The Obama campaign has announced that Vice President, Joe Biden, has plans to be in Tampa next week. This wouldn’t be an important announcement, but the same days he is planning to attend Tampa are the same days the Republican National Convention will be taking place in the city.

The White House released a statement saying: “Next week, on Monday, August 27 and Tuesday, August 28, Vice President Joe Biden will travel to the Tampa area and other cities for campaign events.” The Republican National Convention is scheduled to take place from August 27 to August 30 at the Tampa Bay Times Forum.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus has already responded to Biden’s plans saying that the Republicans will respond to any attempt from the Democrats to interfere with the convention.

Priebus even threatened the Democrats that if they interfere with their convention, they should not be surprised if the Republicans interfere with theirs: “I think it’s pretty common among parties to play with each other’s conventions, and we’ll have a pretty big presence in Charlotte as well,” Priebus added that “the nice thing about going first is that whatever they do to us, we can do ten times over to them.” This was a very serious threat; it seems Priebus believes that if the Democrats attack their convention the Republicans should counter-attack harder.

When Priebus was asked that if his declarations meant that Romney would be in Charlotte for the Democratic Convention, he responded: “You never know where we are going to be.”

This political campaign has been very aggressive, with both campaign teams trying to interfere in each other’s activities.

Joe Biden has been also involved in recent controversies because of the declarations he made on a speech in Danville, Virginia to a crowd that included many African Americans, in which he said that Romney’s Wall Street plan was going to put the people “back in chains.”

An Obama campaign official told ABC News that ““as the full quote makes obvious, the Vice President was clearly using a metaphor to describe the devastating impact of deregulating Wall Street and the financial industry, as well as how Governor Romney’s policies would take us back to the same failed formula that led to the 2008 financial crisis – the same failed formula that benefited a few, but crashed our economy and hurt the middle class.”

The Obama campaign official defended Biden, saying that he did not intend to make racial comments for political purposes, as many analysts have criticized.

Image Courtesy of  Center for American Progress

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Usually vice presidents do things that presidents can’t do by themselves. They try to complement the president in the areas in which he is weaker. That is what Paul Ryan and Joe Biden are doing: Biden is helping Obama gain support of white-working class voters and Ryan is helping Romney with the most conservative wing of the Republican Party.

Although in age and in most political views Ryan and Biden are totally different, they share some things in common. Both are Catholics and both suffered a terrible loss. Ryan lost his father when he was young, and Biden lost his daughter and wife in a car accident.  Both of them have used their personal stories in political rallies.

Daniel Burke in a Washington Post article said that although both Ryan and Biden are Catholics neither of them is a serious defender of their church’s main political causes.  Burke states that “Biden agrees with the church on social justice issues like poverty, but runs afoul on gay marriage and abortion rights. Ryan, meanwhile, agrees with Catholic doctrine on abortion and gay marriage, but clashes with church leaders on social justice issues.”

This proves how both of them are politically opposite in key issues. The real question is if the Catholic vote would be decisive in this election. And, if it is, who would the Catholic voters support?

Biden considers himself to be Obama’s big brother: he has the mission to grant the president the experience he has in aspects like foreign issues from his long political career and credibility in Washington. Ryan, on the other hand, has to give Romney credibility in a key aspect like the federal budget. Ryan needs to show that a Republican government in the White House would reduce the deficit, something the Republicans are claiming Obama has increased by a trillion dollars every year.

But Biden has received recent criticism, and the Republicans are trying to take advantage of it to project a bad image of him. During a political rally in Virginia, in which many in the crowd were African-Americans, the vice president said that Romney’s plans for Wall Street would put them “back in chains.” For this declaration, Biden has received multiple accusations of using racial undertones for political purposes.

In a recent interview with People magazine, Obama defended Biden, saying that he only intended to say that if the Republicans repel the Wall Street reforms his government has made, consumers won’t be protected.

Ryan referred to Biden’s declaration during an interview with Fox News Radio, saying: “You know, these are the kinds of things you say when you’re desperate in a campaign.” He added, “I think you’re going to hear more of these things as we go on because they have a terrible record and can’t run on it so they’re going to kind of sink this campaign to these low levels to distract people.”

