The Briefing Room
General Category => National/Breaking News => Topic started by: mystery-ak on January 19, 2014, 07:59:01 pm
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2014-01-19/obama-says-racial-animus-may-soften-support-new-yorker-reports.html (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2014-01-19/obama-says-racial-animus-may-soften-support-new-yorker-reports.html)
Obama Says Racial Animus Blunts Approval, New Yorker Reports
By Brian Wingfield - Jan 19, 2014
President Barack Obama said that racial tensions may have softened his popularity among white voters within the last two years, according to a story posted on the New Yorker magazine’s website today.
“There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black president,” Obama said in the article by David Remnick, appearing in the magazine’s Jan. 27 edition.
“Now, the flip side of it is there are some black folks and maybe some white folks who really like me and give me the benefit of the doubt precisely because I’m a black president,” Obama said in his most direct comments on how race has affected his political standing since he’s been in office.
Obama’s second term has been marked by controversies including a partial government shutdown in October, revelations that the National Security Agency has gathered personal mobile phone data and the troubled rollout of health-insurance expansion.
Obama’s approval rating among all voters is 39 percent and his disapproval rating is 53 percent, according to a Gallup Poll conducted Jan. 14-16. In the 2012 presidential election, Republican candidate Mitt Romney won 59 percent of the white vote, compared with Obama’s 39 percent, according to exit polling by a consortium of major news outlets. Obama won 43 percent of the white vote in 2008 against 55 percent for opponent John McCain, a Republican senator from Arizona.
Obamacare Blamed
“Poll after poll makes it very clear that Obamacare and other job-killing policies are the reason” for the president’s decline in popularity, Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer said in a phone interview today.
Obama offered reflections on a variety of subjects in the New Yorker story, including his view about the dangers of playing professional football, which has been the subject of media scrutiny over players’ head injuries.
“I would not let my son play pro football,” the article quotes Obama, the father of two daughters, as saying. When asked by Remnick how those dangers squared with his enjoyment of the game as a spectator, Obama said professional players are aware of the inherent risk in playing a full-contact sport.
Like Smokers
“They know what they’re buying into,” Obama said. “It is no longer a secret. It’s sort of the feeling I have about smokers, you know?”
Obama acknowledged that reports of U.S. surveillance programs, including allegations that the government tapped German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone, had created a “breach of trust,” Remnick reported.
Obama said he also assumes others are trying to spy on him, and for this reason he doesn’t have a phone, according to The New Yorker.
He said, “there are European governments that we know spy on us, and there is a little bit of Claude Rains in ‘Casablanca’ -- shocked that gambling is going on,” the magazine quoted him as saying, referring to the actor who played the police captain in the 1942 movie.
To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Wingfield in Washington at bwingfield3@bloomberg.net
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O is so tiresome. He's a thin-skinned narcissist who refuses to admit his own failings. Schools are closed tomorrow to celebrate MLK Day. How ironic that blacks honor and commemorate MLK, while so many of them refuse to live up to his ideals. What is their point? Evidently, they don't believe in a damn word he said, or they would follow his example.
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Que the violins... what a load of hogwash.
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O is so tiresome. He's a thin-skinned narcissist who refuses to admit his own failings. Schools are closed tomorrow to celebrate MLK Day. How ironic that blacks honor and commemorate MLK, while so many of them refuse to live up to his ideals. What is their point? Evidently, they don't believe in a damn word he said, or they would follow his example.
How appropriate to bring up MLK in this context, happy.
There is nothing about King's dream that is embodied in the weak, childish, racist Barack Obama.
He's a shame upon all those who fought for equality.
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How appropriate to bring up MLK in this context, happy.
There is nothing about King's dream that is embodied in the weak, childish, racist Barack Obama.
He's a shame upon all those who fought for equality.
It's been on my mind a lot. Blacks keep touting him, as though MLK was talking to whites only. If they would actually read and/or listen to what he said, they would know he was talking to all Americans. MLK admonished blacks often in his speeches, particularly the violent ones. He didn't care for Jesse Jackson, nor did he trust him. Jesse pretended they were close, always the user.
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It's been on my mind a lot. Blacks keep touting him, as though MLK was talking to whites only. If they would actually read and/or listen to what he said, they would know he was talking to all Americans. MLK admonished blacks often in his speeches, particularly the violent ones. He didn't care for Jesse Jackson, nor did he trust him. Jesse pretended they were close, always the user.
I often wonder how different things would have been if MLK had lived, and the likes of Jesse Jackson hadn't become the face of the Civil Rights movement.
I think perhaps racial reconciliation would have become more of a reality.
I also wonder what MLK would think of the violence and despair of black youth today.
I can't imagine he would feel anything other than despair about how his goals had not been achieved.
(And I can't see that he would think much of Obama's incessant whining and weakness).
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I often wonder how different things would have been if MLK had lived, and the likes of Jesse Jackson hadn't become the face of the Civil Rights movement.
I think perhaps racial reconciliation would have become more of a reality.
I also wonder what MLK would think of the violence and despair of black youth today.
I can't imagine he would feel anything other than despair about how his goals had not been achieved.
(And I can't see that he would think much of Obama's incessant whining and weakness).
I have long believed at JFK not been assassinated and LBJ president and MLK had not been assassinated we would be a much different country today.
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I have long believed at JFK not been assassinated and LBJ president and MLK had not been assassinated we would be a much different country today.
And Jesse Jackson would never be in a position be nothing more than a local community organizer, if that. I wouldn't put it past Jackson to be part of a conspiracy against MLK. He wanted the entire enchilada, and figured he could overcome Ralph Abernathy.
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And Jesse Jackson would never be in a position be nothing more than a local community organizer, if that. I wouldn't put it past Jackson to be part of a conspiracy against MLK. He wanted the entire enchilada, and figured he could overcome Ralph Abernathy.
Yep.......
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I have long believed at JFK not been assassinated and LBJ president and MLK had not been assassinated we would be a much different country today.
Completely agree.
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Just a veiled way of saying if you have a problem with chronic unresolved unemployment, loss of freedoms, Benghazi, Obamacare.... you might be a racist.