Tigers' Cabrera wins Triple Crown of baseball in season finale

KANSAS CITY, Mo. –  Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera became the first player in 45 years to win baseball's Triple Crown on Wednesday night, joining an elite list that includes Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams and Lou Gehrig.

Cabrera's milestone wasn't official until the Yankees pinch hit for Curtis Granderson in their game against the Boston Red Sox. Granderson had homered twice to reach 43 for the year, tied with the Rangers' Josh Hamilton and one shy of Cabrera.

Cabrera went 0 for 2 against the Royals before leaving in the fourth inning to a standing ovation. He finished the regular season with a .330 average, four points better the Angels' Mike Trout, his biggest competition for MVP. Cabrera was the runaway leader with 139 RBIs.

Boston's Carl Yastrzemski was the previous player to achieve the Triple Crown in 1967.

"I would say without question he's enjoyed it. How could you not enjoy what he's done if you're a baseball player?" Tigers manager Jim Leyland said before the game.

"I would also add to that I doubt very much, knowing him, that he necessarily enjoys all the extra attention, and all the extra conversations he has to have, it's kind of out of his realm in personality, to be honest with you."

Only the Angels' Mike Trout provided a threat to Cabrera's second consecutive batting title, and only the Yankees' Curtis Granderson had a chance of hitting more home runs after the Rangers' Josh Hamilton finished with 43 homers earlier in the day.

Cabrera's pursuit of history has occurred largely in the dark, though, overshadowed by thrilling pennant races, the sheer enormity of the NFL -- even the presidential election.

An event that in other years might dominate headlines has been mostly cast aside.

"The entire baseball world should be here right now," said Tigers ace Justin Verlander, the reigning AL MVP, who may soon watch that award get handed off to his teammate.

Perhaps part of the void has to do with Cabrera's very nature.

He's not the boisterous sort, never one to crave attention. He would rather hang out with a couple of buddies than stand in front a pack of television cameras, answering countless questions about what makes him one of the game's most complete hitters.

"He's not a talkative guy," said Tigers catcher Alex Avila. "One, he doesn't speak English that well, but two, he lets his ability carry through."

It takes a special breed to hit for average, power and in clutch situations, which is why there have only been 14 players to achieve baseball's version of the Triple Crown, an honor roll that includes iconic players such as Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams and Lou Gehrig.

Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez never accomplished it, failing to win the batting title, and countless other Hall of Fame players have fallen short of one of sport's rarest feats.

To put it in perspective, consider horse racing's Triple Crown.

The last thoroughbred to win the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes in the same year was Affirmed in 1978, more than a full decade after Yastrzemski's magical summer in Boston.

Whether it's on par with Johnny Vander Meer's consecutive no-hitters, Jack Nicklaus' 18 major championships in golf, Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak or Brett Favre's consecutive games streak for quarterback is open to interpretation, and perhaps some bar-room debate.

Those who have witnessed it first-hand certainly have their opinions.

"It's pretty amazing," said the Royals' Alex Gordon, who's watched the drama unfold from his spot in left field. "Honestly, his numbers are like that every year. He has a great average, great home runs, great RBIs. He's a guy who can pull this off, and it's great for the game."

Giants infielder Pablo Sandoval said he was particularly proud that the Triple Crown would be accomplished by a fellow Venezuelan. Cabrera is from Maracay, along the Caribbean coast.

"I'm excited for the country and for the fans that support us every single day. It's a big deal in Venezuela right now," Sandoval said. "It's exciting, especially because of all the things that have happened in his career."

Yes, it seems that every fairytale these days carries a troublesome footnote.

In Cabrera's case, it stems from spring training last year, when he was involved in an ugly drunken driving incident. According to authorities in St. Lucie County, Fla., Cabrera refused to cooperate, directed an obscene gesture at police and even dared them to shoot him.

The Tigers have been careful to keep him from having to discuss his personal issues, but by all accounts, Cabrera has been a model player ever since. This year, he's the Tigers' nominee for the Roberto Clemente Award, given to the player "who best represents the game of baseball through positive contributions on and off the field, including sportsmanship and community involvement."