Image Courtesy of  pennstatelive

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Vice president Joe Biden has two main things in common with Paul Ryan, the person who is trying to substitute him. Both are Catholics and both suffered terrible loses when they were young. Ryan lost his father and Biden lost his wife and daughter in a crash in 1972. Also, both men have clear differences in the way they plan to run the country and Biden recently called Ryan’s policies “irresponsible.”

In a political rally in Durham, N.C. Biden said that Romney and Ryan are decent men, but they have very different values from him and Obama. He said their main differences are in education policies, tax issues and government spending. Both Republican and Democrat tickets have very different points of view on how these issues should be handled.

Also, Biden referred to Ryan’s plan to privatize social security as irresponsible. The vice president criticized that Ryan wants to end Medicare and give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires.

Obama, who has been campaigning in the swing state of Iowa, criticized Ryan for blocking a farm bill that could help the farmers get the resources they need. President Obama during a rally in Iowa stated: “If you happen to see Congressman Ryan, tell him how important this farm bill is to Iowa and our rural communities,” Obama added “we’ve got to put politics aside when it comes to doing the right thing for rural America and for Iowa.” The Democrats are trying to deflect all the positive attention Ryan could get by making hard accusations on him and trying to prove his budget plan would only favor the wealthy.

On the Medicare issue Romney has defended his running mate, saying that what he intends to do is to preserve Medicare. Romney added that Ryan has different ideas than Obama, and added that “the president’s idea, for example, for Medicare, was to cut it by $700 billion. That’s not the right answer.”

Ryan has also defended the accusations that he would turn Medicare into a voucher system. He said that his mother is a Medicare senior in Florida, and criticized the government by saying that the government made promises to the elderly community, promises with which they have organized their retirement. He added that if the government wants to fulfill those promises it needs to reform Medicare for the younger generation, and that is what he intends to do in order to guarantee a secure future for the elderly.

Romney said that the only president in the nation’s history that has robbed Medicare is Obama. He stated:  ”There’s only one president that I know of in history that robbed Medicare,” and added that it was going to cost $716 billion to implement his own risky program commonly called Obamacare.

Image Courtesy of  Jason and Bonnie Grower / Shutterstock.com

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Washington, U.S.A. - As the first anniversary of bin Laden’s death approaches, Robert Weiner, a former Clinton White House spokesman and former communications director for the House Government Operations Committee, and Senior Analyst at Robert Weiner Associates Richard Mann, prove wrong the statements by Mitt Romney, Carl Rove, and other critics that “any president” would have given the order that launched the raid that killed Osama bin Laden last year.

They contrast Bush’s 2001 outsourcing a raid on Bin Laden’s 2001 Tora Bora location to the Afghanis who failed — on purpose or through ineptness — to Obama’s U.S. solo action in Abbottabad, Pakistan that succeeded when Obama did not reveal or leak the strategy.

Weiner and Mann document their claim with information from a 2009 Senate Foreign Relations Committee Report, “Tora Bora Revisited: How we Failed to Get Bin Laden.”

Weiner and Mann say, “When placed in a similar situation with parallel choices, George W. Bush, Obama’s predecessor, failed to succeed because he made the opposite decision. In December 2001, Bush had the chance to capture Bin Laden in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, was faced with the choice of doing it ourselves or involving a foreign government, and asked the Afghanis to do it. Whether by ineptness or intent, the Afghani troops allowed bin Laden to escape.”

Weiner and Mann show how Obama’s approach was totally different: “When Obama was questioned as why he did not inform the Pakistanis in advance about Abbottabad, he said, ‘I didn’t tell most people here in the White House. I didn’t tell my own family. It was that important for us to maintain operational security.’

When asked during the 2006 presidential campaign debates what he would do with ‘actionable intelligence’, he said he would have the United States ‘act unilaterally’ rather than in consort with foreign intelligence if necessary to capture bin Laden. That’s precisely what he did, as the President restated at a White House news conference.”

Weiner and Mann cite the 2009 Senate Foreign Relations Committee report: “The Committee says its review ‘removes any lingering doubts and makes it clear that Osama bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora.” The Committee Chair expressed the “hope that we can learn from the mistakes of the past.” “Obama did,” say Weiner and Mann.

“Obama recognized that bin Laden’s compound could not exist without local and likely some kind of government cooperation.

