****
12:0: VP Biden delivers remarks at a campaign event at Century Village in Boca Raton, Fla (CNN)
1:0: Michelle Obama speaks at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls
3:05: VP Biden delivers remarks at a campaign event at Kings Point in Tamarac, Fla (CNN)
3:45: Michelle Obama speaks at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin (C-Span)
4:20: President Obama delivers remarks at a campaign event at the Capital Hilton in Washington, D.C. (CBS and CNN)
6:05: President Obama delivers remarks at a campaign event at a private residence (Print Pool for Remarks Only)
8:25: President Obama delivers remarks at a campaign event at the Capital Hilton in Washington, D.C. (Print Pool for Remarks Only)
Need to double-check some of these times, and will look for more links
****
****
Michael Tomasky: Fascinating series of tweets from the economist Justin Wolfers … the Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its annual revisions of the jobs numbers … Result? They were only off by 386,000 jobs.
….. That, says Wolfers, equals 32,000 more jobs every month – every month, friends – than we knew. So the economy that year was adding an average of 194,000 jobs per month, not 162,000 ….. “The BLS benchmark revisions means that there has been a net jobs gain since Jan ’09. Romney can no longer talk about job losses under Obama.”
I would say this is rather big news. Meshes pretty nicely with this recent development that people are apparently feeling a little better about the economy, and becomes, I should think, a pretty good applause line for Obama to add into his speeches.
Full post here
****
Washington Post: Voters in three critical swing states broadly oppose the far-reaching changes to Medicare associated with the Republican presidential ticket and, by big margins, prefer President Obama to handle the issue, according to new state polls by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation.
For seniors in Florida, Ohio and Virginia, Medicare rivals the economy as a top voting issue. And by majorities topping 70 percent, seniors say they prefer to keep Medicare as a program with guaranteed benefits, rather than moving to a system in which the government gives recipients fixed payments to buy coverage from private insurers or traditional Medicare, as Romney advocates.
… Generally, the more voters focus on Medicare, the more likely they are to support Obama’s bid for reelection.
The future of Medicare, the federal health program for the elderly and disabled, has become a flash point in the campaign since Romney’s selection last month of Rep. Paul Ryan…. Now, the challenges for Romney in the aftermath of the Ryan selection are becoming clear.
More here
****
Text of Michelle Obama’s remarks at two Chicago fundraisers yesterday here and here
****
****
****
Michael Tomasky: On the Hardball set last night, Matthews told me that George W. Bush, on November 1, i.e. five days before the election, is giving a speech in…the Cayman Islands! It’s true.
What is he thinking? I guess he’s thinking first and foremost that he’s going to pocket $2 million or whatever it is they’re paying him (it’s an investment summit of some kind). But hasn’t he sort of noticed that overseas tax shelters in general and the Cayman Islands specifically have become campaign issues, and liabilities for the standard-bearer of his party?
It’s not even just about Romney; Bush may or may not give a crap about him. But it’s about Bush. This speech is, if the Democrats set it up properly, going to generate maybe two days of negative stories about the GOP and plutocracy that are going to include revisitations of the dismal Bush record. If he were going to make himself an issue in the campaign in such a public way, you’d think he might have decided to go visit veterans in a hospital or something.
More here
****
****
Eugene Robinson: Conservative activist circles are abuzz with a new conspiracy theory: Polls showing President Obama with a growing lead over Mitt Romney are deliberately being skewed by the Liberal Mainstream Media so Republicans will be disheartened and stay home on Election Day.
This is denial and self-delusion but not of the harmless kind. It’s a false narrative that encourages the Republican Party to take the wrong lessons from this election, no matter the outcome.
Full article here
****
****
****
Happy Friiiiiiiiiiiiiiday everyone 
