to tens of millions of workers who currently lack plans” by providing their employees with a government-mandated “direct deposit IRA account,” exempting only businesses with 10 or fewer employees and providing participating businesses with tax credits to compensate for the businesses implementing and administering the plans.

While the Automatic IRA would serve the purpose of extending private retirement plans to disadvantaged and generally poorer workers, the innovation would place additional costs upon employers. It would require employer contributions to the plans, even if tax credits fully complemented the businesses for implementing and administering them.

Retirement USA

The Service Employee International Union, or SEIU, a key labor union ally of the Obama administration, has mounted an effort to create government-mandated worker retirement accounts as an entitlement program, with the possibility that a portion of all private retirement funds could be forced into U.S. Treasury debt.

Branding the program “Retirement USA,” the SEIU has joined with the AFL-CIO, the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based economic left-leaning think tank that receives substantial labor funding, and two other left-leaning interest groups, the Pension Rights Center and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security.

The Retirement USA idea is promote the concept that all workers in the U.S. have a right to a government retirement account that would fund a secure retirement with adequate dollars, in addition to Social Security and private ERISA-retirement workplace retirement programs such as 401(k) programs.

“Our goal is to involve all workers and all employees in a government-mandated retirement program, with the government putting up the difference for lower paid employees,” Nancy Hwa, a spokeswoman for the participating Pension Rights Center, told WND in 2010.

Put simply, the Retirement USA government-mandated workplace retirement account would require by law employers and employees to contribute to a retirement account for every employee and demand that a portion of that contribution go into a federal-government created annuity that would be funded by purchasing Treasury debt.

“Retirement USA is basically an effort that amounts to nationalizing 401(k)s and IRAs,” David John, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told WND when the Retirement USA idea was proposed two years ago.

Under the guise of making workplace retirement savings accounts available to all Americans and insuring that existing retirement savings accounts pay lifetime income, the SEIU-led Retirement USA effort is quietly exploring strategies that would create “Universal IRAs” or “Guaranteed Retirement Accounts” for all workers.

Following lead of Argentina

Writing in the London Telegraph in October 2008, business and economics editor Ambrose Evans-Pritchard warned that G7 nations, including the United States, may begin following the path of Argentina in forcing privately managed pension funds to be invested in government-issued debt.

In 2008, Argentine sovereign debt was trading at 29 cents on the dollar, reflecting the devalued state of the Argentine peso, with the result that private pensioners holding government debt in their retirement accounts could not be assured those bonds would have any meaningful value at maturity.

“Here is a warning to us all,” Evans-Pritchard wrote. “The Argentine state is taking control of the country’s privately managed pension funds in a dramatic move to raise cash.”

He warned the same could happen in the United States and Europe.

“The G7 states are already acquiring an unhealthy taste for the arbitrary seizure of private property, I notice,” Evans-Prichard warned. “It is a foretaste of what might happen across the world as governments discover that tax revenue and the bond markets are unwilling to plug the gap.”

Currently, as reported Friday by the Financial Times, Argentina is facing yet another bond default after U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Griesa ruled that an upcoming payment to holders of the debt-swap bonds Argentina issued in 2005 and 2010 must be accompanied by a payment in full of $1.3 billion. The payment is to be made to two U.S. hedge fund creditors that did not accept the 2005 and 2010 debt swaps proposed for the bonds Argentina defaulted on in 2001.

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Decisive action against Obama's left-wing 'trolls'

NEW YORK – WND Internet forum moderators have conducted extensive studies of leftist, pro-Obama “trolls” who post misinformation.

In the process, the moderators have blocked from WND forums participants who post abusive language aimed at angering or otherwise insulting forum members, WND authors, management and staff.

Trolls appear to perform a “disinformation” function typical of counter-intelligence efforts by intelligence agencies to confuse political enemies and refute or deflect opposing political views that are less susceptible to refutation by more traditional methods of debate and argumentation.

Typically, trolls operating on WND forums attempt to defend Obama by posting specious and diversionary arguments with the goal of changing the subject and obscuring topics that could damage Obama, such as his birth records, life narrative, political history and policy preferences, including his current positions as president.

Particularly offensive is the proclivity of trolls to use obscene or blasphemous language mixed with personal invective.

