obama

There has been a lot of focus on the Massachusetts Senate race to replace the late Ted Kennedy and some are trying to paint it as a repudiation of President Obama and health care reform. One of the key findings in the new PPP poll released last night was that those planning on voting oppose the health care bill 48% to 40%.

This morning on Morning Joe, Chris Matthews brought up a really interesting point about this. He said that maybe the people of Massachusetts feel like they are getting a double punch by health care reform. They already have their own reform in the state, which they pay for through taxes, so having a federal system to them would end up leaving them feeling they are paying for others. There really could be a lot of truth for this.

So is the opposition to health care and the reason Brown is doing so well in Massachusetts because they already have their own reform? I’m sure not all people of the state feel or believe this, but there is a really good chance that enough of them do to propel Brown ahead and maybe even deliver him to the Senate. If that’s the case it will be a crappy deal for the rest of America.

Watching MSNBC this morning I haven’t seen any mention of Freedom Works, the force behind the Tea Party, urging President Obama and Congress to not help out Haiti.

It’s amazing to think about. Whenever there is any news about the tea party, the mainstream media is like a crowd trying to enter Wal-Mart on black Friday to cover the story. Now we have some very big news about the tea party and the media flat out ignores it. God forbid they actually have to give the tea baggers some negative coverage.

So there you have your liberal media at work – ignoring something as horrible as the position Freedom Works is taking against the poor people of Haiti.

The leaders of the tea baggers is showing their total lack of compassion and care for man kind. Pause for outburst of shock. Ok that was quick. Here’s part of their letter to President Obama and the Congress:

Further, any donations to Haiti will only serve as a "moral hazard", in effect underwriting their bad choices. Haiti had some of the highest tax rates in the Western Hemisphere, hampering the natural innovation of its citizens and making it difficult for corporations - today's engine of prosperity - to operate in that country. Their rules and regulations were among the most onerous as well, preventing true innovation to occur. Without such onerous rules and high taxation, Haiti could have been a thriving commercial center able to better withstand the earthquake and its aftermath.

By giving money, we will prevent Haitian citizens from rising up in their own Tea Party Revolution and taking their country back from the Marxists

Welcome back from the la-la-land that is the tea party and Dick Armey. What a bunch of assholes, but I have come up with a great idea. It would help out the millions of Haitians and all those tea baggers, itching to stand up to a government. We send the tea baggers there to live and bring the Haitians here to live. Problem solved. Can we get it done this week?

Adding….These are the same tea partiers that Jane Hamsher and Cenk Uyger want to team up with.

This morning, speaking from the diplomatic room of the White House, President Obama vowed “unwavering support” to the people of Haiti.

Full transcript below the jump.

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.

Now this is the kind of change we believe in:

The US has lifted a 22-year immigration ban which has stopped anyone with HIV/Aids from entering the country.

President Obama said the ban was not compatible with US plans to be a leader in the fight against the disease.

The new rules come into force on Monday and the US plans to host a bi-annual global HIV/Aids summit for the first time in 2012.

The ban was imposed at the height of a global panic about the disease at the end of the 1980s.

This morning on CNN Tom Kean, former member of the 9/11 commission, was talking about how Obama is “taking on to much”, echoing the same right-wing talking point we have heard all year.

Let’s think about that. To a Republican like Kean, Obama shouldn’t be focusing on other things besides terrorism. We just had 8 years of that and look at what it produced – an economic crisis, the loss of a major city and hundreds of lives from Katrina, ignoring our rule of law to “fight terrorism”, etc., etc. If people think that the President should focus solely on terrorism and nothing else, like domestic issues, then let’s just hand this country over to al Qaeda because they have won.

Here is an interesting fact the internet has pulled up. On December 28, 2009, President Obama made his first public comments about the attempted bombing on Christmas day – 3 days after the incident.

On December 28, 2001, President Bush made his first public comments about Richard Reid’s failed bombing attempt. That was 7 days after the attempt, which was on December 21, 2001.

It took Bush more than twice as long to respond as Obama and somehow the right thinks Obama took too long? It’s just another example of the right playing politics with the very deadly act of terrorism. Here’s another:

Hours after Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich), the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee and a Michigan gubernatorial candidate, sent out an email solicitation bashing "weak-kneed liberals" for their response to an attempted attack on a Detroit-bound airliner, the DNC went to work.

Remember within hours of this incident Hoekstra declared it a “terrorist attack”, which was really funny because the parallels between Christmas of this year and Richard Reid are so similar. The only real difference is one involved shoes and the other involved underwear. Hoekstra never said Reid was a “terrorist attack”.

Perhaps it’s even time for a little reminder about how dangerous Pete Hoekstra is to national security. Here’s Rachel Maddow back in November talking about Hoekstra leaking out information about how the government received data on Maj. Hassan, the Ft. Hood shooter: