Via Craptocracy, we learn that three days before endorsing Barack Obama, Colin Powell warmed up by, well ....

From the Guardian:

Colin Powell celebrated his 71st birthday this year but he's clearly not too old to pull some cheeky Afro-hip-hop moves. His take on Olu Maintain's song Yahooze at the Africa Rising event at the Royal Albert Hall worked a lot better than his former boss George Bush's embarrassing inaugural shape-throwing alongside Ricky Martin. Although he kept his jacket buttoned, almost everyone deemed his dancing spot-on.

But it doesn't look as if the former US secretary of state paid too much attention to the lyrics, or he might have discovered that the Nigerian hit is a celebration of that country's most infamous export, advance-fee email fraud (sometimes called 419 fraud, after the relevant section of the Nigerian penal code). The perpetrators are known as "Yahoo boys" after their email service-provider of choice.

He told the crowd:

"I stand before you tonight as an African-American," The Times quoted Powell as telling the audience. "Many people say to me, 'You became secretary of state of the USA., is it really necessary to say you are an African-American, or that you are black?' And I say, 'Yes,' so that we can remind our children. It took a lot of people struggling to bring me to this point in history. I didn't just drop out of the sky. People came from my continent in chains. There's no reason a new Africa can't be created right here and now."

Of course, it's purely racist for anybody to suggest that race had any influence on Powell's endorsement of Obama, even when Powell admits it was a factor.