Conservative Crier

After more than a year in office, US President Barack Obama remains highly respected in most parts of the world. But bucking the trend is four of five major Muslim countries, where he enjoys the confidence of less than half the population.

Responses in the just-released 2010 survey of 22 nations, including the US, by the Pew Research Center are far more positive about Obama’s new presidency than they were for his predecessor. But the poll also shows clouds on the horizon over Obama’s policy towards the Israel-Palestine conflict and sanctions against Iran. The poll was conducted between 
April 7 to May 8, 2010.   Obama’s status defies widespread assumptions that the overwhelming international public approval of America’s first African-American chief executive was bound to crash once the afterglow of his historic election faded. American soft power, eroding through much of the last decade, has rebounded despite the American roots of the recent economic crisis, escalation of the war in Afghanistan and failure to take steps against climate change.  Nevertheless, the generally positive view of Obama and the US coexists with significant concerns about the perceived American unilateralist approach to world affairs and disagreement about some key US international policies, such as what to do about the Iranian nuclear weapons programme and Obama’s handling of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. This dichotomy runs counter to the Bush years, when specific foreign criticism of US foreign policy ran hand in hand with anti-American and anti-Bush sentiment, suggesting that anti-Americanism displayed early in 
the last decade reflected antipathy towards Bush. Obama is broadly popular. Majorities or pluralities in 16 of the 22 countries Pew surveyed expressed at least some confidence in the US president to do the right thing regarding world affairs.This includes 90 per cent of Germans, 76 per cent of Japanese and 84 per cent of Nigerians. Only 14 per cent of Germans, 25 per cent of Japanese and 55 per cent of Nigerians 
expressed confidence in Bush during his last year in office.

 But in five of six predominantly Muslim countries Pew surveyed, more than half of those polled lacked confidence in Obama, and the US remains a pariah in four Muslim countries Pew surveyed: Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan and Turkey. One in 12 Pakistanis, one in three Egyptians and one in four Turks said they supported the US president, despite Obama visits to Egypt and Turkey in 2009. Only in Indonesia, where Obama spent time as a child, was he popular. 

In Egypt, for example, America’s favourability rating dropped to 17 per cent, the lowest percentage observed in Pew Global Attitudes surveys conducted in that country since 2006 – a striking decline as Obama delivered his address to the Islamic world from Cairo in 2009. Approval of Obama and the US does not prevent publics around the globe from disagreeing with 
US foreign policy.The continuing war in Afghanistan gets a decidedly mixed review among US NATO allies. The British and the French were evenly split on whether their troops should be kept in Afghanistan until the country is stabilised or should be withdrawn now. In Germany, 58 per cent favoured immediate withdrawal. By comparison, only 45 per cent of Americans wanted US troops in Afghanistan removed.

 If Afghanistan is the current irritant in US relations with the world, Iran could be the next one. The Pew poll found widespread opposition to Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. The notable exception was Pakistan, the only nation surveyed in which a majority favoured Iran’s nuclear-
weapons programme.  

Global publics were also critical of how Obama has handled the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Pew survey was carried out before the recent uproar over the Israeli navy intercepting supply ships headed for Palestine. Nevertheless, of people in 22 nations, including the US, only majorities of the French, the Nigerians and the Kenyans approved of Obama’s handling of this Middle East dispute.  Obama generally received good grades for how he handled the world economic crisis. And, despite ample reason to blame Wall Street, world publics do not blame the US for the Great Recession.Eighteen months into the Obama administration, America’s stature in the world has rebounded. The economic crisis, escalation of the war in Afghanistan, failure to act on climate change and tensions in the Middle East have not undermined that support to any significant extent. Obamamania and pro-Americanism may have more legs than many cynics thought possible. This wellspring of global good will is a resource that the Obama White House can draw on in support of American foreign policy.

 Bruce Stokes is the international columnist for the National Journal. He wrote this for the Yale Center for the Study of Globalisation

Posted by Minnette Coleman

Before September 11, 2001, most people did not use the term ‘ground zero’. Now you hear it everywhere. Everything from the source of the spread of a disease to the place where exterminators find the nest of rats is ground zero. To me and to most New Yorkers the ultimate ground zero is the  hole left by the bombing of the twin towers that is the source of so many arguments over money and monuments. It is a reminder that this nation is as vulnerable as the next. It is a war wound that perhaps will never heal.

