Is Obama Setting Himself Up to Lose a Second Term?

Here in liberal Massachusetts, there's a big negative backlash against President Obama's statement last night about Sergeant Crowley
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/07/crowleys_union.html

The officer in question is highly respected, with no significant complaints. And he teaches a class on how to avoid racial profiling.

The liberal local papers, especially the news reports, are fairly anti-Obama on this one. Massachusetts appears to be behind the officer. And he's losing the police vote for the Democrats.

 

If he doesn't win a second term, it won't be because of that comment. Especially 3 years from now. It will be cause of the economy and a number of other x factors

 

I Think , This Is Fake Obama Is Death.

 

I love how he said its fact a disproportionate number of blacks and latinos are stopped by police. DUH!. Look at the jails, what does the percentage say about who commits crimes? It freaking hilarious. When I worked patrol I used to have people say that all the time. My response would be "Right, because I can see your skin color at midnight through tinted windows" Its the minorities that keep the race card going and going. They bring it up, and then the whites get fed up with it, eventually they hate everyone of that race. Simple conditioning.

 

Barack Obama is a hyper-inflated political bubble that will burst sooner or later.

- Yes we can!!
- ..really....?

 

Check the polls. His bubble is deflating as more people realize that he is just another con artist politician who is raping the American public in order to benefit unions and liberal causes.

Most presidents can only get away with pushing their idealist agendas for the first 6 months. His time is up. Now he has to start showing results or he will be just another one term president who leaves office with a situation much worse than when he entered. Can you say Jimmy Carter II?

 

You are really going to hate me on this one, but.....

The numbers of "minorities" that commit crimes is not higher than the number of non-minorities, or "whites" that commit crimes, and Government prison statistics show that there are more white males in prison that black.

However, I can speak from experience having lived in 4 different communities in 3 different states that police f*ck with black males constantly. I have personally been arrested 3 times in my life and put in jail for a number of days for nothing. No charges, no crime, no warrants, no outstanding tickets. Just simple harassment. You can only cooperate for so long before your anger starts to show, and that's when they arrest you ! As if they are purposely screwing with you to see how far they can push you, until you say somehting and then all of a sudden you are resisting arrest (how can you resist an arrest that there is no cause for in the first place?), or disorderly conduct for taking back.

It is so common to people like me that I just avoid the police all together. And I am a handsome, well dressed, educated, small business owner. I drive a nice car, live in a nice neighborhood, dress well, speak well, contribute to charity, and obey the rules..but it doesn't matter if you get the wrong cop, on the wrong day...you can just count on missing 2 or 3 days of work and there is nothing that you can do about it.

No one cares, Every lawyer will agree with you (even the district attorney), that you got screwed, by no one will take the case unless you get assaulted or injured.

And I have friends that work for my local Police force, the county jail, and state police, but unfortunately they are not the ones that end up pulling me over..... because I have an air freshener hanging for my rear view mirror, and then arresting me for having a bad attitude after a 40 minute traffic stop on a Sunday morning with a dozen doughnuts in the passenger seat.

The supreme court just ruled on a case that shows statistically over the last 25 years especially, that courts across the country have sentenced blacks and Mexican minorities to harsher sentences than whites who committed the exact same crime, with the same or similar circumstances...so don't tell me it doesn't exist. Maybe you don't do it, but if you are on any Police force in this country, you know some officers that do.

You think you are tired of hearing people bitch about it ? Well people are tired of having to say it. No one wants to live like this. No one wants to walk around and know in the back of your mind that you possibly will not be treated equally today.

Do you really think that black people want to keep drawing attention to this crap ? To themselves? All it does is affect peoples perception as a whole and make otherwise normal people walk on eggshells, or lash out in hatred. Black people would much rather never have to discuss this ever again, and move on...but it keeps happening.

Never mind that Harvard guy, he's at home now with no charges. And quite frankly, I'm tired of hearing about him.

Had it been me (I'm not well known, and I don't work at Harvard), no one would know about it, no one would have cared, and I would just be getting out of jail after having days of my life wasted with no recourse for justice of my own. That is just the way it is.

I didn't see CNN on my front porch the last time I was thrown in jail for 4 days for nothing.

 

True. But it's tough to win the Presidency without the police vote. Not impossible, just tough. And as the police go, so do the firemen go. And there is a significant electorate of independent voters that often vote with police & fire (including myself).

 

I used to think the above was BS until I left the NYC Metro area and went away to college. I'd watch my black friends get pulled over for no reason. Often it was enough to see me, a white man, in the back seat for the officer to dismiss us. But sometime that wasn't enough because I'm full-blooded Italian and outside of NYC sometimes my features didn't look "right" to them. Lucky for my friends I had police in the family & I'd just show my PBA card.

I'm not saying that there aren't African-Americans that take advantage of the situation - Gates has a book coming out, Axelrod planted the question, and President Obama recited his planned response. But until I left my neighborhood I thought that racial discrimination was a crock, simply because when I was growing up it didn't exist in my world.

 

I don't think this will be the main issue 3 years from now. Besides, Police and Firefighters will also remember how stimulus money to their city or state prevented layoffs in their departments, or saved their budget for new equipment and maintenance.

They will also remember the additional $2 Billion dollars in Justice Department Stimulus that allowed communities to continue to hire new recruits when needed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/07/us/politics/07states.html

I don't think that this issue between one officer, and one man will affect who the Police and Firefighters support in the next election...it's too small and insignificant in the overall picture.

