National News
Obama, back on trail, hits McCain on economy
RENO, Nevada (Reuters) – Democrat Barack Obama, back on the campaign trail on Saturday after an emotional trip to Hawaii, blasted White House rival John McCain for backing the Republican fiscal policies that led to an economic crisis.
At a campaign stop in normally Republican Nevada, where polls show him running slightly ahead of McCain, Obama expanded on a favorite theme: That McCain would be an economic clone of President George W. Bush.
He criticized McCain for saying again on Friday that government should ease its regulations on business and mocked the senator from neighboring Arizona for saying Bush's economic policies had gotten "out of hand."
"Let's be clear: John McCain attacking George Bush for his out-of-hand economic policy is like (Vice President) Dick Cheney attacking George Bush for his go-it-alone foreign policy," Obama told about 11,000 supporters at a chilly morning rally at the University of Nevada in Reno.
He said Bush did not seem offended, since he voted on Friday for McCain.
"And that's no surprise, because when it comes to the policies that matter for middle-class families, there's not an inch of daylight between George Bush and John McCain," Obama said.
Obama noted McCain had met with small business owners on Friday in Colorado and said afterward they wanted "lower taxes and less government regulation" of their businesses.
"None of us want to see unnecessary burdens on business. But after what we've seen on Wall Street, isn't it obvious by now that we need some common-sense rules of the road to protect consumers and our economy?" Obama said.
OBAMA IN LEAD
Obama has solidified his lead over McCain in national opinion polls ahead of the November 4 election, and McCain is playing defense against a surging Obama in about 10 states won by Bush in 2004.
Fast-growing Nevada, with five electoral votes, is a prime target for Obama, whose campaign is counting on a surge in Democratic voter registrations to aid it in key battlegrounds like Reno's Washoe County.
Democrats moved ahead of Republicans in voter registration in Washoe County last week for the first time in 30 years. In 2004, it had about 17,000 more registered Republicans than registered Democrats.
The Nevada campaign swing -- Obama will have a rally later on Saturday in Las Vegas -- followed a day in Hawaii, where Obama visited his seriously ill grandmother, who helped raise him from the age of 10 while his mother lived in Indonesia.
Obama, who arrived in Nevada from Hawaii in the early hours of Saturday morning, thanked the crowd for their support for his 85-year-old grandmother.
"So many people sent out their thoughts and prayers, sent my grandmother flowers," he said. "It meant the world to her and it meant the world to me. Thank you."
The rally at the university's baseball stadium was interrupted for about 10 minutes by a power outage. Obama left the stage and shook hands with chanting supporters until the power was restored.
"I told you, people are having a tough time paying their electricity bills," Obama said once the microphone worked again.
"Either that, or somebody from the McCain campaign kicked our plug out," he said, adding: "That's just a joke. There is no evidence of foul play."
Palin: 'Far-left wing of the Democrat Party’ could takeover
LAKEWOOD, Ohio (CNN) – With her voice beginning to crack on this final marathon day of campaigning, Sarah Palin promised an audience in Ohio: “We will win!”
“You can just feel it here,” she said at a rally in the Cleveland suburbs. “You can just feel it here in Ohio, victory's coming, we can do this, we can win, we can win Ohio. And we must win for you.”
The crowd chanted “We will win! We will win!” throughout her remarks. At one point, Palin warned with urgency: “We must win.”
“We must win,” she said, “because Ohio, the far-left wing of the Democrat Party, not mainstream Democrat ideology, the values, the planks in the platform of the Democrat Party. It's the far-left wing of the party is getting ready to take over the entire federal government.”
Palin again accused Barack Obama of wanting to bankrupt the coal industry, citing an interview the Democrat gave to the San Francisco Chronicle in January in which he discussed his “aggressive” cap-and-trade proposal to limit carbon and greenhouse gas emissions.
“Just yesterday, revelation, an audiotape surfaces,” Palin argued, despite the fact that the Obama interview has been posted online for nine months. “People are starting to hear in his own words what Sen. Obama’s intention is for the coal industry. You got to hear this tape. You’re going to hear Obama saying it, talking about bankruptcy, bankruptcy there in the coal industry. He’s explaining all this to the San Francisco Chronicle, and he says …”
Palin was interrupted by an audience member who shouted “Liberal!”
She continued: “And there must be something about San Francisco and he because it’s like I heard on Fox News today, it’s like a truth serum where when he’s there, he seems to be more candid, and remember it was there that he talked about, there you go, the bitter clingers, the cling-ons, all of us, I guess, you know holding on to religion and guns and, um, so something about he being there in San Francisco.”
Obama says attacks on wife 'completely out of bounds'
CNN – Looking back at his two-year marathon for the presidency, Barack Obama told CBS he was most angered by "right-wing" attacks on his wife, Michelle, and said many of them were "completely out of bounds."
"I do believe there is a Republican or right-wing media outlet, or set of media outlets, that went after my wife for a while in a way that I thought was just completely out of bounds," Obama told CBS' Katie Couric in an interview that aired Monday morning.
"Frankly, I would never have considered or expected my allies to do something comparable to the spouse of an opponent. I just feel like family are civilians."
Mrs. Obama took particular heat from conservative circles for comments she made during the primary season, when she said that for the first time in her adult life "I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback." Those comments were highlighted by several Republican state party chapters in an effort to paint the potential first lady as angry, leading the Democratic presidential nominee to call on them to "lay off my wife" in an ABC interview in May.
Mrs. Obama was also been labeled "Obama's baby mama," by Fox News and "Mrs. Grievance" by the conservative National Review. Some conservative outlets also buzzed last summer about the possibility of a tape, which has never appeared, that showed her using the word "whitey" from the pulpit of Trinity United Church. The Obama campaign said Mrs. Obama had never uttered the word and that no tape existed.
"I just feel like family are civilians, and they don't sign up for this stuff… They really should be bystanders in this process, even if they're campaigning for you," Obama told CBS in the interview that aired Monday.
Protesters make noise at Biden event
TALLAHASSEE, Florida (CNN) – Just two days after completing a three-day bus tour of central and southern Florida, Joe Biden is back in the state for three events Sunday, this time in the north as part of campaign’s final battleground state push before Tuesday’s election.
On the campus of Florida State University Sunday morning, Biden continued to deliver the campaign’s ‘closing arguments’ that include a plea to supporters to reach out to Republicans after the election in order to bridge the partisan divide.
For the first time since being named the Democratic vice presidential nominee, a small group of McCain and Palin supporters tried to interrupt the Delaware senator’s remarks from the public sidewalk about 150 yards from the podium. Their chants inaudible through a megaphone, they took to using the device’s siren to disrupt.
Biden referred to “the people in the parking lot” four times, using them as an example of those that Democrats will have to reach out to after Tuesday.
“I mean it literally. Not a joke. I know you find some of that obnoxious,” said Biden. “We gotta end this. Somebody's got to be big enough to stand up and end this.”
There’s also a practical reason, Biden argued, legislation won't be able to pass without bi-partisan support.
“You think we're going to get education reform? You think we're going to re-establish and end this war and re-establish our place in the world without getting a significant portion of Republicans to agree with us as well? No one party can do this.”
Barack Obama and Biden have been targeting McCain and Palin over the past two days for the endorsement they received from Dick Cheney on Saturday, asking if any more proof is needed that this Republican ticket would be a continuation of the Bush-Cheney administration.
“Folks, John McCain and Sarah Palin can have Dick Cheney’s endorsement,” said Biden, We’ll settle for people like Warren Buffett and Colin Powell.”
After Sunday in Florida, Biden continues the swing state tour in the campaign’s final hours, heading to Missouri Monday morning, Ohio in the afternoon and Philadelphia at night. After voting at home in Wilmington Tuesday morning, he will visit at least one more swing state before joining Barack Obama in Chicago.