READ THE COMMENTARY HERE

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“The comments by this Prosecutor are ignorant and an insult to any rape victim. To compare a white-collar crime to a violent act of rape and murder is insensitive, ignorant and disingenuous. While the crime committed here is terrible it does not come close to any physically violent crime perputrated against another person. The comments spewed by this insensative Prosecutor is a direct attack on the souls of rape victims and the families of murder casulties. The Prosecutor should be removed from office without any delay.” – The Conservative Crier

Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s White House Chief of Staff, is reportedly planning on leaving his position within 6-8 months and is described as being “fed up with the idealism of…Obama’s closest advisers.”

A source in Washington, DC which spoke to the London Telegraph reportedly said of Emanuel:  “Nobody thinks it’s working but they can’t get rid of him – that would look awful. He needs the right sort of job to go but the consensus is he’ll go.”

Emanuel, who is well-known for his post-election statement, “Never let a crisis go to waste,” is apparently undergoing his own crisis both within and outside the White House.  John Harris, a co-defendant in the Rod Blagojevich corruption case as well as a former Army JAG officer, has testified that Emanuel called Harris to recommend Obama’s pick for his senate seat, Valerie Jarrett.

Jarrett and Emanuel have been subpoenaed to testify at the corruption trial of Rod Blagojevich, former Governor of Illinois, with Emanuel having been identified as a victim of extortion.  A report states that Emanuel “had direct conversations with Blagojevich about Obama’s replacement in the U.S. Senate.”

A report from January of this year stated that a leading Washington, DC news source had said that Emanuel planned to run for Mayor of Chicago, IL in November.

By Alan Caruba

Does anyone recall the first weeks of Barack Obama’s presidency? He was everywhere on the media all the time.

His constant use of TelePrompters became an instant joke, suggesting he could not say anything unless it was scripted. Indeed, listening to him try to speak without them is a painful process of a very slow selection of words and very long pauses in between.

After his first press conference he stopped holding them until 309 days later when he addressed the oil spill in the Gulf. It was such a lame performance that his advisors apparently thought a speech from the Oval Office, his first, would make up for that. It didn’t.

In this age of 24/7 news coverage, Barack Obama has managed to make himself ubiquitous to the point of complete inanity.

So, I have a bit of advice for him: Shut up, Barack.

The seas have not ceased to rise because you were elected (as promised) and the Earth has not “healed itself.” Indeed, it is bleeding oil at a prodigious rate, confounding BP’s engineers, all graduates no doubt of the Acme School of Oil Drilling.

What have we learned about Barack Hussein Obama? If George W. Bush was considered an amiable dunce, Obama has demonstrated to everyone he is the worst kind of ideologue, totally tone deaf to the Voice of the People.

When nearly a million Americans showed up in Washington, D.C. on September 12th last year to protest Obamacare, his communications advisor, David Axelrod dismissed them saying, “They’re wrong.”

Axelrod was on all the network and cable news shows the day following his Oval Office appearance defending a speech that essentially said we don’t know what we’re doing, but we blame BP. The good news is that the president has finally found someone else to blame other than George W. Bush for his own ineptitude and incompetence.

In case you haven’t noticed, Obama’s approval ratings in the polls are in the low 40s and heading south. There is a hard core of about 30% who support Obama no matter what he does or doesn’t do.

In an article by the Editor-in-Chief of CNSnews, Terence P. Jeffrey, he noted that “The middle class is abandoning President Barack Obama, according to data released by the Gallup Poll. The only income bracket among which a majority still says they approve of the job he is doing as president are those earning $2,000 per month or less.”

Anyone still making a living comparable to achieving the American Dream has long since abandoned the great Community Organizer with the exception of union members. When you lose the middle class, you have lost the great engine of the American economy.

With the exception of the growing legion of government workers, the unions had been losing members for years. They were held in generally low esteem and their destruction of General Motors and Chrysler bears out their parasitic relationship with business and industry. Obama’s and the Democrat Party’s support from teacher’s unions suggests why our educational system has been in the toilet for decades.

Every time Obama opens his mouth, his approval falls. It began with his great Apology Tour to the Middle East at the beginning of his presidency, continued with his acceptance of a Nobel Peace Prize for having done nothing notable, and plunged with his advocacy of the much-hated Obamacare shoved down the throats of all Americans.

