Obama To Face Another Defeat - How Will He React?

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With the White House positioning itself to blame everyone but themselves for the potential defeat in the Massachusetts Senate race for Ted Kennedy's seat, a continuation of the hard line bully mentality of the Rahm Emanuel school of political fisticuffs, America waits to see if our young and inexperienced president finally learns his lesson or is willing to let his entire presidency go up in flames.



Today's election has all the potential to be not a cliffhanger but an avalanche in favor of the Republican candidate who will win because he ran as an independent, not a Republican. The race between the once invincible Democrat Martha Coakley and Republican outsider Scott Brown is a classic textbook example of political arrogance and presidential indifference driving the prohibitive favorite Coakley into one of the greatest last minute campaign collapses in political history.



However, the signs were there since the Virginia and New Jersey governors races last November when the White House tried to interfere in local races and got trounced. It seems the boys at Pennsylvania Avenue just don't get it. The people of America, be they Democrat, Republican or Independent, are not going to stand by and let some rookies in the White House drive America into self-destruction with some pie in the sky view of what is best for the people.

Deficits, the economy, honesty and truth still are held sacred in this country and the Obama gang has lost sight of all of them. No, Mr. President, this is not your nation but of the people, by the people and for the people. When you made your last minute trip to Massachusetts to salvage your sputtering candidate you made, once again, a huge mistake.

The speech was peppered with "I" and "We" know what is best for you. It was condescending at best, arrogant at worst, and delivered as an elitist professor bored with teaching who is intent on telling his students what to think and why they are wrong in thinking different than he tells you. In short, it was more of the same partisan politics that seem to characterize this supposedly "new" politician who was going to lead us away from the mean-spirited world of politics as usual toward a new breath of fresh air in politics.



Obama proved once again he is nothing more than a Chicago South side politician who knows better than the public and who scolds the public for daring to challenge his words. Even the pro-life heckler who disrupted Obama for about three minutes left him startled and mad that someone, anyone, would dare challenge his credentials. What credentials?

In his latest speeches Obama suddenly saw the light and attacked the banks, the same ones he saved, the same ones who have given millions of dollars to his and other Democratic leaders campaign funds. He attacked pharmaceutical companies while helping Coatley raise money from them. He acts as if we will never know the House majority leader, his man Steny Hoyer, has raised nearly a million dollars from the bad guys and other Washington politicians have raised over $150 million from them.

If Obama does react to a potential loss with even more arrogance, and continues to try and slam unpopular trillion dollar spending bills down our throat, then he might as well lock the doors on the White House and Congress for the last three years of his term because he will be well on his way to being the most ineffective president of all time.

Maybe he learned all about socialism in Ivy League schools and from his many left wing radical friends but he didn't learn enough from the practical applications of socialism in the real world. Socialism only works when people are weak. Americans are not and never have been weak. The people will never stand for an agenda they did not know he intended to pursue and that the people have rejected over and over again throughout our history.



If our young president cannot learn the virtue of humility, and drop his idiotic spending bills and his fast track toward bankruptcy for our nation, he should resign. Our presidents are supposed to lead all the people, not just those few he likes or gave him money. In the 21st century the president of the United States cannot be an on the job training program and the White House is not a frat club for the elite. He must realize he serves us, we do not serve him.

If he cannot learn that simple lesson of Democracy then he should step aside. Because if he cannot learn that lesson of Democracy the people will have to throw him out. That is the Constitutional solution when a president does not serve the people. Wake up Mr. President before it is too late. You have awakened a sleeping giant in the American public and they are mad as hell at what you are doing to our nation. In America, people are Americans first, then members of political parties. When parties ignore the wishes of the public they no longer serve a useful purpose.

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Omaha Slaps Bank Tax on Public - To Be Paid by 2018 - Rakes in Millions from Banks in 2010

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Come on Mr. President, you demonstrate how hard you will be on the banks by slapping a $90 billion tax over the next 8 years yet squeeze them for hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign funds right now. What kind of math is that? Just how does the public benefit from your campaign coffers and those of all your cronies on capitol hill? And by the way, the real economic crooks were running hedge funds and derivative funds that were sold to those bad banks but you forgot to punish them. Is that fair?



