After an easy win in the Nevada caucuses on Saturday, Romney ignored his GOP rivals and instead tried to rebut the positive news for Obama of the day before, when the federal government announced unemployment had dropped to 8.3 percent.

"This week he's been trying to take a bow for 8.3 percent unemployment. Not so fast, Mr. President. This is the 36th straight month with unemployment above the red line your own administration drew," Romney said in his victory speech in Las Vegas, referring to the administration's claim in 2009 that unemployment would stay below 8 percent if the 2009 stimulus package were passed. "And if you take into account all the people who are struggling for work or who have just stopped looking, the real unemployment rate is over 15 percent."

Obama, in an interview NBC's Matt Lauer on Sunday, pointedly declared "I deserve a second term."

And while not attacking Romney, saying he wanted to wait till the GOP nomination process is over, he strongly defended his record on the economy.

"We've created 3.7 million jobs over the last 23 months," he said. "We've created the most jobs since 2005, the most manufacturing jobs since 1990."

That debate comes amid signs Obama is gaining strength. A Washington Post/ABC News poll released Monday showed Obama with a clear lead over Romney in a head-to-head match-up, after months of results that showed them either effectively tied or the former Massachusetts governor ahead.

The economy is likely to be the dividing line in a race between the president and Romney. The president is making the case that while he acknowledges challenges, the economy is showing steady improvement that is proof his policies are succeeding.

The Post/ABC poll suggested that argument is working, which is why Romney in trying to undermine it by pointing out the struggles many Americans are still enduring. This debate is likely to continue for nine months.

Follow Perry Bacon Jr. on Twitter at @perrybaconjr

Reed is leaving her position as assistant fire chief of San Jose, California. She said that her career as a firefighter began when her brother asked her to pass an application along to another brother. In 1986, Reed was working a job for a telephone company that involved her climbing poles to install new lines. Afraid of layoffs and with climbing experience, she decided to fill out the application herself.

"There are still a lot of departments that don't have any women," said Deloach-Reed in an interview with Reuters. "We still have a long way to go in regards to breaking down the doors."

The city of Oakland has changes tremendously. Deloach-Reed will join diverse group of city leaders. The chief of police Howard Jordan is black and Mayor Jean Quan, who appointed Reed, was the first woman and the first Asian-American mayor of Oakland.

Reed said that "Some had their vision of what firefighters are supposed to be like" and discriminated in the early days. "It was a different generation," she said but she and other women fought to get uniforms made for females, locks on bathroom doors and partitions in bunks.

With less that four percent of firefighters female and nearly 6 percent black, Reed says that the key to changing those figures is recruitment. She said, "Women in the fire department have to go out and tell other women it's a great profession, because there is still this stereotype that women are not firefighters."

The relative said Sarah Obama was traveling to her home in the village of Kogelo, in western Kenya, when the accident happened Saturday night.

He said the vehicle lost control and rolled as the driver attempted to overtake a truck near the Kisumu airport. The relative asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak for the family.

Najim Mawji, the chief operating officer of the Agha Khan hospital in Kisumu, said doctors discharged her Saturday night after she had gone through several tests.

Mawji said she coped well with the shock that came from the accident.

Sarah Obama is the second wife of Obama's paternal grandfather. Obama referred to her as "Granny" in his memoir, "Dreams from My Father," and described meeting her during his 1988 trip to his father's homeland and their awkwardness as they struggled to communicate.

Barack Obama has visited his Kenyan relatives three times in Kogelo, and his step-grandmother has gone to the U.S. at least three times. In a 2008 interview she said they are close, although they have to speak through an interpreter.

Kenya has a special regard for President Obama, the son of a Kenyan economist and an American anthropologist. Children, shops and dozens of minibuses -- which carry names in Kenya -- are named after the president.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

The request came a day after an Asian-American group called the ad "very disturbing."

The Michigan Republican began taking heat after his ad targeting Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow as "Debbie Spenditnow" ran statewide Sunday during the Super Bowl. Some detractors said the ad was racially insensitive, while national GOP consultant Mike Murphy tweeted that it was "really, really dumb." Foreign Policy magazine managing editor Blake Hounshell called the ad "despicable."

WATCH THE CONTROVERSIAL HOEKSTRA COMMERCIAL:

The Rev. Charles Williams II of Detroit's King Solomon Baptist church, where Malcolm X spoke in the 1960s, joined with several other Detroit pastors calling for Hoekstra to pull the ad.

"The Asian woman speaking in this video would be no different than him having a black person speaking in slave dialect," Williams said in a statement Monday. "If Pete Hoekstra does not see any wrong in this commercial, he doesn't deserve to be in the race."

The 30-second ad created by media strategist Fred Davis of California-based Strategic Perception Inc. opens with the sound of a gong and shows the Asian woman riding a bike on a narrow path lined by rice paddies.

Stopping her bike, the woman smiles into the camera and says, "Thank you, Michigan Senator Debbie Spenditnow. Debbie spends so much American money. You borrow more and more from us. Your economy get very weak. Ours get very good. We take your jobs. Thank you, Debbie Spenditnow."

The scene then shifts to Hoekstra telling viewers near a cozy fire, "I think this race is between Debbie Spenditnow and Pete Spenditnot."

Hoekstra defended the ad, telling reporters during a Monday conference call that it has "jumpstarted the debate" over deficit spending. He said it's only "insensitive" to the Democratic philosophy of Stabenow and President Barack Obama, noting the ad doesn't criticize China. Asked about the woman in the ad, Hoekstra said that "her parents are 100 percent Chinese."

"We knew we were taking an aggressive approach on this. But this is a time where the people in Michigan and across the country are fed up with the spending, and we wanted to capture that frustration that they had with Washington, D.C.," he said. "This ad ... hits Debbie smack dab between the eyes on the issue where she is vulnerable with the voters of Michigan, and that is spending."

Michigan Democratic Chairman Mark Brewer, whose party launched an anti-Hoekstra web ad Sunday, said it's Hoekstra's record as an 18-year congressman that won't hold up under voters' scrutiny.

"Hoekstra ran up our debt to countries like China by voting for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, and for trillions in unfunded giveaways to billionaires and special interests," Brewer said in a statement. "Debbie Stabenow has been one of our strongest leaders in cracking down on other countries' illegal trade violations."

Stabenow planned a Monday conference call to "discuss evidence that the Chinese are strong-arming Michigan businesses" into handing over intellectual property and technology as a cost of doing business in China.

Her campaign has not responded directly to the ad, which is scheduled to run statewide for the next two weeks on cable TV shows aimed at Republican voters.

A barrage of criticism hit Hoekstra's Facebook page early Sunday evening after the ad ran, but most of the negative comments were deleted by Monday morning. On YouTube, the ratings buttons on the ad were disabled after it aired, although another copy of the ad placed there by others was getting a mostly negative response.

The nonpartisan Asian & Pacific Islander American Vote group's Michigan chapter said it was "deeply disappointed" by the ad.

"It is very disturbing that Mr. Hoekstra's campaign chose to use harmful negative stereotypes that intrinsically encourage anti-Asian sentiment," the group said in a statement. In 2010, Michigan's 236,490 Asian-Americans made up 2.4 percent of the state's population, up 35 percent from 2000.

Two of Hoekstra's GOP opponents, Clark Durant and Gary Glenn, issued statements questioning whether the current front-runner is the right candidate for Republicans to support.

___

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

Obama was responding to a question about how he felt when Michelle Obama said she has been inaccurately portrayed as an "angry black woman." While the president did not address that comment specifically, he says his wife is as good a first lady as anyone could imagine, and says he believes Americans have a positive impression of her.

Obama also says the first lady is ready for another four years in the White House, despite her initial reservations about coming to Washington.

The president spoke in an interview with NBC.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

Boosted by improved public confidence in his economic stewardship, President Obama for the first time holds a clear edge over Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in a hypothetical general-election matchup, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Romney, who notched his second consecutive victory Saturday by easily winning the Nevada caucuses, continues to solidify his position as the front-runner in the race for the GOP nomination. But as the contest has grown more negative, public impressions of the top Republican contenders have soured, as has the former Massachusetts governor's standing as a general-election candidate.

Obama remains a polarizing figure, with Americans closely divided on whether he deserves reelection as well as on many aspects of his performance in office. Although better than they were a few months ago, his ratings on handling the economy and job creation remain negative, with intensity continuing to run against him.

Click here to read the rest of this story.

"It's halftime. Both teams are in their locker rooms discussing what they can do to win this game in the second half. It's halftime in America, too." Eastwood says. "People are out of work and they're hurting. And they're all wondering what they're gonna do to make a comeback."

Pointing to improvement in the auto industry as a positive sign, the "Dirty Harry" star goes on, "Detroit's showing us it can be done. ...This country can't be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again and when we do, the world is going to hear the roar of our engines."

Though the commercial didn't mention any politicians by name, Twitter quickly lit up with speculation: Was Eastwood giving props to President Obama for bailing out the auto industry? And was the ad a veiled endorsement of his re-election?

Click here read more.

Allen West (Florida) and Tim Scott (South Carolina) have emerged as influential figures in the House of Representatives. Former Rep. J.C. Watts (Oklahoma) is a vocal supporter of former House Speaker and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich.

Herman Cain briefly led in the polls in the GOP presidential race, and Jennifer Carroll, Florida's lieutenant governor, is the first black elected statewide in the Sunshine State.

To be sure,the GOP-- responsible for the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the Freedmen's Bureau and once boasting over 1,500 black elected officials -- remains a predominantly white and hardline conservative party with few white moderates and Latinos and even fewer blacks.

Exit polls in the recent GOP primary in Florida, one of the most important states in a presidential election, showed only 1 percent of the voters were African-American.

And some of the conservative blacks are struggling on the national stage. Cain -- while earning "flavor-of-the-week" status during his White House bid -- fizzled when faced with personal scandal. Black Tea Party darling, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, agreed with Gingrich that black people lack a work ethic, and stated that black people should be "put on the plantation."

Anti-affirmative action crusader and former California regent Ward Connerly faces an IRS investigation, as a former employee has accused him of financial impropriety. And Carroll offended the civil rights community when she said she "can't think of anybody currently in my life right now that more epitomizes the values and the vision of Dr. King than Gov. Rick Scott."

Scott is viewed as a highly unpopular and divisive governor and was elected with a mere 3 percent of the black vote.

In many ways, the years since President Obama was elected has inspired a resurgence of black conservatism. Its first stage was in 2009, when the GOP chose a black chairman to attempt to show it cared about diversity in the Age of Obama.

Michael Steele, the former Maryland lieutenant governor and the first African-American elected to statewide office there, did not walk or talk like your typical Republican.

And he came to the job with a plan to shake up the party with outreach to the black and Hispanic communities. Steele criticized the Republicans for its racial insensitivity and for alienating black voters with a 40-year Southern Strategy:

We have lost sight of the historic, integral link between the party and African-Americans. This party was co-founded by blacks, among them Frederick Douglass. The Republican Party had a hand in forming the NAACP, and yet we have mistreated that relationship. People don't walk away from parties. Their parties walk away from them.

But ultimately, Steele came under fire within the GOP ranks following accusations of misspending in the RNC, and for speaking ill of Rush Limbaugh. He was rejected by the Republican establishment, and is now an MSNBC analyst with limited influence in the party.

In an interview with NBC's Matt Lauer before the championship game, Obama would only say he expects a "great game."

"You're not to get me (to pick), I'm going to look for a great game," Obama said with a coy smile.

In a pre-Super Bowl interview just a few days into his presidency in 2009, Obama correctly predicted a Pittsburgh Steelers win over the Arizona Cardinals.

But, facing re-election, Obama said he wasn't picking sides this time.

Earlier in the day, Obama said on Twitter that he was looking forward to game but wished his hometown team, the Chicago Bears, "weren't watching it from home, too."

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives and Romney's main challenger, finished a distant second but vowed yet again to stay in the race for the Republican nomination clear to the party's national convention in late August in Tampa, Florida.

In a victory rally Saturday night, Romney turned his fire toward Obama who is vulnerable because the U.S. economy, while showing signs of picking up steam, remains mired in a sluggish and slow recovery from the Great Recession of 2007-2009.