"This clubhouse wouldn't be quite as good without him," Leyland said.

Source : foxnews[dot]com Read More

Police to search Michigan driveway for labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa

DETROIT –  A tip from a dying man could finally be the missing clue in the mystery of what happened to Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, who vanished 37 years ago. 

MyFoxDetroit.com reports investigators are searching the ground beneath a suburban Detroit driveway after a man told authorities he saw a body being put into the ground around the same time Hoffa disappeared. The man is said to be dying of cancer and was not identified by police. 

After the tip was received by the Roseville Police Department, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality used ground penetrating radar on a 12-foot-by-12-foot patch beneath the driveway, said agency spokesman Brad Wurfel.

It found "that the earth had been disturbed at some point in time," Berlin said.

The environmental quality department on Friday will take soil samples that will be sent to a forensic anthropologist at Michigan State University to "have it tested for human decomposition," Berlin said.

Results are not expected until next week. Police also plan to dig at the home on Friday.

Roseville Police Chief James Berlin tells MyFoxDetroit.com he believes something may be buried there, but he isn't sure it is the body of Hoffa. 

"We are not claiming it's Jimmy Hoffa, the timeline doesn't add up," Berlin said. "We're investigating a body that may be at the location."

Hoffa was last seen on July 30, 1975, outside a suburban Detroit restaurant where he was supposed to meet with a New Jersey Teamsters boss and a Detroit Mafia captain. His body has not been found despite a number of searches over the years.

Innumerable theories about the demise of the union boss have surfaced over time. Among them: He was entombed in concrete at Giants Stadium in New Jersey, ground up and thrown in a Florida swamp or obliterated in a mob-owned fat-rendering plant. 

The search has continued under a backyard pool north of Detroit in 2003, under the floor of a Detroit home in 2004 and at a horse farm northwest of Detroit in 2006.

The FBI had no immediate comment on the new effort in Roseville to The Associated Press.

Click for more from MyFoxDetroit.com.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Source : foxnews[dot]com Read More

Ahmadinejad says new world order needed to get away from US dominance in interview

NEW YORK –  Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that a new world order needs to emerge, away from years of what he called American bullying and domination.

Ahmadinejad spoke to The Associated Press in a wide-ranging interview on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly -- his last as president of Iran. He was to address the Assembly Wednesday morning.

He also discussed solutions for the Syrian civil war, dismissed the question of Iran's nuclear ambition and claimed that despite Western sanctions his country is better off than it was when he took office in 2005.

"God willing, a new order will come together and we'll do away with everything that distances us," Ahmadinejad said, speaking through a translator. "I do believe the system of empires has reached the end of the road. The world can no longer see an emperor commanding it."

"Now even elementary school kids throughout the world have understood that the United States government is following an international policy of bullying," he said.

President Barack Obama warned Iran earlier Tuesday that time is running out to resolve the dispute over its nuclear program. In a speech to the General Assembly, Obama said the United States could not tolerate an Iran with atomic weapons.

Ahmadinejad would not respond directly to the president's remarks, saying he did not want to influence the U.S. presidential election in November.

But he argued that the international outcry over Iran's nuclear enrichment program was just an excuse by the West to dominate his country. He claimed that the United States has never accepted Iran's choice of government after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

"Everyone is aware the nuclear issue is the imposition of the will of the United States," he said. "I see the nuclear issue as a non-issue. It has become a form of one-upmanship."

Ahmadinejad said he favored more dialogue, even though negotiations with world powers remain stalled after three rounds of high-level meetings since April.

He said some world leaders have suggested to him that Iran would be better off holding nuclear talks only with the United States.

"Of course I am not dismissing such talks," he said, asked if he were open to discussions with the winner of the American presidential election.

