Is Racism Really Costing Obama?

The Associated Press reported a poll conducted by Stanford University, to find out why Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama has not yet been able to seal the presidential nod in an election cycle that experts on both sides of the political spectrum admit should be an overwhelmingly strong election season for the Democrats. The polls conclusion, shockingly, stated that a large number of white Americans harbor negative feelings towards Blacks. Here's the Breakdown:

• The Poll states that a Staggering 1/3 of White Democrats harbor negative views of Blacks
• The Poll states that 40% of ALL White Americans have "some" negative feelings towards Blacks.
• The Poll states that just 7 out 10 people who call themselves Democrats plan to support Obama, compared to the 85% of people who call themselves Republicans that plan to support McCain
• The Poll states that their are more whites who have positive things to say about Blacks then negative
• The Poll states that the 3 out of 10 Democrats that do not support Obama, do plan to support McCain
• The Poll claims that Obama would have at least a 6% point increase if not for white racism
• The Poll states that Given a choice of several positive and negative adjectives that might describe blacks, 20% of all whites said the word "violent" strongly applied. Among other words, 22% agreed with "boastful," 29% "complaining," 13% "lazy" and 11% "irresponsible." When asked about positive adjectives, whites were more likely to stay on the fence than give a strongly positive assessment.
• The Poll states that Among white Democrats, one-third cited a negative adjective and, of those, 58% said they planned to back Obama.
• The Poll states that more than a quarter of white Democrats agree that "if blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites." (Those who agreed with that statement were much less likely to back Obama.)
• The poll states that about 20% of independent voters called blacks "intelligent" or "smart," more than one third latched on the adjective "complaining" and 24% said blacks were "violent."
• The survey of 2,227 adults was conducted Aug. 27 to Sept. 5. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.1 percentage points.

The poll states and claims a lot of interesting and thought provoking information. Are one-third of all white Democrats really "racist?" Racism is widely viewed as ignorant minded prejudice in today's world. However, what truly constitutes racism?If Race really is an issue in this election, who is making it one? If their is racism on one side, is it likely that their is racism on the other? This poll provokes many of these questions, and others.

One interesting thing, I believe, would be if Stanford used the same polling techniques on Blacks over the same issues. What would be the outcome of that poll? It's no secret that Blacks are overwhelmingly and unanimously voting for Barack Obama. It would be interesting to see how many Black's are not voting for McCain because he is white and are voting for Obama because he is black. My only quarry with the poll is would that be deemed racist too? One definition of equality is being judged by the same standards. It's very conceivable that a white man would be labeled "racist" if when asked, who he was voting for and why said, "McCain because he's white." My question is would the same scrutiny be as conceivable if a Black man was asked the same question and answered, "Obama because he is black?" Would the same standards hold?

Another valid question is assuming the polls information is truly statistically accurate why do roughly 20 something percent of whites (Republicans/Democrats/Independents all) associate the word "violent" with black people? Furthermore, does that necessarily constitute racism? Any answer to those questions is only pure assumption without a plethora of truly unbiased research and study but perhaps 20% of whites connect blacks to rap music? Rap music which is widely known to glorify gang violence and crime life is predominantly recorded by blacks. Maybe whites make a connection? Or perhaps whites notice that violent crime rates when compared to blacks are widely disproportionate with blacks commiting a higher number of violent crimes? Now the reasons for differing crime rates is quite a touchy subject and widely debated. However, despite the reason the statistic is still accurate. So is it racist for a white person to connect the two? The poll states it is.

In my opinion it does not constitute racism to connect those terms. The poll even says there is a noteworthy amount of people who connect the terms and are still planning on backing Barack Obama. I believe to cry "racism!" is dangerous indeed. It reminds me a lot of the 'Willy Horton" ad in the late 80's. If Obama loses there is no doubt that many on the losing side will cry out foul because of racism. Now I'm not saying that racism doesn't exist, however, I am saying that i don't believe one third of white democrats are truly racist. I think the numbers have been stated in a way that doesn't accurately represent the demeanor of those white democrats. Furthermore, I am every bit the believer that racism exists on the same level among blacks as it does whites. However, I do not believe the average educated, job keeping, hard working American white or black harbors racism. On that note in no way do I believe if Obama loses it will be because of racist white Americans- I think that's simply a ploy.

A Different Obama: From somone who knew him.

RFFM.org conducted an online interview with Debbie Revor. In 1994 Revor was employed as a legal secretary with the law firm Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland while Sen. Barack Obama was an associate with the firm. Mrs. Revor's interview sheds light on what Barack Obama was like in private and will help give Americans an impression of the man who is running for the presidency of the United States. The interview with Mrs. Revor was conducted by Daniel Zanoza, RFFM.org's Executive Director, and was not edited in any form.

