Obama appeals to middle class, jabs at Romney in weekend of furious campaigning

President Obama on Saturday made his appeal to middle class voters while taking a few swipes at Mitt Romney as the presidential campaigns charged into the weekend with well-honed messages for potential voters in several states.

"This country doesn't succeed when only a few do well," the president said during a early-evening rally in Milwaukee. "America  succeeds when the middle class does well." 

The president also attacked Romney plan to extend tax cuts to all Americans by saying he could pay more “and Mitt Romney could sure afford to pay a little more.”

The president’s comments came one day after Romney release a summary of his 2011 tax returns and after a recent video surfaced in which the GOP presidential candidate suggested nearly half of Americans don’t pay taxes.

“We can't move forward if we've got leaders who write off half the nation,” the president said. “I don't see a lot of victims (here) today.”

Earlier Saturday, GOP vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan was in Miami where he told a crowd full of Cuban-Americans that he and Romney will restore the American Dream that brought them to this country and be tougher than Obama on the Castro regime.

“People aren’t working and opportunity is slipping away,” Ryan said at a campaign stop in the city’s Little Havana neighborhood. “People pick up and they go for a better life in this country … Mitt Romney and I are trying to restore that.”

He also attacked the president for his recent remarks he made on the Spanish-language Univision network about his struggle to change Washington. Ryan also attempted, as he has before, to convince potential voters that he and Romney have the region’s best interest at heart, considering his mother is a resident.

Vice President Joe Biden was busy in New Hampshire trying once again to assure middle-class voters that Democrats are the true champions of the middle class. Biden, whose roots in working-class Scranton, Pa., appeal to union crowds, was also trying to secure the union vote for the president and other candidates in the Democratic Party, which has long benefited from organized labors’ support – from campaign cash to extensive get-out-and-vote efforts.

“There is a middle class because of the word union,” Biden said in a union hall in Manchester, N.H. “We need all volunteers because we are going to be outspent by super PACs. It’s a knock on the door.”

The campaigns enter the final six weeks of the race amid protests in the Middle East and North Africa in which 40 people have been killed, including four Americans, and efforts to learn whether the sieges were pre-planned and terrorist attacks.

The camps in recent days have also tried to capitalize on earlier-made statements by the rival candidate – the secretly recorded one this year in which Romney said 47 percent of Americans don’t pay taxes and are "dependent on the government."

The Romney camp took aim at Obama saying 14 years ago in an audio clip: “I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level, to make sure that everybody's got a shot."

The race for the White House remains close and will likely be decided in several battleground states, including Florida, Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin.

This week, Gallup released a poll showing the candidates locked at 47 percent each, while a Fox News poll showed Obama leading by 7 percentage points among likely voters in Ohio (49-42 percent) and Virginia (50-43 percent) and holding a five-point edge in Florida (49-44 percent.)

A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC/Marist poll showed Romney trailing in Colorado, Iowa and Wisconsin.

The poll show Romney trailing Obama 45 percent to 50 percent in Wisconsin where Romney had hoped to grow support after picking Ryan, who represents that state in Congress.

Still, Obama will be in Wisconsin on Saturday for three campaign-fundraising events, a sign political experts say indicates the race there remains tight.

Obama has not campaigned in Wisconsin since February. No Republican presidential candidate has won Wisconsin since Ronald Reagan in 1984.

The Romney campaign responded to Obama’s visit to Wisconsin just minutes after the president spoke.

“After an absence of 220 days, President Obama has finally returned to Wisconsin – a state he won by over 14 points four years ago,” said campaign spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg. “In Wisconsin, and all over America, people are tired of the president’s false attacks and broken promises. … America can’t afford four more years of Barack Obama.”

The first lady is attending an awards ceremony Saturday night in Washington for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.

Biden made two campaign stops in New Hampshire and was joined by wife Jill Biden.

Romney was fundraising in California while Ryan made two stops in Florida, including an afternoon visit in Orlando, a town hall at the University of Central Florida. He was joined in Miami by former Florida GOP Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

“You know, just a couple days ago on Univision, President Obama admitted that he can't change Washington from the inside,” Ryan said in Miami. “Why do we send presidents to the White House in the first place?”

He also said about the Castro family’s grip on Cuba, “We need to crack down on this regime.”

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State Department issues warnings in Sudan, Tunisia

WASHINGTON –  The State Department on Saturday ordered the departure of all family members and non-essential U.S. government personnel from its embassies in Sudan and Tunisia and warned U.S. citizens against any travel to the two countries due to security concerns over rising anti-American violence.

"Given the security situation in Tunis and Khartoum, the State Department has ordered the departure of all family members and non-emergency personnel from both posts, and issued parallel travel warnings to American citizens," said department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.

In Tunisia, the warning advised Americans that the international airport in Tunis is open and encouraged all U.S. citizens to depart on commercial flights. It said Americans who chose to remain in Tunisia should use extreme caution and avoid demonstrations. On Friday, protesters climbed the walls into the U.S. Embassy in Tunis, torching cars in the parking lot, trashing the entrance building and setting fire to a gym and a neighboring American school that is now unusable.

In Sudan, the warning said that while the Sudanese government has taken steps to limit the activities of terrorist groups, some remain and have threatened to attack Western interests. The terrorist threat level remains "critical" throughout Sudan, the department said. It noted that U.S. officials are already required to travel in armored vehicles and to get permission to travel outside Khartoum, where crowds torched part of the German Embassy and tried to storm the U.S. Embassy on Friday.

