Chad’s Morning Brief: Obama to Attack Romney Over Bain, The AP Wants to Know if Black People Vote For Obama Because He Is Black, and More
Here is your Morning Brief for the morning of October 15, 2012. Give us your feedback below and tune in to The Chad Hasty Show for these and many more topics from 8:30 to 11 am.
1. Obama Debate Prep (link)
Will President Obama be more aggressive in the debate Tuesday? Will he attack Mitt Romney on Bain Capital? According to Fox News, the answer is yes.
As President Obama began to hunker down at a plush resort here for three full days of debate prep, his campaign team signaled the incumbent may steal a page from Vice President Joe Biden and show a more aggressive tone in Tuesday's second face-to-face showdown with Republican Mitt Romney.
"Gov. Romney has been making pitches all of his life and he knows how to say what people want to hear whether that was during his time at Bain or during the dozens of town halls he did during the primary," Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Saturday.
It will be interesting to see just how aggressive the President will be in a town-hall forum. They really aren't the place to be aggressive. The attack on Romney's time at Bain as failed in the past and I predict will fail again.
2. Supporting Obama Because He is Black (link)
The AP asked over the weekend if black people vote for Obama just because he is black. The short answer to their article? Yes.
Are black people supporting Obama mainly because he's black? If race is just one factor in blacks' support of Obama, does that make them racist? Can blacks' support for Obama be compared with white voters who may favor his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, because he's white?
These questions have long animated conservatives who are frustrated by claims that white people who oppose Obama's policies are racist. This week, when a black actress who tweeted an endorsement of Romney was subjected to a stream of abuse from other African-Americans, the politics of racial accusation came full circle once again.
"It goes both ways," said Gary, who is white. "There is racial bias amongst whites, and there is racial bias amongst blacks. But as far as the press is concerned, it only goes one way."
Antonio Luckett, a sales representative in Milwaukee who is black, called the attacks on Dash unfair. But when people speak out against a symbol of black progress like Obama, he said, "African-Americans tend to be internally hurt by that."
"We still have a civil rights (era) mentality, but we're not living in a civil rights-based world anymore," he said. "We want to say, `You're black, you need to stand behind black people.'"
Luckett said one reason he voted for Obama in the 2008 primary against Hillary Clinton was because Obama is black: "Yes, I will admit that."
Is that racism? Not in Luckett's mind. "It's voting for someone who would understand your side of the coin a lot better."
Such logic runs into trouble when applied to a white person voting for Romney because he understands whiteness better. Ron Christie, a black conservative who worked for former President George W. Bush, finds both sides of that coin unacceptable.
Christie sees it in his barbershop, where black men shifted from calling candidate Obama "half-white" and "not one of us" to demanding that Christie stop opposing the first black president.
He sees it in the comments of radio host Tom Joyner, who told his millions of listeners a year ago, "Let's not even deal with facts right now. Let's deal with our blackness and pride - and loyalty. . I'm not afraid or ashamed to say that as black people, we should do it because he's a black man."
The actor Samuel L. Jackson said much the same thing: "I voted for Barack because he was black," he told Ebony magazine. "Cuz that's why other folks vote for other people - because they look like them."
In 2011, as black unemployment continued to rise, the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus said that if Clinton was still president, "we probably would be still marching on the White House . (but) nobody wants to do anything that would empower the people who hate the president."
And just last week, the rapper Snoop Dogg posted a list of voting reasons, written by someone else, on a social media account. No. 1 on his pro-Obama list: He's black. Snoop's top reason to not vote for Romney: He's white.
All of this may help explain why Veronica Scott-Miller, a junior at historically black Hampton University, directed the following tweet at Dash: "You get a lil money and you forget that you're black and a woman. Two things Romney hates."
In an interview, Scott-Miller said the GOP fought Obama's effort to provide funding for historically black colleges like hers. She dislikes Romney's opposition to abortion and thinks Republicans have a "negative stigma about us . they make generalizations in their speeches about our race in general, and they make up terms like welfare queens and stuff."
I wouldn't say that all black people voted for Obama because he was black. I would say about 97% though did. Just a guess and since the AP doesn't dispute it...
3. Faith and Football (link)
The Texas Tribune had a story over the weekend dealing with the legal battle in Kountze, Texas over faith and HS football.
There is a new angle to the usual hometown high school football pride on display in the store windows and marquees of this East Texas town.
Supporters still urge their Lions on to victory. But there are also messages of support for the cheerleaders in particular and the Christian faith in general — and occasionally, of scorn for the Kountze school district, which ordered the girls to stop holding banners bearing Bible verses during athletic events last month.
For the moment, the rule is on hold. At the start of a recent home football game, the team charged onto the field through a banner painted with the words of Hebrews 12:1. A day earlier, a state judge extended a temporary restraining order stopping the district from enforcing the ban.
Within the 36 hours before they showed up for the Friday night game, the cheerleaders had appeared on Good Morning America, Skyped with Gov. Rick Perry and taken the stand in the courtroom to plead their national headline-grabbing case.
Meanwhile the town has become the latest setting in a string of lawsuits over where students' rights to religious expression end and the constraints on Texas public schools as governmental entities begin. The situation in Kountze — which has the district caught between the advice of its own lawyers and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott — shows the fine line administrators must walk as they try to follow the law amid fiercely held beliefs on both sides.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation and the small minority that are complaining about the banners are a bunch of losers who have nothing better to do. I hope the school and Greg Abbott fight this.
4. Race & Education (link)
The State of Florida just passed a plan that makes your race a key factor in academics. The Florida State Board of Education approved a plan that sets academic goals based on a student's race. According to CBS Tampa:
On Tuesday, the board passed a revised strategic plan that says that by 2018, it wants 90 percent of Asian students, 88 percent of white students, 81 percent of Hispanics and 74 percent of black students to be reading at or above grade level. For math, the goals are 92 percent of Asian kids to be proficient, whites at 86 percent, Hispanics at 80 percent and blacks at 74 percent. It also measures by other groupings, such as poverty and disabilities, reported the Palm Beach Post.
The plan has infuriated many community activists in Palm Beach County and across the state.
“To expect less from one demographic and more from another is just a little off-base,” Juan Lopez, magnet coordinator at John F. Kennedy Middle School in Riviera Beach, told the Palm Beach Post.
This is what it's come down to. Pathetic and sad.
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