What The Foreign Media Says About Obama

Excerpts From Around The World

Sometimes you have to go beyond the knee-pad wearing American media to see what the rest of the world thinks of Obama because as has been demonstrated time and again since his inauguration, this media is completely in the tank for “The One” and won’t let anything bad be said about him.
While many here in America are still entranced by Obama’s oratory skills, it appears the rest of the world is waking up to the complete failure that the Obama Presidency has no doubt become.
Just look at what our good friend the Brit’s are saying, yes this is the actual title:

“Obama The Impotent”

The disappointment with Barack Obama is tangible – on climate change and financial reform Europe leads while the US Lags

Steven Hill, guardian.co.uk  Sept. 22nd, 2009
Excerpt:

Many leaders and supporters are beginning to wonder what is causing this growing gap between the Barack Obama that many people saw on the campaign trail, and the Obama they see in the White House? Beyond Obama's oratorical skills, which excited not only American voters but people all over the world, he is mostly untested as a politician. His previous experience was only a few years in the US Senate and a few years more as a state senator. A sinking feeling is arising among many that President Obama may not be up to the task, that he may not possess the artful skills needed to accomplish even his own goals.

It seems our friends in the UK are waking up to the Obamanation that this President truly is.   Finally they see what the rest of us have known all along, that electing an ACORN Community Organizer for President was about the dumbest thing this country could’ve done.
But now, the ignorance of our friends the Brit’s as it pertains to our political system here in the “colonies” as they like to call us:

But it must be recognised that it's not just Obama's shortcomings that are causing the problem. The very structure of the American political system is at the heart of these failures. For example, thwarting Obama on a regular basis is an unrepresentative senate where "minority rule" prevails and undermines what a majority of the country may want. With two senators elected per state, regardless of population, California with more than 35 million people has the same number of senators as Wyoming with just half a million residents. This constitutional arrangement greatly favours low population states, many of which tend to be conservative, producing what one political analyst has called "a weighted vote for small-town whites in pickup trucks with gun racks."

As if being insulted by Jimmy Carter wasn’t bad enough, even the Brit’s somehow think that it’s only those in the most rural of areas in the U.S. that oppose Obama.  The reality in the U.S. is that the over-populated urban centers of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas and Houston pretty much control the outcome of every election.  The balance that the Brit’s complain about in the Senate is precisely to counter-act the “mob rule” scenario that our Founding Fathers had the wisdom and foresight to protect against.  (That same wisdom and foresight caused them to leave England, but I digress.)  The specific purpose of the Senate is to prevent “mob rule” by the majority, acting as a governance mechanism to prevent government over-reaction towards passing legislation.

In addition, the senate's use of that arcane rule known as the "filibuster" means you need 60 out of 100 votes to stop unlimited debate on a bill and move to a vote. A mere 41 senators, representing as little as 20% of the nation's population, can stymie the other 80%. Given a vastly unrepresentative senate wielding its anti-majoritarian filibuster, it is hardly surprising that minority rule in the senate consistently undermines majority rule, whether on healthcare, financial industry reform, environmental legislation and many other policies.

Again, our friends the Brit’s are ignorant of the facts of our system and the current balance of power.  The Democrats hold super-majorities in BOTH the Senate and House of Representatives.  Obama does not need a single Republican vote to pass anything he wants, the Democrats can do it all.  The current status of the House and Senate prevent any minority rule party such as the Republicans from stopping anything from coming to a vote – or passing.

The first problem that our shortsighted friends the Brit’s don’t see is that Obama can’t keep his own fractured party together long enough to pass the socialist bills the Brit’s seem to want to foist on us poor “colonists!”

The second problem the Brit’s have is they don’t understand why American’s resoundingly reject the very system they embrace – Socialism.   When 80% of a population want something that doesn’t necessary make it the right thing to do – or a “right” to have.  In the case of Health Care for example, the 20% the Brit’s say don’t want it would be the ones ending up paying for the 80% to have.

In our system of government, who has the authority to place upon me such an obligation?  The answer is NO ONE, which is why we poor colonists (as the Brit’s see us) are revolting against Obama.