Repeat offenders

Trolls operate on WND forums under various identities, often using the same IP address but with different usernames and email addresses.

One troll who was banned from participating in WND forums, was found to have posted more than 4,794 comments over 664 days on a wide range of websites in addition to WND.

Another posted 3,575 comments over 560 days on website forums in addition to WND that ranged from CNN to Fox News.

A third troll posted more than 10,000 comments on various user forums, including 4,306 on Fox News alone.

A fourth posting under different usernames used various email addresses and nine different IP addresses to post 15,200 comments over 787 days on WND and Fox News, as well as several smaller news websites, some of which had a local focus or interest.

Many of the trolls banned from participating in WND forums appear to have been operating on a professional level.

Some could be leftist “plants” whose purpose is to damage the reputation of WND by posing as supporters and utilizing offensive language and making obscene claims or suggestions.

Categories of abuse

Trolls use a wide variety of strategies, some of which are unique to the Internet, including these:

Making outrageous comments designed to distract or frustrate. This is a Saul Alinsky-style tactic employed to stir emotion and angry reactions.
Posing as a conservative and making comments that discredit the movement. After claiming to be a member of the movement, such as a tea party organization, the troll then proceeds to post long, incoherent diatribes to appear either racist or insane. In some cases, these “Trojan Horse Trolls” have been known to make posts that advocate or incite to the use of violence in an apparent attempt to provide evidence to leftist critics and government sources that the right is comprised of “radical extremists.”
Dominating discussions. Trolls may attempt to throw a discussion off course and frustrate participants whose purpose is to engage in a serious and respectful exchange of views.
Posting prewritten responses. Many trolls appear to have been supplied with a list or database of pre-planned “talking points” designed as generalized and deceptive responses to honest arguments. When trolls post prewritten responses, their words typically feel strangely plastic and rehearsed.
Making false associations. In this technique, the position of honest posters is characterized in derogatory terms. For example, a troll may call advocates of Federal Reserve reform or abolition “conspiracy theorists” or “lunatics.” Or, by suggesting certain political arguments are “racist” or otherwise outside the accepted confines of serious political discourse, trolls attempt to dissuade readers from examining the evidence objectively.
Exhibiting false moderation. By pretending to be the “voice of reason” in an argument with obvious well-defined sides, trolls attempt to move readers to relegate the argument to a “gray area,” such that holding or seriously considering the argument is a leap away from reasoned judgment.
Raising straw-man arguments. Here a troll will accuse his opposition of subscribing to a certain point of view, even if the argument is irrelevant and never actually raised.

Professional trolls

WND moderators have developed criteria for helping to identify a professional troll:

The person’s posts are usually short and snarky, with reasonably correct spelling, grammar and punctuation, suggesting both intelligence and education.
The posts are on the edge of acceptability, with little or no profanity or vulgar language that would get the post flagged immediately.
The person has a high ratio of posts to the number of days on the site, suggesting he’s posting comments nearly full time and is getting paid to troll.
The person posts politely on progressive websites but nastily on conservative websites, using the same username and IP address.
The person’s posts are consistently belittling, rather than intelligent objections and points.
The person’s posts address a broad spectrum of topics rather than focusing on one or two subjects of particular interest. The consistency is in the support of leftist policies and positions taken by the Obama administration.

Once the person is blacklisted, the WND moderators do not receive a complaint. Instead, the person quietly returns to post on WND forums in a different incarnation, perhaps using a different username, IP address or email.

WND moderators have concluded the purpose of a troll is not to intelligently discuss various issues but to minimize the importance of dissenting opinions by ridiculing serious participants expressing political views the troll finds objectionable.

Sometimes trolls appear to needle serious participants with the goal of inciting irrational retorts that can embarrass them, perhaps even to the point of being reported to employers or to the government.

WND moderators frequently experience waves of troll attacks that they suspect occur in response to a “call to arms” from a progressive website or blog.

Pajama bandits

A person identified as “AMA” posted a comment on the website Above Top Secret that apparently offers insight into how professional trolls operate.

I was a paid Internet troll

For almost five years, I was a paid Internet troll. Yes, I admit.

