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Philip Sherwell, Telegraph.co.uk

 

President Barack Obama's unprecedented critique of past American behaviour towards Europe aroused predictable ire among his conservative foes and praise from liberals in the US.

 

Phone lines to Right-wing talk radio shows were buzzing with angry attacks on the commander-in-chief for alleged "treachery".

 

Mr Obama may be rebuilding some frayed alliances abroad but his comments are the latest blow to his erstwhile aspirations of developing a post-partisan political atmosphere at home.

 

His references to American "arrogance" and its "dismissive" attitude were viewed by some commentators as an unwarranted attack on his homeland while travelling abroad. Read article.

Irwin M. Stelzer, DC Examiner.com

 

All in all, a rather strange first trip for our new President:

 

* A visit to the Queen of England, at which Obama presented her with an iPod, further proof that he has no ability to select a gift that reflects the rich history of Anglo-American relations.

 

* Attendance at a G-20 meeting in which his allies reject his call to supplement his efforts to stimulate the world economy.

 

* On to a meeting with the Russians, in which the President of the United States accepts responsibility for the “drift” in relations with that country, and with the Chinese, in which he concedes them the added international clout they crave, with no discernable quid pro quo.

 

Top that off with a refusal of our allies to offer meaningful help in combating the terrorists that thrive in Afghanistan and threaten them as well as us, and only someone with the supreme self-regard of Barack Obama can regard the trip as a success.

 

If he had any sense of history, he might have called the Europeans’ attention to the anniversary of the Marshall Plan. But he doesn’t, and so he didn’t. Read article.

Victor Davis Hanson, NRO.com

 

‘Yes, we can!” Germans shouted in unison with candidate Barack Obama at their Victory Column in Berlin this past summer.

 

To judge by the crowds and European media, most Europeans were as ecstatic about the coming of the Obama presidency as they were over the departure of George W. Bush. At last, an American president who praised multilateralism and the United Nations, and seemed sympathetic to Europe’s socialist culture.

 

Obama’s multiracial, nontraditional heritage seemed sophisticated and cosmopolitan in a European way that Bush’s Texas accent and Christian fundamentalism most definitely were not.

 

Despite Bush’s efforts in his second term to work closely with the Europeans, and the emergence of conservative governments in France, Germany, and Italy, Old Europe for the most part was all too happy to see him go.

 

But will Europe always be happy with the Obama it wished for? Read article.

 

Matt Towery, Townhall.com

 

The talk has been in the air for the past few months. People are upset, and they want to vent their anger. Between bailouts, bogus bonuses and the fear that economic calamity has caused, there has been little doubt that the talk of protests both here and abroad was soon to blossom into unrest.

 

But there is a difference between mindless hooligans and those who organize a protest against specific policies they believe to be harmful -- such as those having "Tea Party" protests around the nation to protest the administration's seemingly unbridled spending; or the more targeted Fair Tax rallies led by people such as nationally syndicated radio talk show host Neal Boortz. These protests are to promote real solutions to the problems of massive debt and soaring taxes. Read article.

Judi McLeod, CanadaFreePress.com

 

Neither US President Barack Obama nor British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, hosting the Summit, the leaders of the countries trying to spend their way out of global recession, commented on the protests, perhaps because they provide good theatre.

 

But bankers and greedy capitalists are the target of protester wrath, not the politicians.

 

The pattern of mob rule is familiar on both sides of the pond. Just as groups with billions of dollars in government funding like US ACORN, chartered a bus to menace American Insurance Group (AIG) executives in their own homes, G20 summit protesters levy their rage against bankers.

 

“This is about making it shameful to be a banker,” said 25-year-old consultant, Annabel Acton. “I’ve come here today so we can engage in a peaceful protest and vent our anger against the greed of the financial institutions. They are dealers in death and intent on oppressing us.” Read article.

 

Jonathan Freedland, Guardian.co.uk

 

Obama was meant to sweep into town looking unassailable. Instead he arrives beleaguered, with an awful lot to prove.

 

Someone tore up the script. Here's how it was meant to go. Barack Obama was supposed to sweep into Europe on his first major trip abroad as the new JFK, greeted by adoring fans moistly waving little American flags. His progress would be part celebrity world tour, part celebration of the end of the Bush era. A needy Gordon Brown would bask in the Obama glow, hoping its rays would improve his own deathly pallor.

 

Meanwhile, the rest of Europe's leaders would fall to their knees, humbly agreeing to any request made by the visiting emperor, mindful that in a choice between them and Obama, their own electorates would choose Obama every time.

 

That was the way it was supposed to be. Instead, Obama arrived on the eve of what organisers promise will be a raucous day of anti-globalisation protest on London's streets, the demonstrators' previous loathing of George Bush rapidly transferred to the commanders of the ailing world economy. Read article.

Paul R. Hollrah, NMJ.us

 

According to Greek mythology, Daedalus and his son, Icarus, were imprisoned by King Minos on the island of Crete. As a means of escape, Daedalus made two pairs of wings by attaching feathers to a wooden frame with wax. However, before departing the island, Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly too close to the Sun or too close to the sea.

 

But Icarus became enraptured with his ability to fly and soon forgot his father's warning. Soaring effortlessly through the sky, Icarus flew too high and the heat of the Sun melted the wax of his wings. And as he flapped and flapped his arms, trying frantically to maintain himself in flight, he soon realized that he had no feathers left and that he was only flapping his bare arms. He fell into the sea and died.