“During the years after the Tora Bora debacle, the Bush administration went even further in the opposite direction from Obama’s later actions. Bush closed the CIA’s unit on bin Laden. In contrast, Obama reprioritized the search for bin Laden. Bush said, ‘I truly am not that concerned about him. I am deeply concerned about Iraq. I really don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you.’ Likewise, Governor Romney said he ‘would not move heaven and earth’ to get bin Laden.

“The notion recently raised by Carl Rove, Condoleezza Rice, and Dick Cheney that Bush deserves a share of the credit for Obama’s bin Laden operation is ridiculous and should be recognized as sour grapes.

“Obama’s team had as key players Vice President Joe Biden, a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a former Senate Armed Services Committee member, and their emphasis on using intelligence and special operations over a large military footprint ultimately proved successful. Despite 100,000 troops and another 100,000 contractors, the Taliban actually grew stronger.

It was the surgical raid by a small team that defeated the man behind the 9/11 attacks. “It is time to ask the Republicans and other critics if they have any real alternative that would have succeeded as Obama did in taking down Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki, or Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi or for that matter, on domestic policy, where Obama reversed the Bush bleeding of 750,000 jobs per month, rescued the auto industry and the nation’s financial institutions, and put the country back to 26 straight months of increased jobs and GDP.”

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Xi Jinping, Vice President of China, started his trip to the United Stated recently at the invitation of Joe Biden, Vice President of the US. This visit is expected to strengthen the cooperation between the two countries and boost confidence. On Feb 17th in Los Angeles, China and the US signed a number of economic and trade contracts at the China-US Economic and Trade Cooperation Forum.

This is the second large-scale economic and trade pact between the two countries, the first of which saw $45 billion worth of contracts agreed to when President Hu Jintao visited the US last year. Among these contracts, some are of the traditional mode of purchase and import, including Sanhe Hope-full Grain & Oil Group, which purchased $1 billion in soy beans from an American company and Yingli Energy, which purchased $1.634 billion in silicon material.

There are also some contracts for a new mode of cooperation, such as ENN’s investment to build a clean energy ecological center in Nevada. As well, there is Jiaxing Stone Wheel and Zhejiang Hengzheng Valve’s joint-purchase of American tire making enterprises. This kind of cooperation embodies a diverse investment mode and displays a new trend of Sino-US economic and trade cooperation based on the foundation of frequent mutual visits between the two countries.

According to the “Letter of Intent for Cooperation of the Clean Energy Ecological Center Project” between ENN and Nevada’s Clark County government, ENN will invest $5 billion in Nevada to build a clean energy ecological center, which includes a solar energy photovoltaic generation base, a solar module manufacturing base and a future energy eco-town.

This investment of capital plus technologies will not only provide green energy to local residents, but also provide them with more than 4,000 jobs. At the China-US Economic and Trade Cooperation Forum on Feb 17th, Wang Yusuo, ENN’s Chairman of the board, made a speech on behalf of Chinese private-owned enterprises and expressed his confidence and good wishes for the investment and cooperation in new industries.

Meanwhile, he said that ENN would carry forward its spirit of innovation and begin a second start-up with the support of the Chinese and American governments. Experts said the investment and cooperation pattern of “capital plus technologies” will hopefully boost cooperation between China and the US, which confirms Vice President Xi Jinping’s prediction and opinion that “Sino-US cooperation has undergone a fundamental change in pattern.”

For a long time, “Investing and making profits” has been the main method of American enterprises in their global development. The status quo of “trade surplus in China and profit in the US” has lasted for decades.

Regarding this economic and trade mode, Xi Jinping pointed out when Biden visited China in August 2011, “With the further development of China’s reforms and opening to the outside world and modernization, the traditional Sino-US cooperation pattern that the US provides capital and technologies while China provides labor, resources and markets, has undergone a fundamental change.”

As to the reasons for this change, experts believe it has a lot to do with the fast improvement of Chinese enterprises’ “new power in technological innovations.” In some fields Chinese technology is now a leader. ENN’s clean energy investment project in Nevada is a typical case.