Israeli leaders, however, are still openly contemplating military action again Iranian nuclear facilities, dismissing diplomacy as a dead end. Israel and many in the West suspect that Iran is seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, and cite its failure to cooperate fully with nuclear inspectors. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Ahmadinejad also proposed forming a new group of 10 or 11 countries to work to end the 18-month Syrian civil war. Representatives of the nations in the Middle East and elsewhere would meet in New York "very soon," he said.

Critics have accused Tehran of giving support to Syrian President Bashar Assad in carrying out massacres and other human rights violations in an attempt to crush the uprising against his rule. Activists say nearly 30,000 people have died.

He said the so-called contact group hopes to get the Syrian government and opposition to sit across from each other.

"I will do everything in my power to create stability, peace and understanding in Syria," Ahmadinejad said.

Earlier this month, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi announced the formation of a four-member contact group with Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. But Saudi Arabia so far has not participated.

He denied Iranian involvement in plotting attacks on Israelis abroad, despite arrests and accusations by police in various countries. He also vehemently disputed the U.S. claim that Iranian agents played a role in a foiled plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States last year.

Ahmadinejad will leave office next June after serving two four-year terms. He threw out numbers and statistics during the interview to show that Iran's economy and the lives of average Iranians have improved under his watch. Since his 2005 election, he claimed, Iran went from being the world's 22nd-largest economy to the 17th-largest; non-petroleum related exports increased sevenfold; and the basic production of goods has doubled. Median income increased by $4,000, he said.

"Today's conditions in Iran are completely different to where they were seven years ago in the economy, in technical achievement, in scientific know-how," Ahmadinejad said. "All of these achievements, though, have been reached under conditions in which we were brought under heavy sanctions."

Iran has called for the U.S. and its European allies to ease the sanctions that have hit its critical oil exports and left it blackballed from key international banking networks.

Ahmadinejad said he had no knowledge of the whereabouts of Robert Levinson, a private investigator and former FBI agent who vanished in Iran five years ago. He said he directed Iranian intelligence services two years ago to work with their counterparts in the U.S. to locate him.

"And if any help there is that I can bring to bear, I would be happy to do so," he said.

He also claimed never to have heard of Amir Hekmati, a former U.S. Marine who is imprisoned on espionage charges in Iran. Hekmati was arrested while visiting his grandmother in Iran in August 2011, and his family has been using Ahmadinejad's visit to New York to plead for his release.

Source : foxnews[dot]com Read More

The Difficulty Discussing Wii U

For the past couple years, Nintendo has attempted to share its vision for Wii U. For many observers and fans, the publisher has struggled to articulate itself well, first in clarifying that this was an entirely new system, and then fully demonstrating its capabilities. Bit by bit, Nintendo's overall message has not only grown stronger, but become clearer, and while there's still much to explain, gamers now have a much better sense of why Nintendo is going down this two-screen path.

"With any new hardware from Nintendo that tends to be a significant innovation versus what's been done in the past, we have to learn how to best communicate that innovation to consumers," Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime told me at the recent Wii U preview/launch event. Earlier in the interview, Fils-Aime noted that the company wasn't even sure how to articulate the appeal of something like the 3DS's Street Pass. "It was really hard to put it into words, because it is so different and so novel. And yet when I talk to people, Street Pass is one of the things they love most. The quests, the surprise of finding a new Mii on your system."

Fils-Aime noted the entire process of describing a new system to consumers, particularly since Nintendo typically forges new, innovative paths, is a lengthy one that doesn't click into place all at once. "If you look at the early marketing activity for Nintendo DS, versus where we were six years later, it was very different," Fils-Aime noted. "We had to learn how to speak to the consumer in a way that they could understand about what was so fun about this two-screen experience. The same is true for Wii. As a marketing organization, we had to learn how to communicate the fun of a motion-controlled active play experience."

Nintendo's journey with the 3DS has also been well-documented. When the company first unveiled the new platform, its messaging heavily emphasized the glasses-free 3D feature of the system. Nintendo anticipated that aspect to gel with consumers, but that didn't turn out to be the case. The result is what you see today - more talk about games and more quiet releases of StreetPass-based content. The 3D is still there, Nintendo just doesn't mention it nearly as often as it used to.

In some ways, though the system hasn't even hit store shelves, the same is true for Wii U. "For the last year, we've had to learn how to communicate about Wii U," Fils-Aime said. Watching the company move from a GamePad-centric message to something more broad, incorporating discussions of TVii, asynchronous gameplay and Miiverse has truly been a revelation, but each iteration of that message, and each subsequent showing, seems to be refined. Clearly something is working - Wii U pre-orders are rapidly disappearing as retailers anticipate running out of hardware at launch.

Still, challenges remain. Though Fils-Aime told me online play is as common as air, and that Nintendo intended to “give you tons of that air,” the company has yet to truly shed light on that process, including the critical notion of Friend Codes – or whatever iteration of that concept will (or won’t) appear on Wii U.

And Nintendo recognizes some of those upcoming tasks already. “Miiverse has the same challenges. Our vision for this service is unlike anything that's ever been before it… People put it in, maybe, current terms of things that it's most analogous to, and it's not really what this is going to be. It's going to be a very rich, robust part of the experience,” Fils-Aime said, when I asked if current comparisons and assumptions about the service were appropriate to describe a service that hasn’t fully been articulated yet. “One of the things that we've found is that gamers want to talk about other gamers about the fun they have when they're playing games. And that's different from what you do on other social networks. We believe Miiverse will be a very compelling part of the Wii U proposition, just like Street Pass and the Street Pass Mii Plaza have become a very compelling part of the Nintendo 3DS proposition.”

And Nintendo’s job doesn’t simply end once Wii U arrives on store shelves. There’s plenty more to be said about the games coming to the system, and while we have a pretty good grasp of things like Nintendo Land, New Super Mario Bros. U or ZombiU, things get very murky beyond the initial five-month “launch window.” I asked Fils-Aime why his team has been avoiding that conversation, even though some consumers absolutely think long-term when it comes to evaluating whether a console is worth purchasing.

“This is a real double-edged sword, because there are other people who are complaining that [the launch window is too long],” Fils-Aime told me. “What we're trying to do is give the most complete picture of the games that are going to be available now, as well as over the next number of months. That's why we've focused on this launch window, through March 31.”

Yet knowing that some gamers wanted more information, Fils-Aime noted that that more unannounced Wii U games are in development, including some that will release “during the launch window that we haven’t announced yet.” Precisely when we’d learn more information about that software, and who is developing it, is unclear.

With less than two months until the system’s launch, Nintendo still has plenty to reveal about its new system. Just yesterday we learned Wii U will be region-locked, but we still need to learn more about system transfers, launch day software, online capabilities, Miiverse and plenty more. Nintendo may have clarified its vision, but Wii U is still a ways off from becoming a crystal clear product. Stay tuned to IGN as we learn more.

Rich is an Executive Editor of IGN.com and the leader of IGN's Nintendo team. He also watches over all things WWE, Resident Evil, Assassin's Creed and much more. Follow him on Twitter, if you dare!

Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com Read More

Obama: I can’t change Washington unless I change voters

"I think that I've learned some lessons over the last four years and the most important lesson I've learned is that you can't change Washington from the inside."

-- President Obama in an interview with Spanish-language broadcaster Univision.

The Obama campaign is pushing back hard against the president's gaffe in his Univision interview of saying that Washington cannot be changed from within.

It was an unfortunate thing for an incumbent to say, especially when the nation is so unhappy with the way Washington operates. The federal government has gotten more dysfunctional in the era of Obama, despite his promises to unite and lead.

The fuller context of Obama's remarks, says his campaign, show that the president was really talking about the need to engage citizens outside of Washington to create the pressure needed to force recalcitrant Republicans to embrace a new way of doing things -- to compromise.

But as with Obama's "you didn't build that" gaffe, the fuller context doesn't erase the meaning. It deepens it.

The larger problem for the president in the interview was his ducking and covering on the cause of the attack on American diplomatic outposts in Libya. After his press secretary flipped to say that the attack was "self-evident(ly)" a terrorist operation after more than a week of the administration holding that it was unclear and apparently a spontaneous response to a year-old clip on YouTube that mocked the founder of Islam, Muhammad.

His answer there is of larger immediate concern because of the way the establishment press works. After substantially ignoring the story about how the administration could have been so ill prepared for an attack in an Islamist nation on the anniversary of 9/11, the president's remarks contradicting that of his own spokesman made the story impossible to ignore.

The thing about a story that has been ignored or suppressed by a campaign or politician is that once it breaks through, it is very hard to control. It's like a brush fire.

But Obama's "can't change Washington from the inside" blunder is more revealing about why the incumbent has been unable to dispatch a Republican challenger whose stumbles have been endlessly amplified by the press -- whose deficiencies as a candidate have been endlessly reinforced by tens of millions of dollars of searingly negative, highly personal attacks by the president's campaign.

Team Obama embraces the concept of community organizing, the candidate's professional pathway into politics, as the model for political success.

Community organizing is a concept that calls for activists to identify a problem facing a disadvantaged community and then organize its members to create pressure on those in power to effect necessary changes.

This differs from typical American politics in which candidates and elected leaders search out spontaneous, organic political movements and try to get out in front - to lead and shape those movements.

A typical example of this was the Republican Party in 2010. The Tea Party movement, which began in part as a protest of deficit spending and tolerance for big government within the GOP, was creating lots of trouble for the Republican establishment.

Being sensible and ambitious, Republican leaders decided that they would get out in front of the parade rather than break it up. By joining the march they were able to help steer the movement to an end more favorable to the party. While the fed-up conservatives have done much to change the party, the substantial acquiescence of the party on key points has helped direct the movement.

Obama should know how this works. He owes his career not so much to his 2004 convention speech that talked about no red or blue Americas, but to a blistering anti-war speech he delivered in Chicago in 2003 to a crowd assembled to denounce the invasion of Iraq.

Obama got in front of that parade and harnessed the anger within his party to unhorse Hillary Clinton whose vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq was a major annoyance to the left in her party. Obama could see the train coming, and put on his engineer's hat.

But once he found himself driving the train, Obama changed approaches. Rather than the effective opportunism common in politics, he reverted to the precepts of community organizing.

One of the great complaints of Obama's army in 2008 was that it was a top-down affair, rather than a grassroots organization. The direction of the movement was from Chicago, not bubbling up from the participants.

The complaints of the left have been largely silent owing to their understanding that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's administration would be pointedly hostile to their interests, but much of Obama's initial campaign and presidency was marked by the bitter complaints of the left who lifted him to power feeling unappreciated and not listened to.

Obama's answer to Univision was another version of what he has often said his greatest mistake in office has been -- to focus on policy over politics, failing to "tell a story" that would build consensus around his agenda.

"You can only change [Washington] from the outside. That's how I got elected," Obama said. "And that's how the big accomplishments like health care got done."

But Obama produced a health law unpopular on the left and the right. And when it passed it was already in bad odor with the electorate. Obama had attempted mightily to organize the American community behind his plan, but failed.

When you saw the White House helping organize pray vigils and marches in defense of the law, you saw how the community organizing precept works in the real world of politics.

While the protesters in favor of the law were carrying matching signs and repeating the same slogans, the protesters opposed to the law were pretty clearly doing their own things. One side looked organized. The other side looked spontaneous and organized.

Romney may have a problem with picking which parade it is he wants to lead and being willing to express the deep conviction that those already marching expect to hear, but he is at least willing to play the part of drum major.

Obama is intent on controlling the process from beginning to end. Rather than identifying the direction of voters and trying to lead and guide them, Obama is trying to organize them to follow his direction for the country.

His team in Chicago can dispatch all of the organizers it wants in an effort to create a movement focused on the president's re-election, but that is no substitute for a candidate who can see and hear the direction of the electorate and get out in front.

The danger for Obama is that Romney may yet pick a parade and start marching with real conviction.
==============================================
Chris Stirewalt is digital politics editor for Fox News, and his POWER PLAY column appears Monday-Friday on FoxNews.com. Catch Chris Live online daily at 11:30amET  at  http:live.foxnews.com.

Source : foxnews[dot]com Read More

Largest cancer center in US launches major initiative to cure 8 forms of the disease

The nation's largest cancer center is launching a massive "moonshot" effort against eight specific forms of the disease, similar to the all-out push for space exploration 50 years ago.

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston expects to spend as much as $3 billion on the project over the next 10 years and already has "tens of millions" of dollars in gifts to jump start it now, said its president, Dr. Ronald DePinho.

One of the cancers is myelodysplastic syndrome. "Good Morning America" co-anchor Robin Roberts has that kind and had a bone marrow transplant to treat it on Thursday. The others are especially deadly forms of breast and ovarian cancer, along with lung, prostate, melanoma and two types of leukemia.

The project aims to find cures and lower deaths. Although no overall benchmarks have been set, individual projects for various cancers have specific goals.

With genetic information and more precise drugs, "we have many of the tools we need to pick the fight of the 21st century" and find ways to defeat these cancers, DePinho said.

Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, which has no role in the project, praised DePinho's effort.

"I'm thrilled to see somebody take the lead," Brawley said. "The results that I see him promising, in my mind are reasonable," both in terms of raising money and fighting cancer.

Cancer death rates have been falling since the 1990s at an average of more than 1 percent per year but the disease remains a top killer worldwide. In the United States this year, estimates are that more than 1.5 million people will be diagnosed with cancer, and more than 500,000 will die from it.

The MD Anderson program was inspired by the goal President John F. Kennedy announced in 1962 to put a man on the moon by the end of that decade. He described it to Congress that May and in a speech in September at Rice University, a mile from MD Anderson.

The Houston cancer center treats 112,000 patients a year and has been building a database of tumor samples and their genetic characteristics, especially of breast and ovarian cancers.

A year ago, when DePinho became its new president, he started a competition among its researchers to submit ideas for how to make fresh inroads against the disease. Six teams were chosen to tackle the eight cancers.

Each team has specific goals, ranging from basic research to clinical trials that test treatments, biomarkers and diagnostics. Some projects are aimed at novel prevention methods -- a mandatory role for any of the federally funded National Comprehensive Cancer Centers, DePinho said.

The teams will focus on personalizing treatment according to an individual's tumor genes, real-time assessment of the effectiveness of therapies being tried, better diagnoses and early detection and reducing side effects of treatment.

For example, one project will jointly target a deadly type of ovarian cancer and "triple-negative breast cancer" -- breast tumors whose growth is not fueled by estrogen, progesterone or the gene that the drug Herceptin targets. The cancers share some striking similarities at the genetic and molecular level and treatments for them are converging, MD Anderson scientists say.

Scientists plan to study one cancer pathway and how nearby tissue influences the cancer's growth. They also hope within five years to find a way to detect ovarian cancer early. Experts have recommended against routinely screening health women for ovarian cancer now because methods to do so are too flawed.

Money for all of the moonshot projects will come from foundations, gifts from individuals, grants, revenues from treating the additional patients the center expects to attract, and patents and royalties from discoveries, MD Anderson officials said. That will be on top of the $700 million the cancer center spends each year now on research.

Source : foxnews[dot]com Read More

Obama calls Romney 'new' to foreign policy, recalling '08 criticism

A little more than four years ago, Hillary Clinton suggested then-Democratic primary opponent Barack Obama was so naïve on the world stage he'd need a "foreign policy instruction manual" should he win office. 

Fast forward to the 2012 Democratic National Convention. Obama, now the president, accepted his party's nomination for a second term by touting his experience as a steady leader in the face of overseas crises and mocked his Republican challenger as "new to foreign policy." 

How times have changed. 

But the president's new tactic -- to incorporate into his campaign message the sense that he is the tested leader, and that Mitt Romney is a newbie -- could be a risky one. For starters, it recalls the very criticism against Obama, like the above line from Clinton, when he first ran. 

"Obama had probably less foreign policy experience (when he first ran for president) than Romney has," said Steffen Schmidt, political science professor at Iowa State University. 

Schmidt also noted that Romney is hardly alone among non-incumbent candidates in not having a tremendous foreign policy background. "The truth of the matter is, presidents learn on the job," he said. 

Obama, in an official sense, may have had a bit more foreign policy experience when he first ran than Romney does today. 

Obama, as a first-term senator, was a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And he took several foreign trips. He traveled in 2005 with Republican Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar to Russia and Eastern Europe to visit nuclear and biological weapons facilities. The following year, Obama traveled to the Middle East. Obama, the senator, made another foreign trip to several African countries in late 2006 as well. 

Obama, though, downplayed the value of that experience during his 2008 primary run.  "Experience in Washington is not knowledge of the world," he said in April 2008, according to an account from the time in The New York Times. "This I know. When Sen. Clinton brags, 'I've met leaders from 80 countries,' I know what those trips are like. I've been on them. You go from the airport to the embassy. There's a group of children who do a native dance. You meet with the C.I.A. station chief and the embassy and they give you a briefing. ... And then, you go." 

Obama instead had stressed his time living abroad, as well as a visit to Pakistan back in the 1980s. 

Romney, though, also lived abroad -- in France as a Mormon missionary -- in the 1960s. And both Romney and Obama, as presidential candidates, conducted high-profile overseas tours to bolster their campaigns. 

Obama's, which included an address to a massive crowd in Berlin, was likely better received. Romney stumbled on his summertime tour abroad, most notably when he suggested Britain might not be ready for the 2012 Olympic Games. 

Obama seized on that gaffe during his nomination address last Thursday in Charlotte, N.C. 

"My opponent and his running mate are new to foreign policy," Obama said. "But from all that we've seen and heard, they want to take us back to an era of blustering and blundering that cost America so dearly. After all, you don't call Russia our No. 1 enemy -- not Al Qaeda -- Russia, unless you're still stuck in a Cold War mind warp. 

"You might not be ready for diplomacy with Beijing if you can't visit the Olympics without insulting our closest ally," Obama said. 

Obama went on to say: "You know, I recognize that times have changed since I first spoke to this convention. The times have changed, and so have I. I'm no longer just a candidate. I'm the president." 

Schmidt said Obama may be trying to inject more foreign policy into the mix, not just to deflect from other issues but to defend his administration against a GOP talking point that the president is "leading from behind" on the world stage. 

Indeed, the Romney campaign released a memo over the weekend that highlighted the president's "manifold failures on foreign policy and national security." While Obama touts the successful takedown of Usama bin Laden and the official end of the Iraq war under his watch, Republican claims he has done little to slow what they see as Iran's march toward a nuclear weapon. 

Sen. John McCain, the Republican Party's 2008 nominee, critiqued both Obama and Romney on the foreign policy front in an interview with the Associated Press over the weekend. In the interview, McCain said national security was largely missing from the GOP convention. 

"It's the job of presidents and candidates to lead and articulate their vision for America's role in the world. The world is a more dangerous place than it's been since the end of the Cold War, and so I think the president should lead and I think candidates for the presidency should lead and talk about it, and I'm disappointed that there hasn't been more," McCain said. He was most critical of the current administration, on issues like Iran and Syria.

Source : foxnews[dot]com Read More

Chicago teachers to go on strike after talks with district fail

CHICAGO –  Chicago teachers went on strike Monday for the first time in 25 years after their union and district officials failed to reach a contract agreement despite intense weekend negotiations that the union said were productive but still failed to adequately address issues such as job security and teacher evaluations.

The two sides were not far apart on compensation, but were on other issues, including health benefits -- teachers want to keep what they have now -- and a new teacher evaluation system based partly on students' standardized test scores, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said.