Clearly the Obama gang thinks very little of the common sense of Americans. The same day Obama was raising $90 billion from the banks, assuming congress is stupid enough to pass it, Obama is guaranteeing the labor unions that their extravagant health insurance benefits would not be taxed until 2018 as a bribe to get their support for health care. Seems the union members have Cadillac health care like Congress and the fat cats on Wall Street.

So we go after the banks for a paltry sum compared to the damage they did to the economy, a few trillion dollars lost to the little people in America. And we exempt unions from being taxed for health benefits that we are already paying for through the auto bailout, the transfer of GM stock to the unions, and the stimulus to help car sales. Now aren't these the same health care benefits that broke the auto companies in the first place and plunged them into bankruptcy?



Sometimes I am in awe of the Harvard business school accounting of government expenditures and national debt that seems to emit from the Obama economic team. Their actions would at least seem sincere if they were not shaking down Wall Street and all of corporate America for millions of dollars in campaign contributions from the very special interests Obama was going to run out of Washington.

So far his effort to purge capitol hill of lobbyists has consisted of having them all move to the White House where they will be taken care of if they contribute to the Democratic campaign funds. I really like this election year. The Democrat Speaker of the House, Steny Hoyer, has already raised money from every major bank and pharmaceutical company on Wall Street including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, CitiGroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and a blue chip list of other Wall Street titans.

I wonder when the tsunami of Wall Street money flooding into Obama and the Democrats in congress becomes a conflict of interest? If Obama was being so hard on Wall Street why are they having record profits in the first place? If Obama was so hard on pharmaceutical lobbyists why are they pouring money into his campaigns? And if Obama was so hard on the health insurance providers why did their stock value skyrocket when the Obama Health Care bill passed the Senate?



The facts seem to contradict the words of our president in spite of his failure to see his own hypocrisy. Maybe he should consider that the people see through his hypocrisy as well. As his poll numbers fall through the floor and he drags Democratic candidate after Democratic candidate with him someone should tell him he is captain of a runaway train heading for a big wreck, not captain of the ship of state.

Slow down Mr. President, the time for a full court press is when you have a chance to win the game, not after it is hopelessly lost.

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Miracle on the Hudson - One Year Ago Today

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It was one year ago today the world watched as Flight 1549 crashed landed in an icy Hudson River in an event dubbed the Miracle on the Hudson. The following story was in the DNAinfo news service and tells the story. Let us pray for another miracle in Haiti.



DNAinfo - Manhattan Local News

Flight 1549 Passengers and Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger Mark Miracle on the Hudson Anniversary

January 15, 2010 12:34pm

By Serena Solomon and Mariel S. Clark
DNAinfo Reporter/Producers

MIDTOWN WEST — One year after their plane splashed down in the Hudson River, the crew and passengers of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 are in the middle of a busy day of events to remember the miraculous flight.



The now-famous "Miracle on the Hudson" pilot Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger along with his crew and many of the passengers will take an afternoon ferry to the spot where the Airbus A320 landed.



But earlier on Friday, they took part in a breakfast hosted by the American Red Cross of Greater New York, which assisted in the rescue efforts.



"I have always believed that life is fleeting commodity," Sullenberger said at the breakfast. "We have much to celebrate, much to be grateful for."



The mood at the morning gathering was cheerful. Some of the passengers wore Red Cross blankets like the ones they wrapped themselves in after being rescued from the frigid waters a year ago.



The anniversary celebration also included passengers Ben Bostic and Laura Zych, who started dating after the crash.



"If it was any other flight I never would have had a second chance," said Bostic.
Another passenger, Clay Presley, joked that Capt. Sully overlooked one thing that day — he left the fasten seat belt sign on after the plane had landed in the river.



Gov. David Paterson and Mayor Michael Bloomberg also attended the breakfast.
"It was one of the happiest moments of my life to be able to tell New Yorkers that the 155 passengers and crew members of flight 1549 were safe," Bloomberg said.



Friday afternoon the passengers and crew are expected to take a ferry to the spot where the plane splashed down. They will raise a glass together at 3:31 p.m., the exact moment the plane hit on the water last year.



The survivors will reportedly toast with Grey Goose vodka, a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of the flock of Canada geese that disabled both of the plane's engines and forced the emergency landing just minutes after the flight departed LaGuardia Airport.



The "Miracle on the Hudson" is the only known water landing by a commercial airline in which everyone on board survived.



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Will Boston be Obama's Waterloo? Did He Meddle Once too Often?

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You don't mess around in Boston, the heart and soul of tea party movements in America, the citadel of freedom and the home of America's first tea party that sent shock waves throughout the world. I think people underestimate the Bostonians, take them for granted. Obama's Chicago gang thinks the people of Boston and Massachusetts will do whatever Obama tells them because they are the most liberal state in America. But the people of Boston are populists first. They do not like being told what to do by outsiders.



As the Massachusetts Senate race comes down to the wire next week and the White House goes into full blown panic mode because of the surge in polls by the Republican, Scott Brown, and the collapse of the Democrat, Martha Coakley, will this be the race that convinces our young president to stop meddling in the state races once and for all?



He did not read the mood of the public in New Jersey and Virginia where Democratic candidates for governor in states Obama won handily and with Democratic governors took a beating from the Republican candidates in spite of being outspent by huge margins. Yet here we are, just a few weeks later and the bullies in the White House once again want to tell state voters who to elect. Such arrogance, even from Chicago politicians, is rather stupid.



As a supporter of the Kennedys and supporter of Kennedy candidates in the past I can tell you Martha Coakley is not Ted Kennedy. If she were really in touch with the people, as John and Bobby Kennedy were, she would have campaigned with the people. She said she would not waste her time meeting workers when she could just meet with their bosses. Both John and Bobby would be shocked by such an elitist attitude.



I remember shaking Bobby Kennedy's hand in Nebraska in 1968, along with a crowd of people, when he was surging into the lead in the presidential race and just a couple of days before his assassination. The Kennedy's were always the people's choice, not the bosses and they never forgot it.

If Coakley wanted to be like the Kennedys she would not have squandered her time as Attorney General. She could have sued the banks of Wall Street and the hedge fund and derivative manipulators in Boston who ripped off the American Treasury, stole the retirement dreams from millions of Americans, and destroyed the dream of home ownership for millions more. But instead she asks them for money for her campaign.

She could have demanded accountability from the pharmaceutical companies, health companies and insurance companies for their role in health care price increases but instead gets their money from Democratic party officials. Her special interest campaign contributors read like a Wall Street who's who and we all know by now that when they give money they expect money in return. Just ask our young president with his bailouts, buyouts, loans and stimulus. Who did that money benefit?



And if Teddy Kennedy were still alive you can bet he would be outraged at the shape the Obama health care reform debacle has taken. There are more bribes, more backroom deals than constructive initiatives in this bill. I cannot believe Kennedy would stand for the Obama, Pelosi, Reid pyramid scheme intended to fill everyone's pockets with cash except the public who will be paying for it for generations.



Teddy Kennedy had integrity. He was patient for a generation waiting to get meaningful reform. He would not have endorsed this sham just to get anything approved so the president and congress would look like they did something this past year. The Obama health care bill is not reform but a bureaucratic boondoggle the likes of which we have never seen and no one understands. Coakley wants it, Brown does not. Maybe that has a lot to do with her falling star and his rising popularity.

If Obama fails again to impose his will on the people of yet another sovereign state in America maybe, just maybe, he will finally stop meddling in state affairs and get on with governing all the people. If not he will fill out his term maintaining his do nothing administration while achieving record deficits and national debt. Not a legacy one should seek.

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Haiti Earthquake Response - America's Best is not Good Enough

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Where are the choppers???

It is probably tantamount to a sacrilege to discuss this but it is becoming obvious that America still has a long ways to go to be effective, efficient and timely in responding to natural disasters. I don't say this lightly but in the dark shadow of hundreds, perhaps thousands of victims trapped in the Haiti earthquake who will die before they are rescued.

Because we did such soul searching in ripping Bush and his people to shreds for incompetence after Hurricane Katrina, our failure to respond aggressively in this disaster is even more stunning. However, the facts are facts and rather than tell the world we are in charge and leading the rescue effort and expect the adoration of the world for what we did, we better get our act together before the next disaster.