But first let me state that I never performed my job here on ATS, though I believe I have occasionally seen a handful on here who were using a script similar to what I was assigned.

I cannot and will not name names, but after an internship at a firm with government and political party (Republican) contracts, I was offered the position of “Online Communications Associate” at another company by someone from the original firm for which I interned. My contract completed one year ago, and I have since moved on.

Utilizing six artificial personas, I was active in social networks and bulletin boards. But since I came to love and respect this site, as I stated, I never performed my functions here. Each week, I and presumably several others, were provided with information to use in our online postings. At first the information was comprised of fully conceived scripts, but as I became more and more experienced, it eventually became simple bullet or talking points.

At first I needed to provide links to my postings, but when the company name changed (never knew the real names of any people there), that requirement stopped.

The pay wasn’t very good, but since I was working from my apartment, I suppose it wasn’t bad, and I was able to do several other writing assignments on the side.

AMA

WND will maintain an open posting policy on its forums, but will continue identifying and removing trolls who abuse the privilege.

WND staff member Janet Falkenstein contributed to this article.

Romney's Ohio disaster forces GOP rethink

WND senior staff reporter Jerome Corsi was on Romney’s airplane as traveling press in the final three weeks of the 2012 presidential campaign, from the second presidential debate held at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., on Oct. 16 through Election Day.

The Romney campaign’s failure to win Ohio is a major reason Republicans are contemplating investing hundreds of millions of dollars to develop an electronic “voter intelligence” ground game for the future.

On Election Day, during the last flight of the Romney campaign from Pittsburgh to Boston, Stuart Stevens, a top campaign strategist and speechwriter, told WND he was confident Romney would win Ohio because “a positive campaign message trumps the ground game every time.”

In retrospect, Stevens and the Romney brain trust had miscalculated, devoting resources to old methodologies amounting to nothing more than door knocks and phone banks, while Democrats relied on a sophisticated social science analysis that drove the massive, computer-database, ground-game marketing effort launched by Obama strategists Jim Messina and David Plouffe.

Time magazine reported the Obama team had polling data on 39,000 people in Ohio alone, a huge sample of approximately 1 percent of all Ohio voters, allowing deep understanding of where demographic and regional groups were trending at any moment, and had been running daily some 66,000 computer simulations of the election, calculating Obama’s chances of winning under every imaginable scenario of voter turnout.

The Romney/Ryan presidential campaign may be the last time the Republican Party relies on traditional, seat-of-the-pants estimates common to campaign professionals before the social networking phenomenon, which today is being driven by rapidly developing mobile technology.

The backbone of the Romney campaign’s ground game was supposed to be their much-touted ORCA computer program, which was supposed to connect 800 people in Romney’s Boston headquarters with 34,000 volunteers around the nation.

But like a beached whale, ORCA failed on Election Day.

John Ekdahl, writing on the Ace of Spades HQ blog, provided a scathing postmortem evaluation of ORCA, indicating the computer system that had never been stress-tested prior to the election crashed on Election Day.

As a result, volunteers were left confused and demoralized, without the certificates they needed to act as poll watchers or the mundane names and address information they needed to get to the polls Romney voters who had yet not yet voted.

The contrast between the ground games of the two campaigns was decisive:

As Election Day proceeded, the Obama campaign could monitor voter turnout in the Ohio Democratic stronghold of Cuyahoga County, for instance, to determine precisely how many Obama voters in the rest of the state were needed at the polls to insure victory and where those votes could be found.
The Romney campaign could monitor the same voter turnout data on Election Day, but when Cuyahoga County turned out voters unexpectedly heavy in Democratic precincts, the Romney organization lacked sufficient experience running advanced turnout simulations to determine exactly how many more Romney voters had to be mobilized; moreover, with ORCA down, the Ohio campaign had no way to electronically notify volunteers in Ohio’s western Republican counties which Romney voters to contact to bring to the polls

A disaster waiting to happen

In the three weeks prior to Election Day, during which WND followed the Romney campaign as traveling press, discussions with Republican Party state chairmen in the all-important swing states made clear the Romney campaign was relying on traditional methodologies developed prior to the computer era to get out the vote.