None of these anti-democratic structural features are going away any time soon. Unless Barack Obama is able to demonstrate a better level of political skill than he has shown so far, everyone needs to fasten their seatbelts. The world is about to enter a challenging phase where the US – the undisputed leader of the free world for the past 60 years – is going to rapidly cede its place at the head of the line.

What the Brit’s call anti-democratic are those parts of our political system that they deem as an affront to their own “sensibilities.”  The reality is our system is working precisely as it was designed to do.  The Democrat Party Leadership over-reached in their power-grabs on nationalizing the Banks, the Automobile industry, and now Health Care.  American's have said NO MORE! as more than 2,000,000 of us marched on Washington DC on 9/12 to make sure the bastards got the message loud and clear whereas the poor sniveling Brit's would've clamored for more socialism. 

This is what separates American's from the British, our bold sense of self-reliance vs. their self surrendering "let the government do it for us" lazy attitudes.  This somehow makes the Brit's more "civilized" than us poor colonists? 

Thank God in Heaven above we kicked them out of here 233 years ago.
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Why Everyone Is Saying No to Obama

The Jerusalem Post, Sept. 21st, 2009

Amir Mizroch

Everybody is saying no to the American president these days. And it's not just that they're saying no, it's also the way they're saying no.


The Saudis twice said no to his request for normalization gestures towards Israel (at Barack Obama's meeting with King Abdullah in Saudi Arabia, and in Washington at meetings with Hillary Clinton). Who says no to the American president twice? What must they think of Obama in the desert kingdom?
The North Koreans said no to repeated attempts at talks, by test-launching long-range missiles in April; Russia and China keep on saying no to tougher sanctions on Iran; the Iranians keep saying no to offers of talks by saying they're willing to talk about everything except a halt to uranium enrichment; Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is saying no by refusing to meet with Binyamin Netanyahu until Israel freezes all settlement construction; the Israelis said no by refusing to agree to a settlement freeze, or even a settlement moratorium until and unless the Arabs ante up their normalization gestures.

Which brings us back to the original Saudi no.

The only thing Obama did manage to get Bibi and Abbas to say yes to is a photo-op at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in NY. Mazel tov.

So why is everyone saying no to Obama?

It's the economy, stupid.

Everyone has worked it out by now: The great secret is out. America's economy has made Obama a weak president, and he will likely remain weak throughout his first term. He has about two years to pull the American economy out of its free-fall before he begins his reelection campaign. If he can do it, and that's a big if, chances are good that he'll get reelected, and in his second term he can try to pull some geopolitical strings. But for the next three years, expect to see a world that says no to Obama. No meaningful and dramatic diplomatic initiative can come out of the White House in the next three years, as long as Obama remains weak.
 
And that's a real pity, because there are some serious and imminent issues that need to be addressed.

Pyongyang is getting more bellicose and not being punished. The North Koreans have violated every single international agreement and norm, and nothing tangible has happened to them.

In Iran, this registers. "Look at how bad they're being," the mullahs say, "and they're getting away with it." Even so, the Iranian government is weak internally and internationally following its election fiasco.

The US and EU could tighten sanctions against Iran without the support of Russia and China, but they would need political will for that. Sanctions, such as a ban on refined oil imports, barring Iranian flights to America and Europe etc., could have a serious impact on Iran and weaken the regime further. The US and EU can act now against Iran like the US and UK did against Libya several years ago when they persuaded Gaddafi to abandon his nuclear ambitions. Back then, though, the US was much stronger. Now, the American economy, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and North Korea have all weakened the US.

In retaliation for increased, unilateral sanctions, Iran could turn up the heat on US and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, which will stymie Obama's plan to win and withdraw. In Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran has the US president by the kishkes, in a manner of speaking. And so do the Taliban.

So, when a president with so many problems comes asking for a favor, everyone finds it easier to just say “No!”
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Editor’s Comment:

It’s hard to add anything of value to such a well written spot-on article, other than to say what we said when Obama was inaugurated: “Jimmy Carter must be the happiest man on the planet because finally someone has come along that will be a worse President than he ever was.”