obama

Given all the hate-baiting that has taken place over the Park 51 site in New York, it was only a matter of time until we started seeing stories like this:

ATF and FBI agents are investigating a Saturday morning fire that damaged four pieces of equipment and could halt construction at the site of the planned Islamic center and mosque just outside Murfreesboro.

Eric Kehn, spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said his agency has not deemed the burning of an excavation hauler as arson. He did confirm that three other pieces of equipment were damaged, but he would not comment on the extent of the damage.

"Any type of activity like this we take very seriously and we look into," Kehn said. "When things like this happen, we really need the help of the public."

We really need some leadership at this time. I think the leadership is more than even President Obama can give alone. Instead he should get George Bush to appear with him in a joint statement calling for this hatred to stop. If not then stories like this will only become more common.

MSNBC has been covering this all night. Two weeks ahead of schedule, the final combat troops in Iraq are crossing the border into Kuwait.

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

Of course 50,000 troops will remain indefinitely in a non-combat capacity. Despite that number, this is still a huge accomplishment for President Obama and our troops. Congratulations.

A big milestone was hit in Iraq yesterday, yet I doubt the media will talk about it too much:

Iraqi commandos showed off skills they learned from U.S. military forces, who Saturday formally handed over control of combat operations to Iraqi security forces.

The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. Raymond Odierno, was on hand to watch the final American combat team, the 4th Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division, tender responsibilities to the 6th Iraqi Army Division.

In a little over 3 weeks we will only have 50,000 forces in Iraq. Yeah that’s 50,000 more than I like, but it is a far cry better than the numbers we saw when Bush was President, or if McCain had become President.

And with this major accomplishment, I highly doubt the media will talk too much about it. When President Obama announced that everything was on target last week, the media stayed mostly quiet, yet when President Obama first announced the plan to get the troops down to 50,000 in the summer of 2010 last year, the media was full of the pessimistic Republicans saying it couldn’t happen. Where are those people now?

Today is D-Day for General Stanley McChrystal. Catching up on the overnight and early morning news, I noticed two very interesting takes from one source – ABC.

First off, here’s what George Stephanopoulos has to say:

All of my reporting indicates President Obama truly hasn’t made up his mind, but my bet is Obama will follow Lincoln’s lead and keep McChrystal for now.

Officials tell me the decision really will be made in the room. If McChrystal can convince the President that the article hasn’t crippled his ability to fight the war, he’ll stay.

And now for Jake Tapper:

During his round of phone calls to top officials of the Obama administration whom he and his team disparaged to a Rolling Stone reporter, Gen. Stanley McChrystal said, "I've compromised the mission," a senior administration source tells ABC News.

Whether he did so irrevocably is at the top of the agenda in his Oval Office meeting with President Obama this morning. The president will press him as to what he was thinking and whether he still has the ability to serve as commander of 100,000 US troops in Afghanistan after making remarks about the president and his national security team that the general could use to justifiably fire any of his underlings if they were made about him.

So the question will be if crippling the mission is the equivalent of compromising it.

I’m torn on if Obama should fire McChyrstal or not. I can see the “Obama is above that” argument, and frankly I think it would be a big jab against the former Commander in Chief, George Bush, who fired people for disagreeing with him (see Eric Shinseki).

While House rules prevent Democrats from using the video of Joe Barton yesterday on the campaign trail, they can still hammer away on his apology to BP for the "shakedown" Obama did to them.

This statement by Barton is a national treasure for Democrats. They can run simple commercials telling what he said and pointing out that if Republicans regain control of the House that Barton would become the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which is the main oversight committee of the oil industry.

Add to that the fact that Barton's biggest contributors are from the energy industry:

Now you got a great commercial to run against any Republican:

Representative Joe Barton apologized to British Petroleum for the President demanding they pay for all damages incurred by the oil spill. This is not shocking coming from a person who enjoys a majority of his campaign contributions from the energy committee, but is this what America needs?

As the ranking Republican of the powerful Energy and Commerce committee, Joe Barton holds a lot of control over what happens in the oil industry. Do we need Joe Barton as the chairman of this powerful committee? A vote for John Boehner would put Joe Barton one vote closer to taking the gavel and offering the oil industry extra protection.

Barton's statement doesn't need to effect just Barton, but the Republicans overall. Other Republicans have made similar statements, like Michelle Bachmann, but Barton is by far the most powerful. If Democrats take this gift and seize on it then it could really affect the outcome in November.

Leave it to FOX News to manufacturer whatever they want to pass off as facts. Media Matters has done an in-depth report on Fox's continued lies about Obama and the oil spill. This one really sticks out at me:

Kilmeade: There are "problems" with BP giving "$750 million to a campaign like they did to the Obama campaign" and "Emanuel staying there with a consulting firm for BP." During the segment, co-host Brian Kilmeade falsely claimed BP gave $750 million to Obama's presidential campaign:  

KILMEADE: Sure. And when BP gives $750 million to a campaign like they did to the Obama campaign in the '07-'08 period, along with Rahm Emanuel staying there with a consulting firm for BP, you wonder if somehow there might be some problems.  

DOOCY: Well, clearly this is a big story, Brian. So I would imagine the mainstream media is going to have this all over the front pages.  

Contributions came almost entirely from BP employees -- not BP itself -- and totaled about $70,000, not $750 million

$750 Million? How in the hell could someone read that on the air and call themselves a journalist? And who will Fox fire for this? Last year they put out that memo stating that people would lose their jobs for this kind of crap, yet no one has. Welcome to the ethics of Faux News.

First we had some anonymous White House official blasting labor for supporting Bill Halter in the Arkansas Democratic Primary. Now we got some other senior Democrat doing the same. From Sam Stein:

Another senior Democrat (who also would not be quoted by name) echoed the point in an exchange with the Huffington Post. "Labor is humiliated," the source said. "$10 million flushed down the toilet at a time when Democrats across the country are fighting for their lives, they look like absolute idiots."

This is nothing but the kind of "inside the beltway" thinking that Americans are tired of. It also seems like there's a general tone being struck here. Compare the above statement to the one from last night:

"Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members' money down the toiled on a pointless exercise," the official said. "If even half that total had been well-targeted and applied in key House races across this country, that could have made a real difference in November."

There is one similarity that keeps sticking out at me - November. It sounds like the beltway gang is preparing to scapegoat labor for any losses in November.

Another meme is also being struck here. On Morning Joe this morning, Mark Whitaker was saying that labor backing other candidates shows that Obama is not in charge of the Democratic Party. Well that assessment is totally ass backwards. As the AFL-CIO stated last night, they are not part of the Democratic Party.

A new ABC poll has rated the government response to the oil spill worse than the response to Katrina:

A month and a half after the spill began, 69 percent in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll rate the federal response negatively. That compares with a 62 negative rating for the response to Katrina two weeks after the August 2005 hurricane.

That's really not a shock given the media's attempt to paint the spill as "Obama's Katrina". But unlike Katrina, there have been other roadblocks in the way of the response that the media hardly mentions.

The first of these roadblocks is a provision in the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 that essentially ties the hands of th government when it comes to the response. Instead the oil company is responsible for the response. Here is how Thad Allen described the law to Mike Wallace:

ALLEN: Well, this started out as a search and rescue case. We had the explosion. We had the extraordinary tragic loss of 11 lives. And for 48 hours we were involved in search and rescue when the drill sunk. We mobilized every asset as if it were a catastrophic response.

After the Exxon Valdez, Congress passed legislation called the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, and the way we respond by designating B.P. as a responsible party and having them have contractors available to do the response is the structure that was mandated by Congress after the Exxon Valdez.