Were the presidential contest held today, Mr. Romney would garner 50 percent of the ballots, while Mr. Obama would be the favorite of 46 percent of voters. Only two percent (2%) of the participants stated that they remained undecided. Rasmussen notes that this is the fifth day in a row that the former Massachusetts governor has scored 50 percent and has had a three-to-four-point lead over the president.

Source: Rasmussen, Oct. 24-26, 2012.

Rasmussen also reports that 47 percent of the participants “at least somewhat” approve of Mr. Obama‘s performance so far, whereas 52 percent are “at least somewhat” dissatisfied with his record. In addition, 33 percent told the pollsters that they “strongly” approved of the incumbent president’s performance although 43 percent remain “strongly” dissatisfied. Separately, 37 percent of the respondents said they believed the nation was headed in the right direction.

Source: Rasmussen, Oct. 24-26, 2012.

This particular survey also quotes a poll published on Friday that showed that 53 percent of those questioned believed that today’s children would have a worse quality of life than heir parents. Although this figure is high, it is six points lower than it was a month ago.

In contrast, a mere 24 percent stated that they believed today’s children would enjoy a better life than their parents. Twelve months ago, only 18 percent said so. Twenty-three percent (23%) said that they do not know what the future will bring.

Rasmussen also notes that Mr. Obama is currently expected to win 237 Electoral College votes, while the former governor appears to have 206 under his belt. In order to win the White House, either candidate will need to secure 270.

Eight states which boast a total of 95 electoral votes are currently described as “toss ups” according to the pollster. These are Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin. Four years ago, Mr. Obama won the Badger State by 14 percentage points.

Finally, Rasmussen reminds the reader that, back in 2008, President Obama was scoring between 50 and 52 percent. He ended up winning the presidential election with 53 percent of the votes, compared with 46 percent for his Republican opponent Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Texas Congressman Ron Paul is heavily invested in precious metals.

Texas Congressman Ron Paul has repeatedly complained about Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke‘s monetary policy which the 77-year-old representative claims is eroding the value of the greenback. In addition, Dr. Paul has long been a fervent supporter of gold and silver, which tend to go up in price when the dollar weakens against other currencies. It is therefore not surprising to hear that the Texas congressman has invested a large proportion of his wealth in precious metals.

EFT Daily News wrote on Monday that Dr. Paul had not invested a cent in bonds and that his exposure to equities was a mere 0.1 percent of his portfolio. In contrast, his exposure to gold and silver miners represents a massive 64 percent of his total wealth. Financial advisers usually recommend investors to hold around 10 percent of their assets in precious metals in normal circumstances. However, it could be argued that the financial mess the U.S., European countries and many other nations around the world find themselves in do not constitute normal circumstances.

Dr. Paul‘s decision to invest in miners is a very clever move. Indeed, the potential profit an investor can make with miners can be considerable. For instance, imagine an investor bought an ounce of gold at $1,000 a few years ago. Should the price of gold double to $2,000, an investor would make a 100 percent profit on his investment. If, instead, an investor invested in a miner, the profit in these circumstances would be substantially more. For instance, in the same investor bought shares in a company when the price of gold was $1,000 an ounce and the company spent $400 to extract an ounce of the metal, the miner’s profit per ounce would have been $600, or 60 percent. However, should the price of gold double to $2,000, the miner would now make a $1,600 profit per ounce. That’s a massive 235 percent profit, four times more than it was when gold fetched $1,000 an ounce.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on Dr. Paul‘s investments back in December 2011.

“At our request, William Bernstein, an investment manager at Efficient Portfolio Advisors in Eastford, Conn., reviewed Rep. Paul‘s portfolio as set out in the annual disclosure statement. Mr. Bernstein says he has never seen such an extreme bet on economic catastrophe,” the WSJ wrote at the time. This is how Mr. Bernstein described the Texas representative’s investments.

“This portfolio is a half-step away from a cellar-full of canned goods and nine-millimeter rounds,” he said at the time.

Although many investors report holding gold, very few hold the recommended 10 percent of their portfolio in the metal. When the proverbial hits the fan, investors and ordinary citizens are likely to wake up and rush towards the precious metals. They will have several reasons to do so: inflation, currency devaluation and a likely financial collapse which will be much worse than the 2008 financial crisis. When the price of gold skyrockets, it will be time to sell the precious metal and pocket the massive profits.

Texas Congressman Ron Paul does not believe there is a lot of difference between Mitt Romney's and Barack Obama's policies. Photo: CNBC.

Texas Congressman Ron Paul has no plan to endorse Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, he told CNBC’s Futures Now on Thursday. When he spoke to Fox News a week ago, Dr. Paul told the channel that he was not ready to announce who he would be voting for.

“I haven’t decided yet. At least, I have decided not to announce it. I’m going to sit tight for a bit longer,” he said at the time.

However, when he spoke to CNBC this week, he emphasized that Mr. Romney was not different enough from President Obama in his own view.

“Both are within the establishment where they need the Federal Reserve as lender of last resort to make sure that you take all the risk in the world,” he explained. Dr. Paul has long campaigned for the central bank to be audited and, ultimately, disbanded.

He also insisted that American voters would not notice a big difference whether the Obama-Biden administration is allowed to serve for a second term or whether a Romney-Ryan administration takes over in January 2013.

“I’ve been in this business a long time and, believe me, there is essentially no difference from one administration to another no matter what the platforms. The foreign policy stays the same, the monetary policy stays the same. There’s no proposal for any real cuts and both parties support it,” Dr. Paul pointed out.

He also predicted that the White House and Congress would eventually reach an agreement before the end of the year in order to avoid the ‘fiscal cliff,’ that is the spending cuts and tax hikes which are due to come into force on Jan. 1 next year.

“They’re not going to allow all those terrible things to happen on January 1, but they’re not going to solve the problem either,” Dr. Paul warned.

He also stated that the value of the greenback would continue to be eroded unless lawmakers became responsible and tackled the excessive and unsustainable federal spending.

The Federal Reserve “will destroy the dollar if we don’t come to our senses, and really cut spending and live within our means,” Dr. Paul predicted.

Dr. Paul has so far refused to confirm whether he would be supporting Libertarian candidate and former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, although he praised him when he appeared on the John Stossel show.

“I think he’s wonderful and I think he’s doing a good job. And I think people should look at him, and every individual should make up their own mind,” Dr. Paul said at the time.

President Obama attended a rally at George Mason University
in Fairfax, Va., on Friday. Photo: Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty.

The Department of Labor announced on Friday that the official unemployment rate had decreased from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September. This is the first time in 44 months that the jobless rate has fallen below the eight-percent (8%) mark.

“This morning we found out the unemployment rate fell to its lowest rate since I took office. More Americans entered the work force, more people are getting jobs,” Mr. Obama told supporters in Fairfax, Virginia. He also suggested that his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, would undo his administration’s good work if he was elected on Nov. 6.

“It’s a reminder this country has come too far to turn back now. I can’t allow that to happen and that’s why I’m running for a second term as president of the United States. I have seen too much struggle to see this country get hit by another round of top down economics,” he added.

Although Mr. Romney did not dispute the fact that the unemployment rate had fallen, he was keen to explain that the real reason why the figures from the Department of Labor looked so positive was because many jobless Americans were no longer registered as unemployed.

“The reason it’s come down this year is primarily due to the fact that more and more people have just stopped looking for work. And if you just drop out of the work force, if you just give up and say, ‘Look, I can’t go back to work. I’m just going to stay home.’ If you just drop out altogether, you’re not longer part of the employment statistics,” he remarked.

In an email sent shortly after the job numbers were made public, the Romney campaign echoed the former Massachusetts governor’s comments.

“This is not what a real recovery looks like. If not for all the people who have simply dropped out of the labor force, the real unemployment rate would be closer to 11 percent,” the email read. Mr. Romney asked Mr. Obama during Wednesday’s debate to explain why, if the economy was indeed improving, there were now 47 million Americans on food stamps.

Americans for Limited Government, a pro-Republican group, joked that the Obama administration had asked Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s propagandist, to embellish the latest statistics.

“It appears that Obama has hired infamous Iraqi Information Minister Baghdad Bob to calculate the unemployment rate. Anyone who takes this unemployment report serious is either naïve or a paid Obama campaign adviser,” the group said in a statement.

As the economy only added 114,000 jobs in September, the significant drop in the unemployment rate does indeed suggest that other factors contributed to the 0.3 percentage-point fall. Either the latest figures were manipulated or a large number of Americans have recently become disillusioned and left the labor force for the time being.

Source: The Bloomberg National Poll, Sept. 21-24.

The poll also shows that a slight majority of respondents approve of the job Mr. Obama is doing as president (49 percent vs. 46 percent). However, 53 percent of respondents stated that they disapproved of Mr. Obama‘s economic policies. Nevertheless, when asked which of the two candidates had laid out a better vision for a successful economic future, 48 percent of the participants cited Mr. Obama and 39 percent Mr. Romney, even though the majority feel his stint as a private-equity executive gives him an advantage when it comes to creating jobs.

In addition, 33 percent stated that they were hopeful of the country’s economic future because they were starting to see some signs of improvement. Twenty-one percent, however, said they were fearful because things were getting worse. Forty-five percent, though, were cautious because there was no evidence of anything “really happening.”

Source: The Bloomberg National Poll, Sept. 21-24.

Overall, 52 percent of voters have a positive opinion of the president, with 29 percent viewing him very favorably and 23 percent most favorably. Among those respondents who have a negative opinion of him (44 percent), 31 percent view him very negatively. Furthermore, 60 percent of those questioned state that the nation is headed in the wrong direction under Mr. Obama, whereas around half that percentage (33 percent) believe the country is on the right track.

Exactly half of the participants told the pollsters that they still view Mr. Romney in a negative light, including 31 percent who have a very unfavorable opinion of him. In contrast, the former Massachusetts governor’s vice-presidential nominee, Paul Ryan, is viewed positively by 41 percent of those questioned, the same percentage as those who view him negatively.

The majority of voters (43 percent) continue to state that unemployment and the state of the economy remain their primary concern, while the federal deficit is a distant second (14 percent). The third most important issue is health care (11 percent).

Source: The Bloomberg National Poll, Sept. 21-24.

The pollsters also asked the participants to choose which of these two approaches was most likely to help the U.S. economy: Mr. Obama‘s, which stipulates that resources and tax breaks should be targeted at the middle class to enable them to earn more, spend more and, as a result, create additional demand for goods and services which will, in turn, lead to the creation of new jobs; or Mr. Romney’s, which proposes to target resources and tax cuts at top earners and corporations – the real job creators according to him – so that they are encouraged to invest more and hire workers. Fifty-two percent (52%) said they felt Mr. Obama’s approach would be more effective, while 40 percent supported Mr. Romney’s proposal. It could be argued that businesses would end up investing more and hiring new workers anyway if the spending power of the middle class was boosted through government intervention.

Finally, the majority (43 percent) of the participants said they were better off now than they were when Mr. Obama entered the White House in 2009. Thirty-three percent (33%) said they were worse off, while 23 percent said that their living standards had remained about the same.

The survey is based on interviews with 1,007 Americans aged 18 or over.

Demonstrators tried to attack the U.S. embassy in Islamabad on Thursday, Sept. 20, 2012.

The U.S. embassy in Islamabad has released a series of advertisements showing President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemning the controversial film depicting Prophet Muhammad as a child molester, a womanizer and a ruthless killer in an attempt to placate Muslims in Pakistan. According to the embassy, the ads will be shown on seven Pakistani television stations and will cost the taxpayer $70,000 to air.

Although Mr. Obama and other members of his administration had already expressed their opposition to the controversial production, there were concerns that Muslims in Pakistan might not be aware that the president and top officials had strongly condemned the release of the film. Mr. Obama‘s and Mrs. Clinton’s remarks were subtitled in Urdu.

“As you know, after the video came out, there was concern in lots of bodies politic, including Pakistan, as to whether this represented the views of the U.S. government. So, in order to be sure that we reached the largest number of Pakistanis, some 90 million as I understand it in this case with these spots, it was the judgment that this was the best way to do it,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland stated.

On Thursday, an estimated 2,000 protesters attempted to approach the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, although hundreds of shipping containers had been strategically placed to block access to the area. The demonstrators were initially met by riot police who used tear gas and batons to keep the protesters away from the embassy, although they were later replaced by the army as they struggled to control the crowds. The vast majority of the demonstrators were believed to be students supporting Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist hardline political party, although eye witnesses reported seeing students carrying flags of Sipah-e-Sahaba, the al-Qaeda-linked militant group.

Protests were also organized in Lahore, Chaman, Karachi and Peshawar, although these were largely peaceful.

The Obama administration has instructed the temporary closure of several diplomatic compounds around the world as many are expected to demonstrate tomorrow following Friday prayers.

French embassies and consulates are also on high alert after a French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, decided to go ahead and publish several cartoons mocking Prophet Muhammad. These have already been condemned by Muslim groups in France. There are reports that German satirical magazine Titanic may also be about to publish controversial content mocking Islam.

The US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was destroyed on Sept. 11, 2012. Photo: AFP / Getty.

President Barack Obama spoke to his Libyan, Egyptian and Yemeni counterparts in the past couple of days following the death of four American diplomats in Benghazi, Libya, on Tuesday. Unconfirmed reports suggest that one of the victims, U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, may have been raped before he was killed.

Mr. Obama thanked Libyan President Mohammed Maqrif for his support following the death of the embassy staff and for promising to do whatever was necessary to ensure the safety of any remaining U.S. diplomatic personnel.

Mr. Obama “expressed appreciation for the cooperation we have received from the Libyan government and people in responding to this outrageous attack, and said that the Libyan government must continue to work with us to assure the security of our personnel going forward,” the White House said in a statement. In addition, both men agreed that those guilty of the four murders should face the full force of the law.

“[…] we must work together to do whatever is necessary to identify the perpetrators of this attack and bring them to justice,” the statement continued, adding that both countries would “work closely [together] over the course of this investigation.”

Mr. Obama also telephoned Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, who pledged to protect the U.S. embassy in Cairo as well as ensure the well-being of its diplomats.

“Given recent events, and consistent with our interest in a relationship based on mutual interests and mutual respect, President Obama underscored the importance of Egypt following through on its commitment to cooperate with the United States in securing U.S. diplomatic facilities and personnel,” the White House reported.

Following a telephone conversation with his U.S. counterpart, Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Al-Hadi issued a statement in which he deplored the violence against American interests in the country’s capital Sana’a.

“I do apologize to U.S. President Barack Obama and the people of the United States for the aggressive attack on the U.S. embassy in Sana’a,” the president said in a statement, before denouncing those responsible for the anti-Muslim film mocking Prophet Muhammad.

“Those who carried out the attack are mobs that are not aware of the far-reaching plots of the Zionist forces, especially those who published the film insulting the Prophet,” the statement continued, before adding that “all diplomatic staff of the U.S. embassy in Sana’a had been evacuated earlier in the day to a safe place and nobody was harmed.”

Source: Voice of America.

In a sign that the violence against U.S. interests was likely to spread further, protests were reported in Iran, Morocco and Tunisia. In addition, Islamic scholars in Sudan urged Muslims to take part in a mass demonstration following Friday prayers.

There are fears the unrest will now engulf Afghanistan and Iraq. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, which has some 15,000 personnel, is the largest in the world.

On Thursday night, the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned that “The risk of violence could increase both at home and abroad as the film continues to gain attention. Additionally, we judge that violent extremist groups in the United States could exploit anger over the film to advance their recruitment efforts

President Obama will be giving his acceptance speech in a smaller venue tonight due to poor attendance. Photo: Streeter Lecka / Getty Images.

President Barack Obama will give his acceptance speech tonight in the Time Warner Cable Arena and not the Bank of America Stadium as originally planned. Although the last-minute change of venue is being blamed on the inclement weather, rumors suggest that the Obama campaign was unable to fill the 74,000-seater stadium and decided to move to a much smaller venue to avoid embarrassment.

The Obama campaign, which didn’t have any trouble attracting supporters back in 2008, even tried to bus students from all over North Carolina to try and achieve full occupancy.

A Democratic official confirmed that there had always been a contingency plan in case of severe weather, although he refused to confirm that the change of venue had officially been agreed.

“We do have a contingency plan, though, for lightning or other severe weather,” he said. “We don’t want to put anyone in harm’s way so that’s really what we’re looking for, not if it’s going to rain but if it’s going to be really bad. The reason that we’re not releasing the details on what a move to the arena would mean until that decision is made we don’t want a lot of conflicting information out there. But once that decision is made – if the decision is made – to move, we will make sure all of the details and we want to make sure all of our supporters know exactly what is happening if it changes,” he explained.

However, according to a convention worker, the move has already been rubber stamped.

“It looks like a done deal to me. The decision’s apparently been taken and it’s just a matter of spinning it as being forced on us by the weather,” he said.

The Time Warner Cable Arena holds around 20,000 people.