Romney's message was particularly relevant in Nevada where the unemployment rate was measured at 12.6 percent in December, the worst in the U.S. The state, which witnessed a huge housing boom during the real estate bubble that burst in the recession, still faces a plague of home mortgage foreclosures.

"You have given me your vote of confidence. And this time, I'm going take it all the way to the White House," an upbeat Romney told a raucous crowd gathered at the Red Rock Resort a few miles from the Las Vegas Strip. He ignored his Republican rivals to attack Obama, insisting the president doesn't deserve credit for the recent drop in the national unemployment rate to 8.3 percent.

"Mr. president, we welcome any good news on the jobs front, but it is thanks to the innovation of the American people in the private sector, and not to you," said Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and venture capitalist.

Gingrich held no rally Saturday but instead told reporters that his goal was to "find a series of victories which by the end of the Texas primary will leave us at parity" with Romney by early April.

With votes from 71 percent of the precinct caucuses tallied, Romney had 48 percent, Gingrich 23 percent, Texas Rep. Ron Paul 19 percent and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum 11 percent. Turnout was down significantly from 2008, when Romney also won the state's Republican caucuses.

With the race going very much in Romney's direction, Colorado and Minnesota both hold caucuses Tuesday. Maine follows on Saturday during a month that promises to be as plodding as January was rapid-fire in the presidential race.

Romney's victory capped a week that began with his double-digit win in the Florida primary. That contest was as intense as Nevada's caucuses were sedate -- so quiet that they produced little television advertising, no candidate debates and only a modest investment of time by the contenders.

According to the AP count, Romney began the day with 87 of the 1,144 delegates needed to win the Republican nomination. Gingrich had 26, Santorum 14 and Paul 4. A total of 28 delegates were at stake in Nevada, which awards them proportionally, according to the number of votes for each candidate.

Preliminary results of a poll of Nevada Republicans entering their caucuses showed that nearly half said the most important consideration in their decision was a candidate's ability to defeat Obama, a finding in line with other states.

About one-quarter of those surveyed said they are Mormon, like Romney, roughly the same as in 2008, when he won with more than a majority of the vote in a multi-candidate field.

The entrance poll was conducted by Edison Research for The Associated Press at 25 randomly selected caucus sites. It included 1,553 interviews and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

After Maine's caucuses end next Saturday, the next seriously contested states are expected to be primaries in Michigan and Arizona on Feb. 28.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

Enter Cecil Ash, a Republican from Mesa, who feels that what Arizona needs now is an official holiday for white folks.

The idea apparently came to Ash after state Rep. Richard Miranda proposed a Latino American Day. "I wanted to speak to you all about Latino Americans here in Arizona," Miranda said on the House floor Monday.

After some debate, Ash stepped forward with his grand idea.

"I'm supportive of this proposition and I think it's well deserved," he said. "I just want them to assure me that when we do become in the minority you'll have a day for us."

Click here to read the rest of this story.

Last week, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie demonstrated blatant ignorance of the African American civil rights movement in America as he tried to justify his decision to attempt to derail same-sex marriage by sending the issue to a voter referendum.

Gov. Christie said:

The fact of the matter is, I think people would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South.

A referendum, which is also called a ballot initiative, allows the voters of a state to decide directly at the ballot box whether to have a law or not. Gov. Christie made this comment to explain his determination to seek a referendum on marriage equality and "let the people decide" instead of supporting a marriage equality bill which already has strong support in the New Jersey legislature. [Christie later walked back the civil rights reference, but he has stood by his call for a public vote on marriage equality.]

We can only hope that New Jersey's schoolchildren know their civil rights history better than their governor.

Gov. Christie is wrong for two simple reasons that apply to the African American civil rights movement as well as to the struggle for LGBT rights.

Civil rights marches didn't kill African-Americans.

The civil rights sit in movement or Freedom Riders did not cause the killing of black people in the streets in the South. They were being killed by racist murderers.

African Americans were being lynched long before the modern civil rights movement brought marchers to the streets. They were killed because they didn't move off the sidewalk fast enough, because they owned their own piece of property, and for just about any other reason that a group of bigots decided they should be made an example of. Indeed, a spark that helped drive change in America, and moved African-Americans across the country to action, was the torture and execution of 14 year old Emmett Till in Mississippi.