Biography:
Debbie Revor graduated from Sawyer College with an Administrative Secretary Certificate in 1981. She was a legal secretary for 15 years in Chicago. Revor worked for personal injury firms and corporate law firms. Some of the firms she was employed by include Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland (Sen. Barack Obama's former law firm), Rudnick & Wolfe, and Landau, Omahana, et al. Revor does not work for any political party.
Mrs. Revor has two children, 11 and 9, and has been married for 12-1/2 years. She has worked from home for four years as a Legal Transcriptionist. Her interests include coaching her daughter's basketball team, reading, working out, going for long walks, camping and spending time with her family.

Debbie Revor "In Her Own Words"

Q. I understand CBS NEWS approached you to do an interview regarding your history with Obama. Why did you reject that offer and decide to discuss your experiences with the Democratic Party's presidential nominee with RFFM.org?

A. I am a private person and didn't want to be on TV. Since I also don't feel the media is fair right now to anyone but Sen. Obama, I didn't want my experiences to be shown in a different light than the truth. I just wanted the truth to be told about my experience with working in his law firm and I felt that RFFM.org would tell that truth and not change it to fit their preconceived opinions of Sen. Obama.

Q. Can you tell me how you first met Sen. Obama?

A. I met him when I went to work for Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland in January 1994, a civil rights law firm on the near north side of Chicago on Erie Street. I got the job through a friend who I worked with at a temporary job two years before. She worked at the firm and gave me a good reference. She was Sen. Obama’s legal secretary.

Q. What was your impression of Sen. Obama?

A. He wasn’t friendly and was standoffish and arrogant from the start of my job there. My first impression was that I didn’t like him because of this arrogance.

Q. What were his duties with the law firm to the best of your knowledge?

A. Obama was an associate at the firm and had been there about two years. I saw him have meetings with the other attorneys and he helped with hearings and did prep work for trials.

Obama probably did other things too, but I wasn’t his personal secretary. These are the things I observed him do or heard his secretary talk about.

Q. You told me the law firm you worked for dealt with civil rights. So would it be safe to say Obama was a champion for the downtrodden and less fortunate? What were your personal impressions of Obama? Did he seem like helping the poor was his primary agenda?

A. I didn’t feel at the time Obama cared about the downtrodden and less fortunate and I still don’t feel that way. I didn’t see any proof of that at all during the 11 months I worked there. I don’t have any knowledge of Obama helping in the community in any way. We as legal secretaries weren’t paid very much there and he could’ve started helping with that – speaking up about the low pay we had. I didn’t see that he cared about our state in life. I also saw him act in ways that were very self-serving, self-focused and ambitious.

Q. I know you are a person who cares deeply about your faith. Previously you told me that you did not feel welcome or comfortable as a Christian in your workplace. Why did you feel that way?
A. My friend and I were Christians. We liked to pray together sometimes at our lunch hour in my office with the door shut. After the attorneys found out what we were doing, they would walk in and interrupt us. After a while, Sen. Obama didn’t let his secretary take lunch at the same time I did as he would keep her working very late so she had to take a late lunch. I felt at the time it was because he didn’t want us to spend time praying. He didn’t like his secretary spending time talking about her faith or spending time with me. He rolled his eyes at her and I heard him and an attorney or two talking about her and/or us behind our backs. She felt very oppressed by him and wasn’t herself after a while. We really didn’t talk about our faith after that unless he was out of the office or we were outside the office. You know at other places of employment you could occasionally talk about matters of faith as people would want to in casual conversation or ask about it or ask me for prayer for something, but that never happened there. The attorneys, especially Sen. Obama, made us feel that wasn’t acceptable at all.

Q. It sounds like you feel Sen. Obama and some of those in the law firm were targeting you for your religious beliefs. This must have been distressing to you especially when you were working for a firm that was supposed to champion civil rights. How did this affect you emotionally?

A. I didn’t like to go to work after a while. I didn’t hang around with my friend anymore as I was so uncomfortable around Sen. Obama. He would give me these glaring looks and stare at me like I was invisible. It was very creepy. I became very depressed about the whole workplace situation and left there after 11 months.

Q. Sen. Obama claims to be an advocate for national healthcare. He constantly says in his speeches that everyone in America should be entitled to good healthcare. What was your experience at the law firm regarding this issue? Did the firm offer comprehensive healthcare for its employees?

A. We didn’t have comprehensive healthcare. We may have had a hospitalization plan, but I don’t remember even having that at the time. Why wasn’t Sen. Obama concerned about that? That would’ve been a small issue for him to take up and fight for, right? Better medical benefits for a small staff?

Q. Let’s try to get some of your more personal observations regarding the man, Barack Obama. Was he friendly to the staff? Did he seem like a regular guy? Was he approachable?

A. I don’t remember Sen. Obama ever going out of his way to be friendly or personable to the staff. He was definitely that way with the partners of the firm, but with the staff he was very arrogant and standoffish, very serious and never one to just chat you up or ask how things were with you or anything of that sort. I actually never even talked to him after a while because I was so uncomfortable with his manner towards my friend, myself and the other staff. He was not approachable and seemed very, very driven by ambition and not interested at all in the “little people” like secretaries and staff.

Q. Obviously this is not something that is easy for you to do. You aren’t a public person. You aren’t seeking public office. But yet you had the courage to come forward and share some very private experiences in your life. Some others might not be so brave because politics is a dirty business today or at least many think so. What made you decide to come forward and talk about your work experience with Obama?

A. So that the public would know that Sen. Barack Obama is not a nice, easygoing charmer as he portrays himself on TV. He was a hard, unapproachable, very driven and ambitious person. He was also very self-centered, self-concerned and self-focused. I wouldn’t ever want him to be President as I feel he would make a lot of mistakes in office because of his defensiveness and self-centered attitude. I don’t think he could care for the people of America as he acts like he does. If he couldn’t care for people in a small office with a small staff, which would have been relatively easy, how can he care what happens to the poor and downtrodden?

Also, people need to know he was a new attorney working as an associate with not much experience when I worked with him in 1994. How has he risen to where he is in 14 years? Running for the highest office of the land? How has America let that happen and why can’t people see through his façade? He is a good motivational speaker, but he is not ready to lead this country.

* To hear more of Mrs. Revor's story, tune in to the Dr. Laurie Roth Show on Tuesday, Sept. 16th at 9 P.M. Central. Roth will interview both Revor and Dan Zanoza, the Executive Director of RFFM.org, who conducted the above interview.
Roth's nationally syndicated program will be the first to conduct a live on-air interview with Revor. Roth's program is aired on the IRN-USA Radio Network.

(All credit of this article goes to RFFM.ORG)

Moose Shooter & Maverick, But Can Obama Handle Them?

With the newest USA Today/Gallup poll showing Senator McCain and his running mate 4 percentage points above Obama/Biden, it makes you wonder. It makes you wonder if anyone could have ever guessed the way this election would really turn out, and at this rate Lord only knows what lies ahead of us. The post convention 4 point nod to McCain is 11 points higher then his previous numbers (a larger bounce then Obama received after his convention...yes big stage and all) as well as being his biggest lead since January. The New Polls show McCain leading with a 54% support from likely voters compared to Barack's now 44%.

So does this have the Obama campaign scrambling?- according to them, no. “Up or down, we believe national polls are meaningless,” Obama spokesman Bill Burton told FOX News. Whether your for or against the Senator from Illinois you have to logically look at that statement with some scrutiny. Furthermore, if it were Obama in the lead you would likely here his campaign ascribe it to "Barack's nation wide appeal for change, his new direction, and a "unity" he shares with the needs of the American people." Except this time it's not Barack in the lead anymore.

In another statement during a news conference in Ohio, Obama himself said, "This has been a good story to write about, and there's always something new. And my general approach throughout this process is not to worry about today's news or yesterday's polls." Perhaps, Obama, isn't worried but then how would you explain his distinct new approach to dealing with Governor Palin in the last few days?

While his campaign speeches have predominately remained primarily on policy there has been an obvious spike of remarks against John McCain and even more predominately his V.P. pick Sarah Palin, as a result of the new polls. He's began spouting utter disbelief that McCain and Palin have been painting themselves as the real agents of change. “This is a party that’s been in charge for eight years and now they’re trying to run against themselves,” he said at one campaign stop. “These folks are shameless.”

Baracks's latest accusation against the Republicans was made apparent Monday when he made these remarks, "Mother, governor, moose shooter, I mean, I think that's cool. That's cool stuff. But, so they talk about biography, and then they spent a lot of time talking about me. But you notice they didn't talk about the issues." Furthermore, Obama insisted that Palin was getting a pass by the media. In his own words Republicans are "working the refs" in the media. This coming from one of the most obviously media supported candidates in, perhaps, the history of modern day politics.

The most recent of Obama's remarks to fight against the wave of the new found enthusiasm for the McCain/Palin ticket, came from the twist of a line Palin made during her acceptance speech last week describing the only difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull being lipstick. Obama said, "You can put lipstick on a pig, It's still a pig." The pig line Ironically being the same line McCain had used to describe Hillary Clinton's health-care proposals.

So one of the most Historic elections we will likely ever see is truly gearing up. Both sides are coming out firing like an old west shootout. Obama trying to gain back any kind of momentum after being knocked on his heels by the Palin choice and McCain trying to keep the spirit going strong. No one can truly tell what November will bring, but theatrics and hard words are sure to accompany us all the way.