On Oct. 25 at a Romney rally in Cincinnati, Ohio, state campaign chairman Scott Jennings told WND he was confident Romney would win Ohio because internal polls confirmed independent polls in showing Romney had a substantial lead among independent voters.

“We are not going to win independent voters by more than 10 points in this state and lose Ohio,” Jennings bragged. “Independents are flowing our way.”

Jennings claimed the ground game organized for Romney is better than the Republicans had organized in Ohio for any recent presidential campaign.

“We’ve knocked on 1.8 million doors, and we’ve made over 4 million phone calls,” he claimed. “Sometime this week we’re going to knock on the 2 millionth voter door and we will make the six millionth voter contact. Since early voting started we’ve made nearly 3.8 million voter contact attempts. We are knocking on doors in every county in Ohio.”

Jennings is an experienced Republican political field operative. In 2000, he managed George W. Bush’s presidential campaign in Kentucky, and, in 2004, he managed Bush’s presidential campaign in New Mexico. In 2008, he was a senior political aide to Sen. Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, and he also ran a successful re-election campaign for Republican Rep. Brett Guthrie of Kentucky’s 2nd District.

Asked what the difference was between the Romney campaign in 2012 and other campaigns he had run, Jennings cited the door-knocking effort.

“In 2000 an 2004, we put a lot of effort on phone banking, but this year we are emphasizing door-knocking,” he said. “People will always answer their doors. This is the best interaction you can have in American politics. This is why we are knocking on doors, because I think the personal neighbor-to-neighbor interaction helps turn folks out.”

Jennings claimed the Romney campaign was making inroads on early voting in Ohio.

“Obama won early voting in 2008 by 20 points, but with the Democrats’ erosion of early voting and a Republican surge, in which more absentee ballots being returned by registered Republicans were beginning to outnumber absentee ballots being returned by registered Democrats, we are narrowing Obama’s margin to a 6-point advantage for the Democrats,” Jennings boasted.

Jennings acknowledged that in the final weeks of the campaign, Ohio remained a neck-to-neck race, with Romney closing in on a 5- to 6-point advantage Obama had held in the state until October.

“I’m not going to tell you we’re going to win early voting, but I’m saying we’re going to keep it close,” he said, “and we’re going to blow it out on Election Day and that’s how we are going to win the race.”

Jennings sounded confident about the ground game he had organized in Ohio.

“They have collected a lot of leases and a lot of rent payments,” he suggested, “and they have sent out a lot of press releases on their leases, but with thousands of volunteers in this state, we enjoy an enthusiasm gap.”

WND research determined that many of the “door knocks” did not amount to in-person visits, but may simply have involved leaving campaign literature when no one was home.

Jennings argued his goal was to better the 2008 McCain campaign in voter margins, returning to the margins George W. Bush won in beating John Kerry in Ohio in 2004.

“All over the state of Ohio, I think you will see the Romney team return to the margins Bush enjoyed in this state in 2004,” he said. “Everybody senses we are on a track to win this state this year. We are not going to win Cuyahoga County, but we will get our votes out of the Cleveland area. We are going to reclaim Hamilton County, a battleground county in the southwest of the state where we are today. The counties around Cincinnati are red counties, and there is renewed enthusiasm in the western corridor of the state between Toledo and Cincinnati. In southeast Ohio, there is a lot of concern about the Obama administration shutting down coal production.”

When the votes were counted, Romney bettered McCain’s 2008 vote differential against Obama in Ohio, but not enough to win the state.

In 2004, George W. Bush won Ohio by slightly more than 100,00 votes out of 5.5 million cast; in 2008, John McCain lost Ohio by approximately 200,000 votes out of 5.2 million votes cast.

This year, Obama won Ohio by approximately 100,000 votes out of 5.1 million votes cast.

Romney camp smells victory in early returns

TRAVELING WITH THE ROMNEY CAMPAIGN – Mitt Romney is on the verge of becoming the next president of the United States, because Democrats didn’t get the votes they needed in early polling, the Republican nominee’s top strategist told reporters before the campaign plane took off from Pittsburgh this afternoon.

Later, en route to Boston, a very upbeat Romney came to the back of the plane to talk to the traveling media.

He referred to an unexpectedly large and enthusiastic crowd in Pittsburgh today.

