Obama delivered a much-anticipated speech to the Muslim world on Friday. Mitt Romney jumped on the Fox News bandwagon and called it the latest stop in Obama’s “apology tour”. I guess Mitt didn’t really watch the speech, but instead decided to parrot out the right wing talking points. Or perhaps he was watching the speech through shit-stained glasses. I don’t know.

The fact is the speech was not apologetic. It was honest. He spoke frankly about the stereotypes that divide us and the common principles we share. He acknowledged the stereotypes we have about the Muslim world, and the stereotypes the Muslim world has about us. The message was not directed at Al Qaeda or terrorists, but to moderates in the Muslim world. It was the beginning of the dialogue that has been sorely lacking.

I guess to some, the speech would be jarring considering that our last president neatly packaged foreign states as “against us” or “with us”. Those who were “against us” did not deserve to be heard by us. I understand, the tactic Obama is taking is huge departure from what has been done in the past and it could be uncomfortable.

The substance of the speech was to explain to Muslims the ideals which America stands for and the reasons that extremism should not be accepted in their countries. After listening to the speech in its entirety, I was very proud of his performance.

But Sean Hannity of Fox News had a different take, he said:

While much of America was asleep this morning, President Barack Obama delivered a major address in Egypt that was billed as a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world. But in the end, the president decided to use his time on foreign soil to point the finger directly at America for many of the world’s problems. And he faulted the U.S. for the tension that exists between Americans and Muslims. And that is our headline tonight: “Blaming America First.”

Now, in his remarks, Mr. Obama refused to use these words: “terror,” “terrorism,” “terrorists,” or even that term “manmade disasters.” But he repeatedly quoted the Quran and even accused Americans of overreacting to the 9-11 terror attacks.

His reporting of the speech is patently false and irresponsible. Not once did he blame America for the world’s problems, but he did characterize the Iraq ware as a “war of choice”, which it was. He did not lay blame on either party for the tensions that exist between Americans and Muslims, but he did acknowledge they exist. While he did quote the Quran, he also quoted the Bible and the Torah to illustrate how their teachings share the same fundamental ideals. Hannity’s characterization of the president’s remarks on 9/11 is twisted and just wrong. In fact, what Obama said about 9/11 was:

I’m aware that there’s still some who would question or even justify the events of 9/11. But let us be clear: Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day. The victims were innocent men, women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody. And yet al Qaeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the attack, and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale. They have affiliates in many countries and are trying to expand their reach. These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with.

There were no apologies, none at all. I’m proud of our president: Barack Hussein Obama. And I have no apologies, none at all.

I spent some time yesterday looking through a few pages of posts on Sabrina’s Money Matters and found some gems that I wanted to share with you. Every writer will agree that everything they write is not top notch quality. Some days I’m grasping for anything, I’ll watch the news just to get an idea of what to write about sometimes.

Yet it doesn’t always yield a fresh idea and I’m forced to find a new avenue and today is one of those days for me. I’ve got dark clouds in the mind today and clouds behind my eyes as well. Sabrina’s Money Matters was my first blogging effort, maybe I shouldn’t have started with a niche blog, but I still get some traffic to her and have been writing there again little by little.

The first post I want to share with you is called Security in an Insecure World. I thought of this post when I was working with the investigative firm that I just recently left and thought it would be good to share with my readers just where exactly our personal information is stored that we don’t think about until it’s too late.

The next post I want to share with you is a fun post I wrote as part of a small series of cheap dating ideas to use that guarantee fun, but not a big dent in the wallet. This post is called $20 Dates, The Living Room Luau. Not a bad post to read before Friday night.

Another post I wanted especially to highlight was How to Lock Your Credit Report. You can do it without Lifelocks’ help and monthly fee. Realistically I don’t like Lifelock I think it provides a false sense of security. But that’s another post, and one I’ll save for Sabrina’s Money Matters probably, so sign up for the SMM feed if you haven’t already so you don’t miss that post.

Last for now, but definitely not least, is an article I wrote that still gets a surprising amount of traffic. SMCStreet.com and NewFuture.com are highlighted as scams in this post. In this article I even refer you to websites to teach you what these companies are trying to sell you.

That’s all for now folks, hopefully tomorrow I’ll be in a better mood and can write something fun for you.