 

What better metaphor for Barack Obama. His meteoric rise to power and his all-but-certain fall from grace will be every bit as spectacular as Icarus’s flight. Yes, Obama’s political godfather, George Soros, and others, made certain that Obama had enough feathers and enough wax to fly effortlessly through the Democratic primaries and the General Election. However, drunk with power, and thinking of himself as invincible and irresistible, Obama has paid little attention to the lessons of history.

 

In just a few short weeks the Obama presidency has come to resemble, not the inventive and forward-looking approach to governance that his supporters envisioned, but something far more tragic. His soaring rhetoric and his promise of unspecified “change” were the wax and the feathers that took him to the heights, but now he appears more like Icarus after flying too close to the Sun.

 

His personal charm and his monumental ego... actually believing that he was capable of serving as President of the United States... were the sum and substance of his perceived greatness. But now, as it all begins to melt away, his disappointed followers find that there is simply no “there” there. They are left with nothing more than an empty suit floating on a sea of broken promises. Read article.

 

Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic.com

 

In an interview conducted shortly before he was sworn in today as prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu laid down a challenge for Barack Obama. The American president, he said, must stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—and quickly—or an imperiled Israel may be forced to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities itself.

 

“The Obama presidency has two great missions: fixing the economy, and preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu told me. He said the Iranian nuclear challenge represents a “hinge of history” and added that “Western civilization” will have failed if Iran is allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

 

In unusually blunt language, Netanyahu said of the Iranian leadership, “You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.” He went on, “Since the dawn of the nuclear age, we have not had a fanatic regime that might put its zealotry above its self-interest. People say that they’ll behave like any other nuclear power. Can you take the risk? Can you assume that?” Read article.

Melvyn L. Fein, Marietta Daily Journal.com

 

One of George Burns' more famous observations was that the secret to acting was sincerity. At this he would pause, then tellingly add, "If you can fake that, you've got it made."

 

Our current president is a master at faking sincerity.

 

How many times has the president told the nation that his stimulus package would produce, or save, 3 to 4 million jobs?

 

How many times has he declared that his green energy program would create five million unexportable jobs? Obviously he has done so many dozens of times - always with complete sincerity.

 

Yet where did he get these figures? Even his own economists, if they are being honest, have to admit that he made them up. Economic predictions are notoriously unreliable; nevertheless the president presents them with a conviction that sounds as if it were grounded in irrefutable facts. There is a stentorian quality to his voice and a straightforward look in his eye that are difficult to contradict.

 

Nonetheless, he is faking it. He is making promises designed to elicit support, not predictions that will later be subjected to rigorous test. Count on it; if the numbers do not add up as currently stated, they will be revised without any acknowledgement that there has been a revision. The president will simply count on voters having short memories.

 

In the meantime, he will rely on a time-honored formula for persuading people that something is in their interest. He will continue to repeat his fictitious numbers with an undiluted conviction. He understands that even blatant lies are believed if they are reiterated frequently enough. Such is the way that an aura of sincerity is created.

 

And what will be the reaction of the American public? Read article.

 

Joe Kressm NWV.com

 

The Fabian Society (founded January 4, 1884), began as a socialist movement in Great Britain. Its purpose is to accomplish a social democracy to transform societies and governments not through revolution but gradually. It is the foundation of the British Labor Party and subsequently it forced the decolonized of the British Empire. The Fabians favored gradual incremental change.

 

The Fabians favored nationalism of land, believing that rents collected by landowners were unearned. The founders of the Fabian Society were Sidney and Beatrice Webb (founders of the London School of Economics). Together, they wrote studies on co-operative economics applied to ownership of capital as well as land. The meat of their message was a minimum wage, creation of socialized medicine, and the abolition of hereditary peers.

 

It is more than apparent that the model of United States public education was taken out of the Fabian textbooks and from the designer of U.S. public education, Fabian Socialist John Dewey’s MATRIX for public education. It’s the same as the British counterpart, the Bismarck model, where children are really property of the state and trained to serve the state, but never to be provided an education meant for men of letters. Read article.

 

Sandra Carney, FSM.org

 

In the Communist Manifesto Karl Marx argued for the abolition of the nation state:

“The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.”

 

Do Fabians support these ideas of abolishing countries and nationality?

 

At the behest of the Fabian Sydney Webb, Leonard Woolf (husband of Virginia Woolf) published his book “International Government” which is one of the foundational documents of the twentieth century towards Global Governance.

 

Are we going to be subservient to the United Nations?

 

Does Barack Obama believe in an independent U.S.? Read article.

 

Dr. Laurie Roth, NWV.com

 

The legs and arms continue to be ripped off the body of the patient while Obama talks ever so carefully and diplomatically with the world leaders at the G20 meeting. No doubt these wonders of international leadership and wisdom are campaigning for an international currency and regulations to come. Expect a well-worded, international report within a week or two announcing an international currency that would of course have negotiated controls and regulations from a central source.

 

Naturally, since we are in so many national and international emergencies, transitioning to another currency for international trade will shred even further wealth and retirement investments for millions, but who cares. You know the “Chicago way” don’t you……….”the means justify the ends.” What’s a few more million suffering bodies. Government will just scheme to redistribute some more wealth to solve the crises they are currently making. Read article.

 

Ron Marlar, NMJ.us

 

Cowardice asks the question “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question “Is it politic?” Vanity asks the question “Is it popular?” But conscience asks the question “Is it right?” And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one’s conscience tells one that it is right. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

Barack Hussein and Michelle Obama do not like the United States of America as it has been and is so far at present. They make their dislike of the U.S. clear in their past and present words and actions. Those that they have associated with as their closest friends and co-workers and those that they have brought into his Administration share their dislike going to hatred of the U.S., even to terrorist acts against the U.S. Read article.