“Just getting off the plane and seeing those people there, cheering as they were, connected emotionally with me,” he said.

Romney noted that the campaign didn’t inform the public when he would arrive.

“I have felt intellectually that we would win for some time,” Romney said. “But seeing those people, I not only feel intellectually we will win, I feel it as well.”

Romney said he was proud of the campaign his team has run.

“Our team has been very solid,” he said. “We have worked well together, and we have gotten our message across. I feel like we put it all on the field. We left nothing in the locker room. We fought all the way to the end, and that’s why I feel we were successful.”

Senior strategist Stuart Stevens attributed Romney’s success to having a positive message.

“A positive message always beats a ground game,” said Stevens, who believes Romney connected with the electorate.

Landing in Pittsburgh at 3 p.m., Romney was met by an impromptu crowd of well over 1,000 supporters standing outside a chain-link fence at Pittsburgh International Airport. People were lined up on the second story of a parking lot and in the street across from civil aviation area.

Romney, in a white shirt with his sleeves rolled up, saw the crowd from the airplane and went over to the fence and waved both hands in the air.

Walking back to get into the motorcade, a reporter with the traveling press asked, “Governor, how does that make you feel?”

Romney responded, with his hand over his heart: “Well, that’s when you know you’re going to win.”

As WND reported yesterday, the Romney camp approached the finish line with cautious confidence, greeted by enthusiastic, overflow crowds at five stops yesterday from Florida to Virginia to Ohio to New Hampshire.

In Ohio, shortly after noon, the two campaigns converged as Vice President Joe Biden’s plane landed just 20 minutes after Romney, along with running mate Paul Ryan, headed toward Cleveland in a motorcade.

For Romney and his wife, Ann, Election Day began at 8:15 a.m., when they arrived at the Beech Street Center in Manchester, N.H., to vote.

At the polling place, the Romneys were greeted by a fairly large crowd, including one woman inside the holding a sign that read “Mitt and Ann – Enjoy your new White House.”

A reporter asked Romney how he felt about his chances in Ohio.

“I feel great about Ohio,” Romney responded enthusiastically.

Morning in Boston

At 9:15 this morning, Romney arrived at the airport outside Boston for a day rallying the ground troops who are getting out the vote in pivotal Ohio and in Pennsylvania, where the Romney camp believes victory is possible after six straight Democrat wins.

Campaign manager Kevin Madden and senior strategist Stevens accompanied Romney on the airplane.

“We are going to win Ohio,” Stevens told reporters. “We always close strong.”

Asked to respond to Democrats who say Romney’s trips to Ohio and Pennsylvania smack of desperation, Stevens countered: “I never thought that going out and talking to voters and working was anything but what we are supposed to do.”

Mitt Romney talks to reporters on the way to Boston (WND photo)

Not to be outdone by the Romney campaign, within minutes of the Republican nominee’s arrival in Cleveland at approximately 11:15 a.m., Air Force 2 touched down, while Romney was yet in his airplane waiting for Ryan to arrive.

Ryan’s plane arrived just before noon and pulled up to the Romney campaign plane, providing the unusual spectacle of the two planes positioned yards from one another, with Air Force 2 visible in the distance.

At about 12:50 p.m., the Republican candidates’ motorcade arrived at a local campaign office in a strip mall in the Richmond Heights suburb of Cleveland.

Signs on the walls read: “Ohio loves Romney,” “Vote Today!” and “Romney for America.”

Romney and Ryan spoke with about two dozen volunteers who were phone-banking.

By 1:20 p.m., Biden’s motorcade returned to the airport, with the vice president expected to head to Chicago to join President Obama to wait for Election Day returns.

Mitt Romney waves to supporters in Pittsburgh today (WND photo)

In Pittsburgh, Romney visited the Green Tree victory center, where more than 30 volunteers were making calls. A flat screen television played Fox News in the corner. A sign on the wall read “Obama isn’t working.”

When Romney arrived, a woman started chanting, “Twelve more hours.”

Romney thanked the volunteers and encouraged them not to be negative when reaching out to potential supporters.

He said they “don’t need to be disparaging of the other guy.”