A U.S. official said on Saturday that Sudan's government is holding up the deployment of an elite Marine team that the U.S. planned to send to Khartoum to boost security at the embassy.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton worked the phones on Saturday, calling top officials from seven countries to discuss the situation following a wave of protest and violence over an anti-Muslim film that has swept across the Middle East and elsewhere in recent days. An obscure, amateurish movie called "Innocence of Muslims" that depicts Muhammad as a fraud, a womanizer and a pedophile sparked the outrage.

On Tuesday, protesters in Egypt breached the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and then well-armed extremists attacked the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing four Americans, including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens. Since then, protests over the video have spread to more than 20 countries in the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia. While most were peaceful, marches in several places exploded into violence, including Tunisia and Sudan.

Clinton on Saturday spoke to the prime minister of Libya, the president of Somalia, and the foreign ministers of Britain, Egypt, France, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Nuland said.

With Libyan Prime Minister Mustafa Abushagur, Clinton spoke about the importance of bringing the consulate attackers to justice, Nuland said. The prime minister "expressed confidence that the attackers would be brought to justice, noting that the government was already starting to take action," she said.

With the Egyptians, Turks and Saudis, Clinton thanked them for their condemnations of the violence and spoke of the need to ensure security at diplomatic missions, Nuland said. Clinton and Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr also "agreed that while the film may be offensive and reprehensible, it cannot be used as justification for violence," Nuland said.

Clinton's calls and the State Department travel warnings came as President Barack Obama paid tribute to the Americans killed in Benghazi in his weekly radio address and denounced the anti-U.S. mob protests that have followed.

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Russia rejects US' calls for pressure on Syria, Iran

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia –  Russia on Saturday soundly rejected U.S. calls for increased pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad to relinquish power. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton tried to prod Moscow into supporting U.N. action to end the crisis in Syria and she expressed hope that Congress would repeal Cold War-era trade restrictions on Russia.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, after meeting Clinton on the sidelines of a meeting of Pacific Rim leaders, told reporters that Moscow is opposed to U.S.-backed penalties against the Assad government, in addition to new ones against Iran over its nuclear program, because they harm Russian commercial interests.

"Our American partners have a prevailing tendency to threaten and increase pressure, adopt ever more sanctions against Syria and against Iran," Lavrov said. "Russia is fundamentally against this, since for resolving problems you have to engage the countries you are having issues with and not isolate them."

"Unilateral U.S. sanctions against Syria and Iran increasingly take on an extraterritorial character, directly affecting the interests of Russian business, in particular banks," he said. "We clearly stated that this was unacceptable, and they listened to us. What the result will be, I don't know."

Clinton, who also met with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit in Vladivostok, had urged Moscow to reconsider its opposition to the penalties, particularly against Syria in order to convince Assad that he should agree to a political transition, according to a senior U.S. official.

Clinton told her Russian counterpart that the Security Council needed to do more to send "a strong message" to Assad, given the escalating level of violence in Syria, said the official, who was present during the meeting. Clinton made clear to Lavrov that the Security Council risks "abrogating its responsibility" if it fails to act.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the conversation was private.

Russia and China have blocked three Security Council resolutions that would have punished Syria if the Assad government did not accept a negotiated political transition. Clinton said in Beijing this past week that the U.S. was "disappointed" by the vetoes.

She had earlier called the actions "appalling" and said they put Russia and China on the "wrong side of history." That assertion was rejected by Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi at a news conference with Clinton on Wednesday, when Yang said history would prove China's position to be correct.

On Saturday, Lavrov said Russia's opposition to penalizing Syria was based on the premise that "they don't achieve anything."

The question of sanctions against Syria and Iran will be a main topic of conversation among officials later this month at the U.N. General Assembly, and the U.S. official said Clinton had discussed both with Putin during dinner in Vladivostok.

Clinton, who's in Russia's Far East representing President Barack Obama at the APEC summit, also discussed with Putin topics including wildlife conservation, the upcoming winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and bilateral trade and investment, the official said.

Despite Russia's refusal to join the U.S. and its allies in seeking more pressure against Syria and Iran, Clinton told business leaders at the APEC meeting that the Obama administration wants Congress to repeal a 1974 law that denies Russia normal trade relations with the U.S because of Soviet-era laws restricting the emigration of Jews.

Now that Russia has joined the World Trade Organization, Clinton said the Obama administration is "working closely" with lawmakers on that issue and hopes that "Congress will pass on this important piece of legislation this month."

At the same time, Washington is looking for Russia to play a greater role in the Asia-Pacific region as the U.S. tries to quell growing maritime tensions.

Territorial disputes, including between U.S. allies Japan and South Korea, sparked by nationalist rhetoric have fueled fears of conflict.

Clinton has spent the last week in the region urging peaceful resolutions to competing territorial claims between China and its smaller neighbors in the South China Sea. The U.S. wants to see the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and China establish quickly a code of conduct for the area to be followed by a mechanism to resolve the conflicts peacefully without intimidation, coercion or clashes.

She began Saturday by signing an agreement with Lavrov that will enhance U.S.-Russia scientific cooperation in the Antarctic, as well as link national parks on either side of the Bering Strait.

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