In Gov. Christie's retelling of history, if there had just been a referendum, there would have been no such "dying in the streets in the South." That doesn't even make sense.

Similarly, too many young people are now bullied because of their sexual orientation. And too many of them have lost hope such that suicide remains a real concern for those who work every day to support gay teenagers. Police violence against gay people helped spur the Stonewall riots, which are often described as the birth of the LGBT civil rights struggle.

While this is still elevated, and the gap between black employment and the overall rate
remains, this can be seen as a positive development in addressing the situation in the black community. However, despite this encouraging news, further improvement will likely require more targeted action from federal and state governments. Given that reality, here are three things Washington can do to continue to address black unemployment.

1. Provide Financial Support for educational training for high-demand job areas

While the Great Recession has made the situation considerably worse, black unemployment has consistently lagged the rest of the country long before the 2008 crisis, largely due to differences in educational attainment. Reducing this education gap is potentially the largest factor in addressing black unemployment, and is a focus of the Obama administration, but it is costly, difficult and will take an extended period of time to successfully accomplish.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama proposed "a new initiative to train and place two million Americans in good jobs through partnerships between businesses and community colleges that give workers the skills employers explicitly need."

While the details are being fleshed out, this appears to be a promising initiative. What could further enhance it and make it even more effective in addressing black unemployment is to provide increased tax credits and future loan forgiveness directly to qualified individuals (low-income, long-term unemployed, etc.) who pursue degrees that make them more employable, especially in areas that are currently, or are expected be in high demand. These include jobs such as as radiology technicians and home health aides, where training in some cases can be completed in a matter of months as part of certificate programs, therefore quickly preparing unemployed workers for new areas that are hiring.

2. Use remaining TARP funds ($37 billion) for mortgage principal reductions

Nearly half of all US mortgage holders owe more than their house is worth. This continues to put a tremendous amount of pressure on the housing market. Many have advocated (and still do) for allowing mortgage modification through the bankruptcy process. In fact, President Obama did as well during his campaign in 2008. However, that is unlikely to happen in this current political climate.

Romney declared he was "proud" to have Trump's blessing, saying as he stood stiffly beside Trump at a Las Vegas press conference that appeared to be much more fun for The Donald than for The Romney:

"Being in Donald Trump's magnificent hotel and having his endorsement is a delight, and I'm so honored and pleased to have his endorsement."

The political and media consensus is that Romney should be anything but "delighted, honored and pleased" to have Trump's blessing. But the fact that Trump epitomizes everything that's garish and unpleasant about the merger of money, showbiz and politics isn't even the biggest reason why.

Mitt Romney should have run from Donald Trump, even if it meant leaving Las Vegas, because besides being a sideshow, Trump is also a birther.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The birther aspect of Trump's three-ring circus shouldn't be dismissed as a minor angle. Whatever else he does in life, however many hotels he builds (or bankrupts) or how many seasons he manages to milk out of The Apprentice, Donald Trump will always be the guy who tried to humiliate the nation's first black president by demanding to see his birth certificate.

Trump's antics when he jumped aboard the birther bandwagon were partly responsible for President Barack Obama actually making his long-form birth certificate public -- an unprecedented action for a sitting president -- just to quiet the absurd speculation that he was not born in the United States.

Still not satisfied, Trump went on to question how a young, black kid from Hawaii like Obama, who Trump "heard from some people" had "terrible grades" -- could have possibly been qualified to attend Ivy League schools.

The unsubtle implication that Obama was an "affirmative action baby," who essentially stole his education from a more qualified white student, is one of the oldest racist dog whistles in the book, and Trump blew it.

By a 395-27 vote, the House approved legislation that would prevent welfare recipients from accessing their payments in strip clubs, casinos and liquor stores, a proposal Republicans back as a way to reduce waste and abuse of federal payments.

Republicans called up the bill under a suspension of House rules, which required a two-thirds majority vote. While some Democrats grumbled that the bill demeans people who need help, others indicated support for the bill as a common-sense way to reduce waste and ensure that payments go to help families.

The bill, H.R. 3567, was opposed by just one Republican and only 26 Democrats, making it easy for Republicans to reach the two-thirds majority.

Click here to read more