In addition to advocating a Cap-and-Trade bill that is a huge tax on energy use, he is now babbling about a “clean energy future” that apparently involves paving over America with millions of acres of solar farms and coast-to-coast wind turbines.

Obama doesn’t like coal that provides fifty percent of all the electricity we use every day and, of course, oil that fuels our cars, trucks, tractors, et cetera.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

Barack Hussein Obama is living proof of that.

“If the political thing doesn’t work out for this clown – there is always stand up comedy.” – The Conservative Crier

 During past recessions, the financial stability of hospitals seemed to be nearly indestructible. But researchers at the University of Michigan Health System and St. Joseph Mercy Health System say the current national economic crisis may be an exception.

Hospitals are reporting declining profits, likely as a result of Americans losing health insurance as they lose jobs. As a result, hospital plans for renovation and new construction are being scrapped, and hospitals are being forced to reduce hospital staff, according to an analysis in the just-released May/June issue of the Journal of Hospital Medicine.

The researchers speculate hospital cutbacks may risk the quality and safety of health care delivery, and urge the federal government to improve public awareness of overcrowding emergency services, nurse-to-patient ratios and use of information technology.

“In uncertain economic times, it’s especially important to have certainty that hospitals are doing things safely. But as hospitals reduce staff and make other changes to make ends meet, we don’t necessarily have that certainty. That’s why it’s as important as ever to not only measure the quality of hospital care, but also understand the systems that do deliver consistent, cost-effective and high quality care.” says lead author Jeremy Sussman, M.D., M.S., an internal medicine physician and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation clinical scholar at the University of Michigan Health System.

During this recession, every source of income for hospitals is at risk. Almost three-fourths report receiving less reimbursement from insurance payers per discharge and over half report a decrease in patient admissions, according to the American Hospital Association’s report.

Sussman and his coauthors suggest the federal government should focus on connecting hospital safety with financial stability. For example, a hospital could receive government stimulus funds to employ nurse discharge advocates – who educate and prepare patients for discharge with instructions for medications and follow-up – to reduce rehospitalization. This program would preserve employment while advancing patient safety.

Obama has apparently confirmed what many have suspected since the presidential campaign:  that he is a Muslim, not a “committed Christian,” as he professed during the presidential campaign.

The periodical Israel Today has reported that in a private meeting with the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Obama told Gheit that he is a Muslim.  The exchange was aired on Nile TV.

Last year the mainstream press would say only that Obama “seeks to win Muslim hearts and minds” as he prepared for his trip to Cairo and other parts of the Middle East. 

Obama has openly admitted that he has “family members” who are Muslim.

American conservatives are up in arms against the Welfare State. They harangue us about wasting money on all the so-called “entitlements” like Medicare and Social Security. They insist that we need to ween Americans off these programs and get government off the backs of business, so we can enjoy unhindered the benefits of the so-called “free market.”

One example of the “free market” in all its glory is the operation of the oil industry. We are told that energy from oil is “cheap.” This was never true. But now that we all see the results of BP’s oil hemorrhage in the Gulf, and how it is destroying wildlife, the fishing industries and the living conditions of millions of Americans, we KNOW that oil costs a lot more than we pay for it on the “free market.”

“Free market”? It’s more like a Dirty-Energy Welfare State. Grist tells us of a new study by the International Energy Agency that has calculated the amount of world-wide welfare supplied to an industry that is destroying the Earth’s climate:

File this one under “news that ought to be the top headline across the world but will likely be ignored.”An early draft of a comprehensive new study from the International Energy Agency reveals that total global subsidies to dirty fossil-fuel energy amount to $550 billion a year — about 75 percent more than previously thought.

 Aren’t we the fools? We give subsidies to fossil-fuel companies so they may pollute our environment and produce CO2 and other dangerous emissions that will warm the Earth and bring about a climate-change cataclysm fairly soon.

We give them subsidies and refuse to help those who are trying to develop alternative energy sources!

Conservatives knock “American Welfare” and back “Dirty-Energy Industry Welfare.” It would be more helpful to all of us if they did the opposite. As a start, let’s remove the dirty-energy subsidies.

Posted by Paul Siegel