This is not the first time that ENN has participated in project cooperation in the clean energy field in the US. Starting in 2009, ENN group began cooperation in the photovoltaic field with Duke Energy, one of American’s biggest energy companies. Analysts consider ENN’s “capital plus technologies” project at the clean energy eco center in Nevada a ground-breaking event which will be a milestone in starting a new pattern in the China-US economic and trade dynamic.

Behind this new pattern is the rise of China’s comprehensive strength and technological innovation and America’s confidence and open mind towards its cooperation with China. During his visit to China last year, Biden expressed that the US is willing to step up cooperation with China on market access and mutual investment and welcomes and encourages direct investment in the US from Chinese businesses and entities.

Apparently, both the US and China have realized that with the acceleration of globalization, competition and cooperation has become an inevitable trend. To pursue cooperation in competition and form new cooperative patterns is the key to a win-win result, and will be the catalyst for developing future economic and trade cooperation between the two countries.

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With his near-win in Iowa and his recent rise in the polls, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum is facing new scrutiny about his views on intelligent design and evolution. Reporters and others have expressed particular interest in the so-called “Santorum Amendment” authored by Senator Santorum, which was adopted in revised form in the Conference Report of the landmark No Child Left Behind Act.

The Santorum Amendment won overwhelming bipartisan support in the United States Senate. In fact, Sen. Ted Kennedy enthusiastically endorsed the Amendment on the Senate floor. Others voting in favor of the Amendment included Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. Joe Biden, Sen. Barbara Boxer, Sen. Harry Reid, Sen. John McCain, and Sen. Sam Brownback.

The Santorum Amendment did not mandate teaching intelligent design, nor did it encourage teaching creationism or religion in the classroom. Instead, it encouraged open discussion and inquiry by teachers and students of the evidence both for and against controversial scientific theories such as Darwin’s theory of evolution.

The approach advocated in the Santorum Amendment is favored by the vast majority of Americans, no matter what their race, gender, or political party. According to a nationwide Zogby poll in 2009, 80 percent of likely voters “agree that teachers and students should have the academic freedom to discuss both the strengths and weaknesses of evolution as a scientific theory.”

“Allowing discussions of all the scientific evidence about evolution in the classroom is good for students and good for science. It’s the mainstream approach supported by most Americans,” says Dr. John West, Associate Director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture. “Those who are trying to put a gag order on teachers and students to insulate Darwin’s theory from critical inquiry are the real extremists.”

Image Courtesy of  http://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/

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A new bill set to pass through the United States Senate has many internet users worried about the future of online censorship. SOPA, an acronym for the Stop Online Piracy Act, was proposed as one the latest attempts to protect copyright and control online media pirates.

However, the bill’s vague parameters are already raising concerns and objections that the loose wording may be ripe for corporate manipulation. The aim of the legislation is to crack down on pirating by targeting rogue sites outside of U.S. borders. SOPA would allow the government to disband any website that hosts copyrighted material, and an individual who streams such material could also be tried for committing a federal offense.

Search engines, blogs, and directories with links to infringing content would be required to remove the offensive link under threat of lawsuit. It would force host websites to take responsibility for all of the material uploaded rather than merely serving as an impartial medium, hence the fear that major video sharing websites like Youtube could become targets.

Web giant Google went so far as to call the bill ‘draconian’, and Twitter, Wikipedia, Yahoo!, Facebook, and Redditt, among others, are taking a similar stance. Vice-President Biden also has announced his anti-SOPA position, claiming that the bill would create a fragmented and divided internet.

Others point to the fact that no new statues are actually being introduced by the bill, and that the government already has the means to combat internet theft through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Although SOPA has garnered a lot of support from the entertainment industry, many technology experts fear that it would irrevocably change the internet for the worse, stifling innovation and many promising young online businesses.

Art Bordsky, a Washington-based public policy expert, recently explained some of the potential implications of the bill to The Guardian:

“The international aspects alone are very worrying,” he said. “It appears that the US is taking control of the entire world. The definitions written in the bill are so broad that any US consumer who uses a website overseas immediately gives the US jurisdiction the power to potentially take action against it.”

Despite rising opposition, SOPA’s supporters are insistent that the legislation is in fact needed to combat the issue of piracy, and that complaints of government censorship are overblown. Careful analysis of the bill reveals that sites host infringing information must demonstrate “willful intent” to be prosecuted, which would offer protection to sites like Youtube.

