Euro angst is tasty

[BuddhaRhubarb]

America actually doesn't really want change or they would be letting his government do more than hand out money to billionaires at the expense of tax payers. 

This is the kind of contention (contained in the Op_Ed in the OP as well) that mystifies me.  "America" does this.  "America" won't let something happen.

How is "America" or even "Americans" prevent something from happening, or let something happen like "letting his government do more?"  I don't see how "America" can even be an actor.

well yes, Americans would have been better grammar and more to my point. The fact is that Obama was elected. As was Bush before him etc. therefore he is supposed to be leading the Americans, or speaking for America. And IMHO... That he does.

But this idea that America must change the world is yes, pretty silly. Every nation has an urgent need to change the world, some nations do this better than others, America probably better than any other nation in the last 100 years. But that doesn't mean and never has that as goes America, there goes the world.

Even if somehow The USA got universal healthcare everyone could agree on, gun control(that satisfied gun-tards and peace-tards alike), environmental protocols that put the whole world on the right track, brought the deficit down to a reasonable amount or paid it off even (talk about your fantasy scenarios) was able to pull out of Afghanistan & Iraq leaving the middle east as a peaceful Democratic Utopia of simple goat herders and heroin dealers, it wouldn't be enough. imho Obama has had this "saviour" thing cast on him, not by those who support him as much as he has a "failed saviour" thing cast on him, by his opponents.

It seems to me that people  can't see through that, and can't understand from the hard time The US has had with the bailouts, housing markets, and various wars, that it may take more than a few months to solve all these issues that have taken years and years to build to the point they are at now.

Saying you are willing to work hard to try to change things people are complaining (Which is what I heard in his speeches) about, is not the same as somehow unilaterally just changing them. Abra kadabra.

[Faeelin]

Nobody in America it seems (the TV wouldn't lie to me would it?) wants to do anything to help the Obama government, they're all to scared by completely ridiculous fearmongering by the Republicans, and the media. Moronic tea parties, and blocking something as innocuous as letting poor people get some semblance of health care are somehow considered helping the economy?

Incidentally, one of the big criticisms the left has of the Obama administration is that it mercilessly stabs its base in the back whenver it's convenient. The gays, pro-choice lobbyists, environmentalists, civil libertarians, etc. are all at best dissapointed and at worst openly hostile to them.

[garbon]

The mongrel races of Canada are of no help to anyone.

Just seems sad as that means the earth/human race is on the verge of immediate collapse?

[crazy canuck]

But buddha, he does have himself to blame in part.  When you run on a platform of "hope and change" you really do increase expectations that things will, well, change.

He is doing the hope part in the first two years. 

The second two years will be the change.

The problem is the Change part will be that there is no more hope.

[Caliga]

The presidency has been all Hope thus far.

The Change part will come in 2012.  The first Tuesday of November in 2012, to be exact.

[crazy canuck]

Even if somehow The USA got universal healthcare everyone could agree on, gun control(that satisfied gun-tards and peace-tards alike), environmental protocols that put the whole world on the right track, brought the deficit down to a reasonable amount or paid it off even (talk about your fantasy scenarios) was able to pull out of Afghanistan & Iraq leaving the middle east as a peaceful Democratic Utopia of simple goat herders and heroin dealers, it wouldn't be enough. imho Obama has had this "saviour" thing cast on him, not by those who support him as much as he has a "failed saviour" thing cast on him, by his opponents.

Actually, if he did that he would simply be living up to his election promises.....

[BuddhaRhubarb]

I guess he should have mentioned that he didn't have a magic wand that would just fix things without any muss or fuss.

Well, he should have done something during the campaign to dampen expectations that got wildly out of control.

like expect people to not expect solutions to appear out of thin air?  yeah good luck with that.

Nobody in America it seems (the TV wouldn't lie to me would it?) wants to do anything to help the Obama government, they're all to scared by completely ridiculous fearmongering by the Republicans, and the media. Moronic tea parties, and blocking something as innocuous as letting poor people get some semblance of health care are somehow considered helping the economy?

Is that really how the Euro media is portraying this?

And you actually buy that explanation?

No. That's why I posed those smarmy comments as questions.  I don't buy anything the media or the government (any government) tries to sell me without much consideration. I don't know about the Euro media except from that OP.

I watch the Canadian and American media. It seems to me that both those are doing a lot of fear mongering/over hyping: Swine Flu, Olympic silliness in Canada, The Economy, etc. I rarely see positive stories about how this or that program or initiative is doing a good job of helping regular North Americans in their lives. But feel free to take my incoherent misspelled rants as something that I have put am lot of thought into, rather than the knee jerk reactions to the moronic posts of languishites.