"This is a difficult decision and one we hoped we could have avoided," she said. "We must do things differently in this city if we are to provide our students with the education they so rightfully deserve."

Mayor Rahm Emanuel condemned the union's decision, and said the negotiations could be resolved if the two sides kept talking, "given how close we are."

"This is not a strike I wanted," Emanuel said. "It was a strike of choice ... it's unnecessary, it's avoidable and it's wrong. "

More than 26,000 teachers and support staff were expected to hit the picket lines early Monday, while the school district and parents carried out plans for keeping nearly 400,000 students safe and occupied while classes remain empty in the coming days in the nation's third largest school district.

Both Emanuel and union officials have much at stake. The walkout comes at a time when unions and collective bargaining by public employees have come under criticism in many parts of the country, and all sides are closely monitoring who might emerge with the upper hand in the Chicago dispute.

The timing also may be inopportune for Emanuel, a former White House chief of staff whose city administration is wrestling with a spike in murders and shootings in some city neighborhoods and who just agreed to take a larger role in fundraising for President Barack Obama's re-election campaign.

As the strike deadline approached, parents spent Sunday worrying about how much their children's education might suffer and where their kids will go while they're at work.

School officials said they will open more than 140 schools between 8:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. so children can eat lunch and breakfast in a district where many students receive free meals. The district asked community organizations to provide additional programs for students, and a number of churches, libraries and other groups plan to offer day camps and other activities. But it's not clear how many families will send their children to the added programs.

"They're going to lose learning time," said Beatriz Fierro, whose daughter is in the fifth grade on the city's Southwest Side. "And if the whole afternoon they're going to be free, it's bad. Of course you're worried."

Eric Ferrer, a cook, said his children can stay home Monday with his wife, who works in a store. But if the strike goes more than one day, they would have a problem -- one that he sees no way to solve.

"My wife is off tomorrow, (so) we can keep them at home," said Ferrer, as he sat in a McDonald's restaurant on the city's Southwest Side with his wife and their 8-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter. "She works the next day (and) so do I."

School board President David Vitale first announced Sunday night that talks had broken off, despite the school board offering what he called a fair and responsible contract that would cover four years and meet most of the union's demands. He said the talks with the union had been "extraordinarily difficult."

Emanuel said the district had offered the teachers a 16 percent pay raise over four years, doubling an earlier offer.

Lewis said she would not prioritize the issues, saying that they all were important to teachers.

That included concern over a new evaluation that she said would be based too heavily on students' standardized test scores, which she said would be unfair to teachers because it could not adequately account for outside factors that affect student performance, including poverty, violence and homelessness.

She said the evaluations could result in 6,000 teachers losing their jobs within two years.

City officials said they did not believe that was true, but said the union would not tell them how they came to that conclusion.

Emanuel said the evaluation would not count in the first year, as teachers and administrators worked out any kinks. Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard said the evaluation was mandated by state law but "was not developed to be a hammer," but to help teachers get better.

Emanuel said the union should have postponed the strike because an agreement is close. He also said his negotiating team would be available all night if the union was willing to talk, but Lewis said negotiations would resume Monday.

The strike is the latest flashpoint in a very public and often contentious battle between the mayor and the union.

When he took office last year, Emanuel inherited a school district facing a $700 million budget shortfall. Not long after, his administration rescinded 4 percent raises for teachers. He then asked the union to reopen its contract and accept 2 percent pay raises in exchange for lengthening the school day for students by 90 minutes. The union refused.

Emanuel, who promised a longer school day during his campaign, then attempted to go around the union by asking teachers at individual schools to waive the contract and add 90 minutes to the day. He halted the effort after being challenged by the union before the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board.

The district and union agreed in July on how to implement the longer school day, striking a deal to hire back 477 teachers who had been laid off rather than pay regular teachers more to work longer hours. That raised hopes the contract dispute would be settled soon, but bargaining continued on the other issues.

Source : foxnews[dot]com Read More