The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the issue on November 16th, and SOPA is expected to go to markup sometime around December 15th.

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The Obama Campaign may be fighting back against the Tea Party Republicans who have hijacked any sort of meaningful dialogue. An Obama adviser went on the offensive on a television appearance while the President had a heated exchange with a tea party activist.

Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs went on MSNBC on Tuesday. Gibbs, who now serves as a re-election advisor for the president, criticized Republicans, saying that they must decide whether they’re going to “swear allegiance to the tea party” or work with Democrats to create jobs.

He advised Congress to “pay attention to creating jobs again.” He also suggested that some Republicans “do not want to see this economy get better” because they know continuing misery will likely improve their election prospects.

Gibbs says Obama favors a number of moves to help businesses step up hiring. He says “the president is not focused on keeping his job, most of all. He’s focused on creating jobs for the American people.” He reported that Congress likely will be asked to continue payroll tax relief.

Looking ahead to 2012, Gibbs said, “We’re not running against George W. Bush.” He added, “But many of the policies that got us into the mess that we’re trying to dig out of now, are the same policies that the frontrunners for the Republican nomination seek to go back to.”

Meanwhile in Iowa, the tea party confronted Obama about vice president Joe Biden’s remarks earlier in the month comparing the tea party to terrorists. “He said we were acting like terrorists,” Iowa Tea Party activist Ryan Rhodes said, confronting the president after the Decorah town hall as Obama worked a rope line of audience members. “What we stand for is limited government and a balanced budget,” Rhodes continued.

“First of all, in fairness to this gentleman who raised a question, I absolutely agree that everybody needs to try to tone down the rhetoric. Now, in fairness, since I’ve been called a socialist who wasn’t born in this country, who is destroying America and taking away its freedoms because I passed a health care bill, I’m all for lowering the rhetoric.”

Obama later countered that Biden was making the point that almost failing to raise the debt ceiling was irresponsible. “He wasn’t objecting to the balanced budget amendment, he was objecting to us almost defaulting,” Obama said. As Rhodes persisted, and Obama continued to shake hands, the president added, “It doesn’t sound like you are interested in listening.”

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Sarah Palin and GOP presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann are outraged over a comment that vice president Joe Biden made during the excruciating long and dragged out debt ceiling negotiations.  According to Polico, Biden suggested that Tea Party-backed lawmakers “acted like terrorists” during the debate over the debt ceiling. This comment caused Bachmann and Palin to begin huffing and puffing.

Of course, you should note the context of the comment. Of course, Palin and Bachmann should too. Rep. Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania, who apparently asserted that “[w]e have negotiated with terrorists” during a closed-door meeting with House Democrats about the deal to raise the debt limit. Biden’s response; “They have acted like terrorists.”

Palin appeared on Fox News’ “Hannity” on Tuesday night to showcase the mock outrage. “If we were real domestic terrorists,” Palin explained to host Sean Hannity, “President Obama would be wanting to pal around with us, wouldn’t he? He didn’t have a problem palling around with Bill Ayers back in the day when he kicked off his political career.”

Although Palin has tried to connect Obama to Bill Ayers, a 1960s Weather Underground member, no serious connection exists. Obama did not “pal” around with Ayers, according to the Associated Press.  They worked on community boards and Ayers hosted a political event at the beginning of Obama’s career .

Palin went on to defend the tea party. “I’m not just going to roll over with a sticker plastered on my forehead that says, hit me baby one more time, call me a terrorist again, call me a racist. Those things that Tea Party patriots have been being called over these months. It is unfair, it’s hypocritical of the other side doing that. And enough is enough. And I’m going stand up for those fiscally conservative patriotic independent Americans who wants the best for this country.”

Really, Palin? Being called something is unfair? And while you are complaining about being called something, you are implying that Obama is friends with a terrorist. I am not sure you understand the definition of hypocritical, but look in the mirror and you will get it. Your party brought up the whole calling the other side terrorists. If you want to criticize someone, start with Rep. Doyle.

Bachmann responded to the comments in an e-mail on Monday night, “Only in the bizarro world of Washington is fiscal responsibility sometimes defined as terrorism.” And only in bizarro world is fiscal responsibility linked to a refusal to increase revenue.

Jeffery Stone / Shutterstock.com

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