Shame has a good point actually in parsing my posts: I agree with him that in fact most Americans( and Canadians if you look at voter this country recently) are diisengaed from politics. They (and probably this is better than getting wound up on Bulletin Boards all day) have no political will, and just roll with the punches, complaining amongst themselves.

I vote, but that is the limit to my political activism, for example. Languish is the only place I argue politics really ( I do have to listen to a lot of nutbar ranting trapped in a retail store that is oft visited by all sorts of people with conspiracy fetishes.) and I don't even do that well. It doesn't stop me from posting any more than it does you.

America indeed does not have any cohesive single political will. Why should it? land of the Free and all that.  That was really not what I was saying. I was using the convention used in the OP talking about Europe and the US as if they were some sort of entities. I apologize for diluting your genius discussions with my poor grammar.

:p

[Grallon]

America wasn't humbled enough with that last financial meltdown.  So long as that doesn't happen there won't be any real changes.  That a no brainer like healthcare could drag on as it does and swallow so much time/energy is very telling of the mire/lurch the US is in.



G.

[MadImmortalMan]

The GOP even sucks at fearmongering. If they are attempting it, they have thus far failed to reach me with their message. And I pay attention to the news, unlike the majority of people. 

As for the media only doing bad stories, well it could be worse. Unemployment is in double-digits. We could have the constant barrage of stories on the homeless and how hard it is for regular people to get by, etc. You don't see that to the level I'd expect under the circumstances. There's still a level of circumspection and restraint (except for FoxNews). It's probably true to an extent that a lot of them don't want to trash the economy with Obama at the helm, but honestly I think it's just a different level of expectations now. When we had a booming economy, they were doing sob stories about people who had problems affording the gas to get to work. Now, they don't have a job, so no problem. We're looking back at the economic "problems" of 2005 and wishing we had that back. So I think the media has shown a lot of restraint for the most part.

[grumbler]

Even if somehow The USA got universal healthcare everyone could agree on, gun control(that satisfied gun-tards and peace-tards alike), environmental protocols that put the whole world on the right track, brought the deficit down to a reasonable amount or paid it off even (talk about your fantasy scenarios) was able to pull out of Afghanistan & Iraq leaving the middle east as a peaceful Democratic Utopia of simple goat herders and heroin dealers, it wouldn't be enough.

I would point out that "one of these things is not like the other things."

However, I would argue that you are wrong.  Accomplishing these things (or even a couple of them) would be enough.

[Martinus]

America actually doesn't really want change or they would be letting his government do more than hand out money to billionaires at the expense of tax payers. 

This is the kind of contention (contained in the Op_Ed in the OP as well) that mystifies me.  "America" does this.  "America" won't let something happen.

How is "America" or even "Americans" prevent something from happening, or let something happen like "letting his government do more?"  I don't see how "America" can even be an actor.

This is no less stupid than the entire premise of the thread about "Euro" angst. It's a bit silly to expect exacting terminology from a response made to a thread that is in fact one big trolling attempt.

[Ed Anger]

Oh, I'd say I succeeded.

[KRonn]

The presidency has been all Hope thus far.

The Change part will come in 2012.  The first Tuesday of November in 2012, to be exact.

I HOPE Obama CHANGES....   

[jimmy olsen]

But few people expected that the Barack Obama, of all people, would continue his predecessor's climate change plan. When he took office at the beginning of 2009, it was clear that the success of the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen in December depended almost entirely on the US -- that America needed to take a clear leadership role on a problem that could shake civilization to its very core.

Only if the US manages to reduce its excessive energy consumption, commit itself to mandatory CO2 emission reduction targets and help finance the move away from oil for poorer countries, is there still a chance that countries like China and India will do the same and that a dangerous warming of the Earth can be stopped. On the weekend, Obama announced that there would be no agreement on binding rules in Copenhagen. It was the admission of a massive failing -- and the prelude to a truly dramatic phase of international climate policy.

Obama Lied to the Europeans

Barack Obama cast himself as a "citizen of the world" when he delivered his well-received campaign speech in Berlin in the summer of 2008. But the US president has now betrayed this claim. In his Berlin speech, he was dishonest with Europe. Since then, Obama has neglected the single most important issue for an American president who likes to imagine himself as a world citizen, namely his country's addiction to fossil fuels and the risks of unchecked climate change. Health care reform and other domestic issues were more important to him than global environmental threats. He was either unwilling or unable to convince skeptics in his own ranks and potential defectors from the ranks of the Republicans to support him, for example by promising alternative investments as a compensation for states with large coal reserves.

The Oceans boiling? Give me a fucking break, not even under the worst case scenario would they do so.

Secondly, a harsh treaty like he's talking about would never get by the senate. It wouldn't even be close. If he believed otherwise he was deluding himself.

[FunkMonk]

The Change part will come in 2012.

I blame Obama.