At daybreak Friday the victims trapped under tons of debris will have spent three nights and 62 hours buried alive, if they are still alive. No doubt many trapped survivors will die. In addition the thousands of injured victims and millions of homeless and terrified residents of Haiti will still be in tents in open fields, most without food, water and medical help.



So far we have demonstrated an ability to open the airport and help supply planes land and unload. Then most of the supplies have sat since planes started arriving more than 36 hours ago. All the while thousands of helpless victims are buried alive and their families try to dig them out from under tons of debris with their hands.

The Obama administration has mobilized for this tragedy at the same pace as they ordered all those new troops to Afghanistan. Obama orders a troop surge and then we discover much of the surge will take 8-12 months. That hardly sounds like an immediate troop surge to attack the bad guys. I'm not questioning that it takes the military so many months to carry out an order. But in a life threatening emergency like the earthquake we have no time for such comprehensive plans, logistical support operations, and all the other things that can be programmed into a war.



In a disaster you get yourself to the site to assess it and then start making decisions on how to save lives. Three days into this disaster and no one is in charge on the ground and no one is coordinating the efforts except a few bureaucrats back in Obama's office. If it weren't for the first responders who flew down to Haiti before any of the Obama gang, three crews and dogs from America and crews from Iceland, France, England, Russia, and China, no one would be searching for survivors yet. The Obama gang is still in Washington planning.

Check out the television reports gang, people are actually dying. We are not staging an invasion of Iran but trying to save lives in Haiti. Field coordinators should have been on the ground the night of the disaster. There are thousands of Americans and humanitarian workers from around the world who were already in Haiti, they have been there for years. Even Doctors Without Borders had over 100 people there. We didn't need press conferences, we didn't even need people the first few hours, we just needed to get supplies to the people already on the ground. They are still waiting.

It was immediately obvious that Haiti was not going to contribute anything to this rescue effort so military should have been taking over police control the next morning. No one has done that yet. It was also obvious roads had to be cleared and heavy equipment was needed immediately, not four or five days later, to find and save the tens of thousands of trapped victims. Three days and the only equipment in Haiti is what the locals grabbed or the Dominicans sent in.



We know Haiti has 2000 pieces of heavy equipment throughout the country. Why didn't we go get it and fly it into the disaster zone with Chinook or Sky Crane helicopters? We know they can carry at least 28,000 pounds, about the size of modest but life saving bulldozers and cranes to lift debris. Surely there have to be a few dozen helicopters sitting around and Haiti is only a few hours away.



Right now, day three, the trapped are dying, the injured are dying, thousands of tons of supplies are piling up at the airport and there are still no roads cleared. Were it not for the deeply religious nature of the Haitians there undoubtedly would have been civil unrest by now. Still we owe them a better chance to survive.

The clean up and recovery may be a cerebral undertaking at Harvard speed but when lives are at stake like the first couple of days of a catastrophic disaster there is no time to meet and plan but only to execute. There are thousands of people from around the world on site and they are making a great sacrifice to be there. It is too bad that Americas first real contingent of soldiers will not arrive until the end of the third day.



We owe a great debt of gratitude to Americans and people around the world for helping out. We also owe it to ourselves to once again dissect our emergency response efforts and try to get it right the next time. No more lives should be lost because of our inability to mobilize instantly and react immediately to the human tragedies like this. America can do much better.



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Obama Completes New American Paradigm - Democrats Now Party of Big Banks, Big Pharma, Big Interests and Big Bucks

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Barack Obama ran on a platform of promising change and people have waited a year to see what kind of change he would deliver. The answer is finally in and the picture isn't easy to take for the lifelong members of the Democratic party. The Democrat party is no longer the people's party, the unique conglomeration of diverse partisans who had no other home for their cause.

Thanks to the new President from Harvard where money talks and money walks the Democrats have now become the political party of Wall Street, big banks, big pharma, big insurance and big money. Left in the debris of a once proud party of the people are the traditional Democrats from labor, teaching, minorities, Catholics and every other group that does not have extremely deep pockets.



How did our new president reverse the political landscape and take the Democrats from the populists to protectors of big money? Perhaps he spent too much time at Harvard researching the wealth of the Harvard endowment fund and the source of that wealth. Or maybe it was the dominating influence of his Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel who set out a couple of decades ago to become the poster boy for protecting Wall Street. Or maybe it was the stark realization that in today's world of politics money is everything as long as the campaign rules are not changed.

Whatever, while his domestic and foreign policy agendas fell flat on their face and the public revolted against the big government, big spending, big deficits and big taxes he proposed in health care, energy, the environment, housing, and many other areas, he was slamming through a seemingly dumbfounded congress the foundation for his new paradigm. He got bank bailouts, insurance bailouts, auto bailouts, Wall Street bailouts, housing bailouts, secret deals with big pharma, all were meant to guarantee the survival of the money mongers regardless of the impact on the people.



As a result the people's candidate became the beneficiary of all those bad guys he promised to stop when he was still a candidate, a promise his record demonstrated was just another political lie from just another Washington politician. Suddenly an avalanche of big money flooded in to Obama and all those who agreed to be his puppets. In fact over $429 million has flowed into congressional campaign funds for the 2010 elections and it is only mid-January.



Where are the Obama windfall campaign funds going? Democrats dominated the big business fund raising marathon capturing seven of the top ten places in the House and eight of the top ten places in the Senate. House Democrat Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland led all House members for receiving special interest funding to such an astounding degree that every major bank receiving Obama bailout funds contributed to his 2010 campaign funds. Even Charles Rangel, Democrat of New York hit the top ten and he is under a long delayed investigation for cheating big time on his taxes.



Any Democrat who voted for health care reform would share in the hundreds of millions of dollars paid out by the pharmaceutical and insurance industries to support health care reform. Why, you might ask, would the drug and insurance industries be paying for something that the president said would hurt them? It will not hurt them.



It will assure the drug companies can maintain their billion dollar profits on their drugs by keeping out foreign competition. Lawyers and their billions in legal fees for malpractice cases against the medical community are protected. Waivers of anti-trust laws for insurance providers will remain. Current health care providers who already charge too much will find their profits swelling from the flood of uninsured whose insurance will be paid for by new taxes.



The result? Industries such as pharmaceutical, hospitals, nursing homes, health professionals and insurance companies are pouring money into Democratic campaigns at a far greater rate than Republican campaigns.

The same is true in the financial sector. The bad boys on Wall Street, in the banking, housing and investment fields are pouring money into Democrat campaigns at almost the same rate as they are paying billion dollar bonuses. For the first time Obama has made the Democrats the favorite recipient of cash from Wall Street, banks, securities, investment, real estate, lawyers and lobbyists fields.



Republicans used to be the party of choice for Wall Street and big business. Obama has changed that long established paradigm. Indeed he has brought about the institutional change he promised, but it was not in the areas of social programs or policy initiatives. No, the Obama agenda was always about controlling the flow of dollars into campaigns.



Of course this leads to a couple of important questions about our new president. Why is he the new protector of Wall Street and big business? And who told him to do it? Certainly there is nothing in his published background that would indicate he would become the most effective fund raiser from big business in history. Nor that he could parlay his relationship with big business into controlling the money hungry minions on capitol hill by filling their campaign coffers.



Goldman Sachs, the bad boys of Wall Street, may hold the key to Obama and his conversion from populism to capitalism, Rothschild style. In numerous articles I have warned of the strange interaction between Obama during his climb to the top of the mountain and how Goldman came out of nowhere to help push him along the way. The media in America never got interested in pursuing the truth about this any more than they got interested in pursuing the truth about the Obama years after Columbia when he travelled in unusual places while his Ivy League education loans got paid off.

With the paradigm achieved and the media now learning this is not the president they were promised or expected, maybe now they will look into the background and find the truth. However, the public, especially the Democrats and Independents, know something is terribly wrong with the promise of Obama compared to the results.



Now that he or Emanuel are the new King Midas of the Democratic party and are dividing their efforts between raising money from big business to scolding big business, from financing congressional campaigns to protecting the people paying the money, maybe the traditional Democrats who have lost their party will lead a new effort to find the truth about Obama and his strange policy shifts.

Watch the flood of last minute money into the Massachusetts Senate race for Ted Kennedy's seat and look at where the money comes from and the truth will be obvious. Obama and his minions will pump into the campaign money from the very people they claim are the cause of our problems in the first place. How did they get their hands so deep into the pockets of big business? What was promised in return? Can we, all Americans, really afford the new Obama paradigm?

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Thousands Die in Haiti's Worst Earthquake in over 200 Years

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All Americans should join in prayer for the victims of Haiti. The following is an onsite report from the Catholic News Service from Haiti. Over 80% of residents of Haiti are Catholic.

Pope prays for victims of Haiti quake; archbishop's body found

By John Thavis
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI prayed for victims of a massive earthquake in Haiti and urged the international community to provide generous assistance to the stricken population of the Caribbean nation.

The victims included Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot of Port-au-Prince.

"The lifeless body of Archbishop Joseph Miot of Port-au-Prince was found this morning under the rubble of the archbishops' residence," L'Osservatore Romano said in a Page 1 story Jan. 13.

Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the Vatican's apostolic nuncio in Haiti, told the Vatican missionary news agency Fides: "Port-au-Prince is completely devastated. The cathedral and the archbishop's residence, all the big churches, all the seminaries are reduced to rubble."



Pope Benedict made his appeal at the end of his general audience Jan. 13, some 12 hours after a magnitude 7 earthquake struck Haiti, toppling buildings and causing widespread destruction. The number of casualties was not immediately known, but local officials called it a major catastrophe.

Pope Benedict said he wanted to highlight the dramatic situation in Haiti following the "devastating earthquake, which resulted in serious loss of human life, a great number of homeless and missing, and enormous material damage."

"I appeal to the generosity of everyone, so that our brothers and sisters receive our concrete solidarity and the effective support of the international community in this moment of need and suffering," he said.

He said the Catholic Church's charity organizations would immediately move into action to assist those most in need.

"I invite everyone to join in my prayer to the Lord for the victims of this catastrophe and for those who are mourning their loss. I assure my spiritual closeness to people who have lost their homes and to all those affected in various ways by this calamity, imploring from God consolation and relief of their suffering," he said.



Archbishop Auza said he had toured the capital on the morning after the earthquake and found the country's ministry buildings, schools and supermarkets destroyed. He said the headquarters of the U.N. stabilization force in Port-au-Prince had completely collapsed, reportedly trapping hundreds in the debris.

"I found priests and nuns on the street, who no longer have homes. The rector of the seminary survived, and so did the dean, but the seminarians are under the rubble. Everywhere there are cries coming from under the rubble," he said.



He said a study institute for men and women religious had collapsed, with many students inside as they attended a conference. The nunciature withstood the quake, and there were no injuries there, he said.

"We cannot enter or stay inside for very long because the earth continues to tremble. So we're camped out in the garden," he said.

Caritas Internationalis, the Vatican-based umbrella organization for Catholic charities, said it was mobilizing to provide immediate assistance to Haiti. On Jan. 13 it had already assembled an emergency relief team to fly to Haiti to assist Caritas members already working in the country. It said there had not yet been contact with the Haitian Caritas office.

Caritas Internationalis humanitarian director Alistair Dutton was leading the emergency relief team, Caritas said in a statement.

"There is a strong Caritas presence in Haiti. We already know that Caritas staff will be providing support to survivors of the earthquake, such as food, shelter and comfort through churches and parish networks," Dutton said.

"A priority for Caritas will be to assess the damage and our local capacity to provide aid to survivors of the quake. Caritas runs more than 200 hospitals and medical centers in Haiti. It is experienced and prepared to respond to humanitarian disasters there as a result of the frequent hurricanes," he said.

"Communication with our staff on the ground is difficult, but we are piecing together a picture of desperate need. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Conflict, recent natural disasters, and poverty have left Haitians with weak infrastructure. Working in that environment will be difficult," he said.



In its statement, Caritas said the cathedral in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince was badly damaged.

Caritas also said the U.S.-based Catholic Relief Services had been in communication with its staff in Haiti. The local CRS office was still standing and CRS staff present at the time of the quake were safe, it said. CRS staff described the quake as "a major hit ... a direct hit."

END