Sarkozy- I want to change the world with Obama

[Dry]

That's because amongst the vast majority of people it was never Anti-Americanism, as some people were so desperate to claim. Most so-called Anti-Americans were actually Anti-Bush-administrationists.

I second that.

Back in the days, I remember how to be anti-Bush was to be anti-American, freedom-hater. And to be anti-Sharon was to be nazi-like anti-semitic.

I would say it this way:
It's weird how on some forums this long and deep "criticizing Bush equal treason, [self-hating] anti americanism, anti-freedom" has totally gone now.

[OzzyKP]

It seemed very much to a lot of us that the "anti-bushism" (which many of us agreed to) really was anti-americanism. I am very thankful that Bush is gone and attitudes are warming, but the attitude in the last 8 years was deeper than just anti-Bush.


As for the OP, the most striking quote is Royal trying to take credit for Obama's success.

[Pekka]

MikeH, Sure, absolutely. However, the tone with anti-americans is less vigilant as well. Surely that's natural since Bush is gone, however, some of the sentiment has diminished that was not so much anti-bush but anti-bush+anti-america.

Anti-Bush people have usually separated themselves by stating that they just don't like the president, or have stuck to criticizing his actions.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Obama also makes the rest of Europe look bad, from a racial-equality viewpoint. Even such bastions of democracy as France and England are taking a long hard look at the racial composition of their legislative and executive branches.

Sarkozy was always a pro-American politician, as was Merkel. Much of this can be attributed to Bush's second-term diplomatic offensive (a tacit reversal of his "my way or highway" first-term policy), so attributing this purely to Obama - whether positively or negatively - is somewhat questionable.

[MikeH]

To some extent, although senate and congress are still incredibly white. Similar here, we had a female prime minister, but it hasn't massively impacted parliament in terms of female MPs. I don't think 1 person getting the top job indicates the problem of equal representation is solved.

[Barnabas]

Here we have a law which says half of the candidates for congress should be women, and they should be intercalated evenly in the lists.

For example, if province X chooses 5 deputies, the candidate lists of the political parties should be male-female-male-female-male or female-male-female-male-female

[DanS]

Even Khaddafi is on Obama's side right now.

I'd say that the over-under on this entire honeymoon is 2 weeks.

[Arrian]

Isn't Khaddafi on the dole now? One of Bush's successes (how real that success is, I honestly don't know), IIRC.

-Arrian

[DanS]

On the dole? That's the first I've heard of it.

Edit: To be clear, I'm not sure that a payoff wouldn't be worth it. It rolled up AQ Khan's network, IIRC. I guess it matters how much the payoff was, if indeed there was a payoff. As to the magnitude of the success, I think it was pretty big, as far as these things go.

[Arrian]

1) Apparently, I was confused as to the nature of the recent improvement in US-Lybian relations. I didn't pay much attention to it, and I assumed there was some payoff associated with it. My bad. I did correctly have it in the "one of Bush's successes" column, though.

2) I'm not necessarily against payoffs. I'm just saying they're often hard to evaluate as a private citizen.

-Arrian