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In an interview with ABC, President Obama gave his views of opening the U.S. oil reserves to combat high oil prices:

"We are monitoring the situation very closely. The strategic petroleum reserve was designed for when oil actually shuts off," Obama told ABC.

"The reserves, I think, are something that we've got to be very careful about. And what we don't want to do is catch ourselves in a situation, particularly when things are uncertain in the Middle East, where we're using it now and it turns out we need more later."

While I shed a tear every time I fill up, I have to agree with the President on this. The oil reserves aren’t a silver bullet to high prices. Once the reserves are gone, they have to be refilled. What if prices are even higher then? Well that’s more we have to pay out to the reserves.

Another, very plausible scenario is the instability in the Middle East right now. We are talking about a region that 100 or 1,000 year uprisings are not uncommon. If we opened up the reserves now, we don’t know what might happen tomorrow or next year. We could see some major uprising or war that shuts off a big chunk of the supply. With depleted reserves, we would be stuck with even higher prices.

Sadly there isn’t a simple solution to the current oil prices. Some say we should start drilling here, but even if we started today, we wouldn’t see anything pumping out for at least 10 years.

George Stephanopoulos has “corrected” Rudy Giuliani’s statement that ‘no domestic terrorist attacks happened under Bush’.

The two key changes are as follows. First the title:

• Then:
  Rudy Giuliani: 'No Domestic Attacks Under Bush.... One Under Obama'
• Now:
  Rudy Giuliani Wrong in Saying ‘No Domestic Attacks Under Bush’

And then George added in a new paragraph.

Then:

“What he [Obama] should be doing is following the right things that Bush did -- one of the right things he did was treat this as a war on terror. We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama,” Giuliani said. “Number two, he should correct the things that Bush didn’t do right. Sending people to Yemen was wrong, not getting this whole intelligence thing corrected.”

The former Republican presidential candidate is specifically taking issue with the fact that the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, is being tried in a civil court instead of a military tribunal.

Now:

“What he [Obama] should be doing is following the right things that Bush did -- one of the right things he did was treat this as a war on terror. We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama,” Giuliani said. “Number two, he should correct the things that Bush didn’t do right. Sending people to Yemen was wrong, not getting this whole intelligence thing corrected.”

Giuliani seems to have forgotten about the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and shoe bomber Richard Reid.

There has been a lot of talk about the new WaPo/ABC poll that finds 57% of the respondents want the public option, with 51% saying go for it without Republican support.

Another interesting number in this new poll is 20%. That’s how many people now identify themselves as Republican. The numbers are very dire for the GOP:

Only 20 percent of Americans now identify themselves as Republicans, the fewest in 26 years. Just 19 percent, similarly, trust the Republicans in Congress to make the right decisions for the country's future; even among Republicans themselves just four in 10 are confident in their own party. For comparison, 49 percent overall express this confidence in Obama, steady since August albeit well below its peak.

And while it looks bad for Republicans, it should also send a warning shot to Democrats. On a nearly 3:1 basis people support the public option more than they claim to be a Republican. That’s a huge margin. So what will happen if the Democrats scrap the public option because of Republican opposition, or put in other words – if the majority party gave in to the 20% minority party? Simple – loss of power.

No I am not saying that everyone will say “that’s it I’m voting Republican”. Instead what will happen is people will say “that’s it, I’m done voting!” 2010 is a mid-term year and already has the obstacle of being near impossible to get voters to head to the polls. Add to that a disgust with the Democrats for not listening to their base, and you will see far less head out to the polling places. Likewise Republicans will be touting the defeat of the public option as a huge victory over Democrats and use that to energize their base, thus translating that energy into votes.

ABC has a must read up about the growing threats against President Obama and how certain people, like Rush Limbaugh, is helping to spark the new extremism in the U.S.A.

Got this in my inbox from ABC:

President Obama To Sign Executive Order Thursday to Close Gitmo Within a Year [4:20 p.m. ET]

He is working fast to erase the eight years of hell Bush put us through.

It looks like the WaPo-ABCIt looks like the WaPo-ABC poll wasn't so much a fluke. This one has Obama leading 48%-42%

That's what Obama is telling the Tennessee GOP:

Obama, his party's presidential front-runner, and his wife, Michelle, were asked in an interview aired Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America" about an online video last week by the state's GOP taking her to task for a comment some considered unpatriotic.

"The GOP, should I be the nominee, can say whatever they want to say about me, my track record," Obama said. "If they think that they're going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful because that I find unacceptable, the notion that you start attacking my wife or my family."

Good for him. I am sure the Republicans will jump on this about Michelle being "fair game" and all, but they need to remember back to 2004 when Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter was brought up during a debate about gay marriage. They weren't too happy about that one.