The campaign planes of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan meet near Cleveland today (WND photo)

“The president has run a strong campaign,” Romney said. ‘I believe he is a good man and wish him well, and his family well. He is a good father and has been a good example of a good father, but it is time for a new direction. It is a time for a better tomorrow.”

Much more to come …

Romney camp cautiously confident

Romney rally Sunday in Bucks County, Pa. (WND photo)

TRAVELING WITH THE ROMNEY CAMPAIGN – On the final day of campaigning, the Romney camp is approaching the finish line with cautious confidence.

“I’m not over confident, but we are going to win Florida,” Romney campaign top strategist Stuart Stevens told WND at a rally in Orlando this morning.

On a day that would not end until after midnight, the campaign is holding five rallies in states key to a Romney win – Florida, Ohio and Virginia – along with an 11 p.m. stop in Manchester, N.H., the town where the Romney began his run for president two years ago.

At the Orlando airport rally, the senior Romney team standing in the background looked quietly satisfied with the road traveled.

“Don’t you just love this guy?” Stevens quietly asked WND, particularly happy with how Romney had delivered a modification Stevens had just made to the stump speech.

With every appearance, Romney has appeared more comfortable and looked more presidential.

“I can tell you one thing about this guy,” Ann Romney told an Ohio rally Sunday, speaking of her husband, “he will always stand by my side and he will always do what is right for America.”

“I’ve seen him in so many situations – as a husband, a father, a businessman, a governor, someone who turned around the Olympics – and I will say this: He does not fail!”

At that, Ann Romney introduced her husband as “the next president of the United States” to strong and sustained applause from an audience of some 10,000 supporters.

Romney accompanied his wife from the podium.

“You guys are fabulous,” he told the Ohio crowd, beginning a stump speech that has changed subtly as the campaign has progressed to reflect his sharpening vision for the next four years.

“Your voices are being heard all over the nation.”

Firing up the ground troops

On Election Day, Romney will travel to Cleveland and Pittsburgh to encourage the get-out-the-vote staffers and volunteers in the crucial swing-state of Ohio and in Pennsylvania, where he is competing in a state GOP presidential candidates haven’t won since 1988.

Internal campaign polling, according to the London Daily Mail’s Toby Harnden, shows Romney up one point in Ohio and tied in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Mitt and Ann Romney Saturday in Englewood, Colo. (WND photo)

In 2008, by contrast, Obama defeated John McCain in Wisconsin by nearly 14 percentage points, Pennsylvania by more than 13 and Ohio by four.

As the campaign left George Mason University in Fairfax County, Va., near Washington, Stevens confirmed to WND that the Romney camp will not campaign tomorrow.

“We have thousands of volunteers, and Gov. Romney wants to appear in person at victory centers in Ohio and Pennsylvania to be there to cheer on the troops,” he said.

A senior campaign official who asked not to be named told WND that Romney has gained energy from the series of large and enthusiastic rallies and wants to be in the field on Election Day.

See WND video of the George Mason rally:

Campaign spokesmen, peppered with questions from the largely Obama-supporting establishment media traveling with the campaign, denied that the campaign was acting in a desperate fashion.

Stevens and Romney campaign manager Kevin Madden told WND the campaign remains confident of victory in Ohio, and it is not an act of desperation to want to work until the polls close.

‘The silent majority’

The first three rallies held by Romney today produced large and enthusiastic crowds, with the rally in Fairfax, Va., packing a crowd of some 10,000 cheering supporters at the Patriot Center at George Mason University.

Several thousand supporters, who were prevented by fire regulations from being allowed inside, stood on the roadway to the university to cheer Romney’s motorcade as it wound its way to the Patriot Center.

Romney rally Sunday in Bucks County, Pa. (WND photo)

Somehow, the man the Obama campaign has tried to frame as wealthy and aloof, has found a way to connect with what Richard Nixon used to call “the silent majority” – the hard-working, God-fearing middle class that establishment media in Washington, D.C., New York City and Los Angeles often dismiss as “fly-over” America.

Even after the first debate, when Obama was the candidate who appeared aloof, virtually all the reporters riding Romney’s plane from state to state refused to believe Obama could lose.

In the final days of the 2012 presidential campaign, the traveling media observed the candidate’s decision to hold rallies in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, states once considered safe for Obama.

