With several meaning this morning, as the worst news greeted my rising. Port-au-Prince was hit by another earthquake, a 6.0 aftershock, this morning just before 6 am local time. A CNN reporter said that morning that, despite his experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, it was the scariest thing he had ever been through.

Honestly, I would like to write more about this, but I just honestly don't have the information. The best place I've found, CNN.com, didn't even have coverage of the Mass. election on its front page last night. It has turned to almost exclusive coverage of Haiti. Happy is the wrong word, but CNN's priorities here are certainly commendable. If you click on CNN International up in the far top left corner of the page, you get even more information.

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Obviously, the domestic news is the election in Massachusetts last night. Is it possible for something to be shocking, but not surprising at the same time? Because that would be what this is.

Scott Brown, the winner, talked for about the length of his upcoming term last night, promising that his seat is the "people's seat." He vowed to vote against the current health care people, albeit for an interesting reason: Mass., which already has universal health care and 98 percent insureed (thank you Mitt Romney, Republican), doesn't need it. That is a fair point. His job is to represent his constituency. Taxing it for something it already has isn't very good representation.

He also said that the election is not a referendum on president Obama, but did say that there's trouble across the country for Democrats.

But, obviously the questions are about health care. I'll share links with those, along with others.

(Interesting, as I write this, I watched T. Boone Pickens plug natural gas on Fox 'n Friends. They talked about his new commercials out pushing the abundant (yet, not renewable) resource, without once mentioning that he owns a ton of the land it is buried beneath. In other words, he stands to make billions. That said, I like Pickens, just an interesting point that whenever they talk about clean energy, they mention how much money people like John Kerry stand to make. Well, Pickens, who is a businessman rich because of oil, was pushing legislation that would make him truckloads of money. Just saying.)

Two New York Times writers say health care should be passed anyway. They make a valid point that continues to be made, but ignored - "But the problem isn't that health-care reform itself is unpopular. It is that people are turned off by the current debate about it. And those repelled by what is happening in Washington include a lot of liberals as well as conservatives."
This is a new dynamic that can be attributed to the 24-hour news cycle. Never before has the "sausage" been so transparent and the people don't like it. In my opinion, mostly because they don't understand it.

Scott Brown became the "Change" candidate, something not helped by Martha Coakley's admitted ties to the Mass. political machine.

"The idea is the problem." With all this talk about change, it should be noted that: "Yet for all the presidential election-time happy talk, Americans have this sturdy historical aversion to "fundamental" reorganizations of their society." Change is scary and people are fundamentally averse to it. At least quickly.

And just had to link this Boston Globe column.

Have a good day y'all.