 

We are in big trouble the next four years, lets hope votes spit out the kool aid before the next election.

 

http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/07/police_unions_c.html

The Boston Globe, which heavily supported Obama, is reporting that the police unions are now demanding an apology from the President.

I think it's safe to assume that Axelrod is heavily investigating all officers involved and are looking for anything to use against them. Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick (D), another Axelrod candidate, whose popularity is so low even his own party no longer wants him to run for re-election, is most probably helping to dig up dirt on the officers.

Given the timeline for these things, if there is any dirt I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that the dirt on the officers will show up next Tuesday or Wednesday.

 

I think you guys are trying waaayyy to hard to make this into something prolific. There are much more important issues on the table than this.

Amazing that 7 months into his administration everyone is nit picking every breath as if he was in office 7 years already.

Where were you people in June of 2007 when 30 nationwide mortgage companies closed in one month ? I didn't see anyone calling for G.W.'s head.

This Cambridge Police thing is really trivial compared to all the work that needs to be done, and a huge misdirection from the real issues.

If any lawmakers jump on this, instead of doing their job to get something accomplished with the other 546 members of congress, with all the legislation they have pending that need some work done on them, they need to be removed from office and go work for Inside Edition, or The National Enquirer.

We really don't have time for this.

 

Depends how you look at the numbers. The over all number of black/white people in prison is close, but the percentage of the population of white/black in prison is much different:

On June 30, 2006, an estimated 4.8% of black men were in prison or jail, compared to 1.9% of Hispanic men and 0.7% of white men.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/pjim06.htm

So, with that said, as racist as it may sound, it's a fact that a black person is more likely to spend time in prison for crimes than a white person. Now why that is could be for many reasons from being treated as lower class by racists, given less opportunities, more likely to be born on the streets, whatever it is, it still doesn't change that it's a fact.

I've lived all over the US in many major cities (LA, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Sarasota, Memphis all over a year each as a telecom engineer and small business owner). I've seen and experienced in some areas the clear profiling.

Working nights downtown LA in the late 1990's (1 Wilshire) got me pulled over constantly running for a food break to the 7-11 with my highly modified 300ZX twin turbo with tinted windows, 18" rims and dropped to the ground (silly car phase many of us go through lol). They clearly wanted to know what I was doing downtown at that time but made up some stupid reason for pulling me over. Now if I had been black would they have probed me more? I dunno, I worked alone back then.

A good cop knows the statistics and uses them to do the best possible job they can without harassing. Many cops come from the military where profiling using many aspects incl race is actually taught (6 years Marines myself). Not to make racial pigs, but to access and evaluate their situation and danger which is used very successfully in Iraq right now. When you see something that throws a flag of question in an action or situation you factor in the race, age, sex, and many other things such as body language, clothes, and many others to understand a person and their threat level. We do it as human nature as well, it's been passed down from our ancestors as a survival factor of evolution as with all animals and even greater with humans. We evaluate the threat level of another person or group by their size, profile, and surroundings near us and act accordingly.

Who do you feel more threat from asking directions downtown LA after dark... an 80 year old woman in a wheelchair holding a large purse that could carry a gun, or a 20 year old with a gold tooth, sideways hat, and a huge coat and loose clothes that could conceal a gun? Now that's an extreme difference that's easy to call, but good cops use this methodology to evaluate who is likely to be a problem and who isn't in much more harder to read situations. Does it get abused and misread? No doubt it does and it may be that race isn't as much of a factor as others such as the type of car and clothes that combined with an act catch a cop's interest. It may just be that a black is more likely to be in those clothes and car resulting in more action being taken and be less of a color issue in setting off the flag.

This stuff needs to be considered before just throwing up a flag and saying cops hate blacks and looking for people to make examples of even if they're completely innocent.

Sorry to drive this off topic so much, I just wanted to throw that in lol

 

Yes we can

 

How come white people are ALWAYS the bad guys in these situations?

Is there another side of the coin we are ignoring here? I mean, what an easy way to get charges dropped, from what I heard he was being completely uncooperative with police and they warned him to stop or he would be arrested.

Why is it that it's always the white people that are at fault or being racist? Can't it be racism too if someone cries wolf to get themselves out of a situation? Why doesn't society ever stop and think about that?

I know I did it several times as a child. I get busted for something, and to take the attention off of me, I threw the attention back at someone else. Like I would rat my sister out for something she did that was even worse than my offense.

How come we can never discuss that maybe racism is used as a crutch BY SOME? Not saying everyone does it, but come on. I've certainly seen plenty of adults in my time pull this BS.

Call me racist for this post all you want. I don't think I am, and I certainly don't think these racial issues are ALWAYS one races fault. That's just racist!

The incident with the children being banned from the pool was clearly racially motivated, but this situation I have my doubts....

 

Obama made this a national racist issue, nobody else.

Obama and Henry Gates owe this police officer an apology before this is all said and done.

 

Henry Gates made this a racist issue. Obama took it to the national level.

 

His systematic self destruction started the other night. Its clear he is broken, and is currently unraveling. His spending and this health care crap appears to be his undoing. Even his own party cannot stand him anymore.

Then he starts a race war with a Police Officer? I'd say he's going to have to produce some pretty good results and high numbers if he ever expects to come back from the doldrums.

You're right.. His time IS up. No one's buying this BS anymore, not even his own party.

Carter II or Lame Duck Part Deux.

 

That's a shame, cause all they were doing is their job, civil servants shouldn't be thrown into the politics of this.