A Romney rally in Manchester, N.H., drew at least 20,000 supporters, including pop star Kid Rock. (WND photo)

Reporters from the New York Times and the Washington Post were skeptical.

At a backstage gaggle Sunday in Cleveland, campaign manager Madden was asked if Romney’s decision to campaign in Obama territory was a sign internal polls showed Romney losing Ohio or possibly Florida.

“Is this a strategy to open up a new pathway to the White House, knowing the polls in Iowa show you are losing?” Madden was asked.

Media appeared to be looking for the slightest bit of confirmation that would permit them to publish a headline such as “Romney campaign abandons Ohio in desperate bid for Pennsylvania.”

But Madden knew the game.

“No,” he said firmly. “We’re going to win Ohio. The beauty of a successful campaign is that you get the opportunity to reach beyond your strength into your opponent’s territory to look for votes.”

Mitt and Ann Romney at Englewood, Colo., rally Saturday (WND photo)

Madden had explained to WND that internal polls for Ohio were quite good for Romney, and his focus on developing and using the nation’s abundant coal reserves was resonating in Pennsylvania.

In the Keystone State, Obama’s energy policy has been termed a “War on Coal” that had already cost the state thousands of jobs, with the prospect of an Obama re-election costing thousands more.

Madden also knows that contesting Pennsylvania forces the Obama brain trust of David Axelrod, David Plouffe and Jim Messina to divert the precious, rapidly dwindling resources of time and money.

Romney has been pushing himself to the end.

Campaigning on Sunday did not end in Orlando until 2 a.m., after rallies in Des Moines and Cleveland, followed by 35,000 people showing up in Bucks County, Pa., for a rally at which the Marshall Tucker Band played. He ended the day with an airport hanger rally in Newport News, Va., that did not begin until nearly 11 p.m.

What the Romney team knew was that each appearance in Pennsylvania generated sound bites of Romney’s speech on the local news, showing residents the candidate is serious about winning their vote.

The Romney campaign also knew Obama was not pushing himself nearly as hard.

On the final day, when the former Massachusetts governor had five campaign appearances scheduled, Obama had only three.

Romney claims homestretch momentum

DES MOINES, Iowa – “Our campaign has gained the strength of a movement,” Romney told some 3,500 people who filled an early Sunday morning rally at the Iowa Events Center in downtown Des Moines.

“We are only two days away from a new beginning,” Romney continued. “If there’s anyone who fears the American dream is fading away, I have a message: With the right leadership, America is going to come roaring back. We’re Americans. We can do anything.”

Mitt Romney is finishing strong, gaining momentum with upbeat rhetoric, in a non-stop series of rallies that have included two of the biggest crowds seen in the presidential campaign of 2012.

On Friday, Nov. 2, at an outdoor concert featuring Kid Rock, whose song “Born Free” has become a Romney campaign theme song, an estimated 30,000 supporters gathered.

On Saturday, Nov. 3, an overflow crowd packed an outdoor amphitheater with a capacity to hold 18,000, in Englewood, Colo.

“You probably heard what the president said a couple of days ago – that you can vote for revenge,” Romney told a rally of 4,400 supporters in downtown Des Moines on Sunday Morning – a comment he repeated a few hours later to a crowd of 10,000 at an exposition center in Cleveland Hopkins Airport. “I’m telling you that you can vote because you love America.”

At both rallies, Romney emphasized his proven skills as a leader in business, in government and with the Olympics.

“Achieving real change is not something I just talk about, it’s something I do,” Romney claimed. “And it’s something I am going to do as president of the United States, with your help.”

Prospects in Iowa

On Sunday, Nov. 4, the Des Moines Register published its final presidential poll, giving Obama a 5-point advantage, with Obama polling 47 percent of likely voters and Romney 42 percent.

“Iowans are feeling more optimistic about where the nation is headed, and they’re giving President Barack Obama the credit,” staff reporters for the newspaper wrote. “In what continues to shape up as an ultra-tight race nationally, losing Iowa, with its small cache of six Electoral College votes, would complicate Romney’s chances for winning the presidency.”

The same poll, however,

The following video captures a Romney rally in Dubuque, Iowa, on Nov. 3, beginning with comments from auto racing legend Richard Petty: