Colin Powell endorses BHO again

[naynay]

Brotherly love?

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/politics/2012-election/sen-john-mccain-slams-colin-powell-endorsing-pres-obama

Earlier today, General Colin Powell endorsed President Obama for the second time. Powell said he agreed with Pres. Obama’s decision to end the war in Iraq, to begin to end the war in Afghanistan and not starting any new wars.

Powell told CBS News: "You know, I voted for him in 2008, and I plan to stick with him in 2012 and will vote for him and Vice President Joe Biden next month. So that's an endorsement for President Obama for reelection."

In response, Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) said Thursday afternoon on the 'Kilmeade and Friends' radio program: "General Powell, you disappoint us and you have harmed your legacy even further by defending what is clearly the most feckless foreign policy in my lifetime,” reports TalkingPointMemo.com.

There's obviously no love lost betwen Powell and McCain. If you recall, the Republican senator failed to get Powell's endorsement during the 2008 campaign -- and McCain certainly hasn't forgotten that slight. In fact, since his work with the George H.W. Bush Administration, Powell has distanced himself from the Republican party.

As of yet, no one has criticized Sen. McCain for his attack on the former American General.

[Vertnut]

Brotherly love?

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/polit...ing-pres-obama

He claims to be a "republican"...until it comes to color, apparently.

[slow99]

Damn, I thought he went to the whites in the racial draft.

[sc281]

Damn, I thought he went to the whites in the racial draft.

No shit. Wheres charlie murphy?!

[helosailor]

Graham Crackers gotta stick together.

[Forever_frost]

Chavez, Putin and Castro also LOVE Obama. Not a single strong America loving one in the midst.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/22/chavez-putin-castros-are-leaning-obama/

President Obama appears to getting reelection support from three world leaders notorious for their anti-American views.

Venezuela President Hugo Chavez, after winning a fourth term earlier this month, reportedly said he would vote for Obama and that the president would likely vote for him.

The socialist-leaning ruler also reportedly called Obama a “good guy.”

His support follows that of the Castro family, which has ruled Cuba under a communist dictatorship for more than 50 years.

In June, Mariela Castro, the daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro, said in a CNN interview, translated into English: “As a citizen of the world, I would like (Obama) to win.”

And Russian President Vladimir Putin -- who is back in Moscow's driver's seat after a stint as prime minister -- has said the reelection of Obama could improve political relations between the two countries.

He also reportedly called Obama a “genuine person" who "really wants to change much for the better."

However, Putin also told The Wall Street Journal he is prepared to work with Mitt Romney, who once called Russia the United States’ “No. 1 geopolitical foe.”

Putin characterized the Republican presidential nominee’s stance as "pre-election rhetoric."

While Obama certainly didn't ask for the support of any of those three leaders, the president has come to Russia's defense on the campaign trail. In his Democratic nomination speech last month, Obama mocked Romney's comment saying "you don't call Russia our number one enemy -- not Al Qaeda, Russia -- unless you're still stuck in a Cold War mind warp."

While some foreign leaders are watching the U.S. election and observing from afar, other foreign officials are planning to make a visit, supposedly to make sure things go smoothly. United Nations affiliates from Europe and central Asia are reportedly coming to the U.S. to monitor the Nov. 6 elections.

The monitors will go to polling stations to watch for voter suppression activities by conservative groups, according to The Hill newspaper.

The paper reports the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe -- a United Nations partner -- will deploy 44 monitors, part of a larger mission that will send an additional 80 to 90 members of parliament from nearly 30 countries.

Catherine Engelbrecht, founder and president of True the Vote, a conservative-leaning group seeking to crack down on election fraud, told The Hill: “These activist groups sought assistance not from American sources, but from the United Nations. The United Nations has no jurisdiction over American elections.”

[Broncojohnny]

It is just fine to vote for someone based on race as long as that person is black. You guys don't remember that double standard? There was a memo a while back. I'd really like to find a single black person voting for Romney. I am sure such a person exists but he/she is like a unicorn as far as rarity.

[John Galt]

It is just fine to vote for someone based on race as long as that person is black. You guys don't remember that double standard? There was a memo a while back. I'd really like to find a single black person voting for Romney. I am sure such a person exists but he/she is like a unicorn as far as rarity.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15297.html

If 96% of whites voted for McCain it would be called Racist....

[KungFuHamster]

It is just fine to vote for someone based on race as long as that person is black. You guys don't remember that double standard? There was a memo a while back. I'd really like to find a single black person voting for Romney. I am sure such a person exists but he/she is like a unicorn as far as rarity.

the black chick from "clueless" is voting romney. of course, the black community tore her ass up for not being pro-O

[talisman]

I said a couple of months ago that race relations and tensions were the worst I've ever seen in my life in the last couple of years. It would appear I was correct.


WASHINGTON (AP) — Racial attitudes have not improved in the four years since the United States elected its first black president, an Associated Press poll finds, as a slight majority of Americans now express prejudice toward blacks whether they recognize those feelings or not.

Those views could cost President Barack Obama votes as he tries for re-election, the survey found, though the effects are mitigated by some Americans' more favorable views of blacks.

Racial prejudice has increased slightly since 2008 whether those feelings were measured using questions that explicitly asked respondents about racist attitudes, or through an experimental test that measured implicit views toward race without asking questions about that topic directly.

In all, 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell.

"As much as we'd hope the impact of race would decline over time ... it appears the impact of anti-black sentiment on voting is about the same as it was four years ago," said Jon Krosnick, a Stanford University professor who worked with AP to develop the survey.

Most Americans expressed anti-Hispanic sentiments, too. In an AP survey done in 2011, 52 percent of non-Hispanic whites expressed anti-Hispanic attitudes. That figure rose to 57 percent in the implicit test. The survey on Hispanics had no past data for comparison.

The AP surveys were conducted with researchers from Stanford University, the University of Michigan and NORC at the University of Chicago.

Experts on race said they were not surprised by the findings.

"We have this false idea that there is uniformity in progress and that things change in one big step. That is not the way history has worked," said Jelani Cobb, professor of history and director of the Institute for African-American Studies at the University of Connecticut. "When we've seen progress, we've also seen backlash."

Obama himself has tread cautiously on the subject of race, but many African-Americans have talked openly about perceived antagonism toward them since Obama took office. As evidence, they point to events involving police brutality or cite bumper stickers, cartoons and protest posters that mock the president as a lion or a monkey, or lynch him in effigy.

"Part of it is growing polarization within American society," said Fredrick Harris, director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University. "The last Democrat in the White House said we had to have a national discussion about race. There's been total silence around issues of race with this president. But, as you see, whether there is silence, or an elevation of the discussion of race, you still have polarization. It will take more generations, I suspect, before we eliminate these deep feelings."
Overall, the survey found that by virtue of racial prejudice, Obama could lose 5 percentage points off his share of the popular vote in his Nov. 6 contest against Republican challenger Mitt Romney. However, Obama also stands to benefit from a 3 percentage point gain due to pro-black sentiment, researchers said. Overall, that means an estimated net loss of 2 percentage points due to anti-black attitudes.

The poll finds that racial prejudice is not limited to one group of partisans. Although Republicans were more likely than Democrats to express racial prejudice in the questions measuring explicit racism (79 percent among Republicans compared with 32 percent among Democrats), the implicit test found little difference between the two parties. That test showed a majority of both Democrats and Republicans held anti-black feelings (55 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Republicans), as did about half of political independents (49 percent).

Obama faced a similar situation in 2008, the survey then found.

The Associated Press developed the surveys to measure sensitive racial views in several ways and repeated those studies several times between 2008 and 2012.

The explicit racism measures asked respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements about black and Hispanic people. In addition, the surveys asked how well respondents thought certain words, such as "friendly," ''hardworking," ''violent" and "lazy," described blacks, whites and Hispanics.

The same respondents were also administered a survey designed to measure implicit racism, in which a photo of a black, Hispanic or white male flashed on the screen before a neutral image of a Chinese character. The respondents were then asked to rate their feelings toward the Chinese character. Previous research has shown that people transfer their feelings about the photo onto the character, allowing researchers to measure racist feelings even if a respondent does not acknowledge them.

Results from those questions were analyzed with poll takers' ages, partisan beliefs, views on Obama and Romney and other factors, which allowed researchers to predict the likelihood that people would vote for either Obama or Romney. Those models were then used to estimate the net impact of each factor on the candidates' support.

All the surveys were conducted online. Other research has shown that poll takers are more likely to share unpopular attitudes when they are filling out a survey using a computer rather than speaking with an interviewer. Respondents were randomly selected from a nationally representative panel maintained by GfK Custom Research.

Overall results from each survey have a margin of sampling error of approximately plus or minus 4 percentage points. The most recent poll, measuring anti-black views, was conducted Aug. 30 to Sept. 11.

Andra Gillespie, an Emory University political scientist who studies race-neutrality among black politicians, contrasted the situation to that faced by the first black mayors elected in major U.S. cities, the closest parallel to Obama's first-black situation. Those mayors, she said, typically won about 20 percent of the white vote in their first races, but when seeking reelection they enjoyed greater white support presumably because "the whites who stayed in the cities ... became more comfortable with a black executive."
"President Obama's election clearly didn't change those who appear to be sort of hard-wired folks with racial resentment," she said.

Negative racial attitudes can manifest in policy, noted Alan Jenkins, an assistant solicitor general during the Clinton administration and now executive director of the Opportunity Agenda think tank.

"That has very real circumstances in the way people are treated by police, the way kids are treated by teachers, the way home seekers are treated by landlords and real estate agents," Jenkins said.

Hakeem Jeffries, a New York state assemblyman and candidate for a congressional seat being vacated by a fellow black Democrat, called it troubling that more progress on racial attitudes had not been made. Jeffries has fought a New York City police program of "stop and frisk" that has affected mostly blacks and Latinos but which supporters contend is not racially focused.

"I do remain cautiously optimistic that the future of America bends toward the side of increased racial tolerance," Jeffries said. "We've come a long way, but clearly these results demonstrate there's a long way to go."

[Cooter]

It is just fine to vote for someone based on race as long as that person is black. You guys don't remember that double standard? There was a memo a while back. I'd really like to find a single black person voting for Romney. I am sure such a person exists but he/she is like a unicorn as far as rarity.

Come down to rural Brazoria county. Tons of black conservatives

[Geor!]

the black chick from "clueless" is voting romney. of course, the black community tore her ass up for not being pro-O

I'd show her my O face.

[32valves_of_pleasure]

i sometimes wonder what would happen with the whole race card if bobby jindal ran.

[naynay]

why are ya'll so tied up on race?

[347Mike]

why are ya'll so tied up on race?

Because it is evident.. Don't play dumb... It's something like 96% of black people voted for Obama. Higher than any previous democrat. Why is that? Do you really think Obama has something more than his skin color that his incumbents didn't?