It only took a couple months for the Europeans to lose faith in the Messiah

Actually that's pretty astute, considering what Europeans are fed with their Pravdaesque mainstream media here. With Hillary Clinton's (the weebil) visit to Brussels, Washington is set to begin its European charm offensive but many Europeans are now uncertain whether the trans-Atlantic climate has really changed all that much. The Obama kool-aid buzz is wearing off.

Europeans are discovering what their fellow American kool-aid drinkers have been finding out right after the election. The messiah talks the talk, but doesn't walk the walk. It's one thing to run for president....it's quite another to govern.

Eloquent words and "spin" work better in a campaign than they do while governing. You can't blame Bush for everything, at some point it becomes your baby. Obama is discovering the laws of economics won't change, even for him....the one who walks on water.

Great leaders are thought of as such only after they've demonstrably pointed their constituents in the right direction. After all, when the lemming hordes jump off the cliff and into the sea, does it matter who the head lemming was, or even that there was a head lemming at all?

Obama has been president for a little more than five weeks. During his speech to a joint session of Congress last week, he showed what a skilled speaker he is and how persuasive he can be. But words delivered from Teleprompter Jesus, while important, have to line up with actions.

Promises have to be met. And a president who promised to be one thing cannot be another. At some point, the gap between good feelings and results, between perception and reality, closes.....can you spell STOCK MARKET!

Europeans still piqued over any apparent slight by Obama should take a more sanguine view of the transatlantic relationship, according to Michael Emerson, associate senior research fellow at the Brussels-based Centre for European Policy Studies. The priority at the moment is the economic crisis. The transatlantic relationships is all about substantive questions, so Europe is just not an issue."

Read Time Magazine: Is Europe Falling out of Love for Obama

Depending on which fawning US media appraisal you accept, Oprah is anything from America's most influential black woman to the world's most powerful woman.

Some have blamed her effusive support for Barack Obama, arguing that her bedrock fanbase of middle-class white women was upset that she didn't back a woman candidate. It's a nice idea, but the fact that she endorsed Obama less than 13 months ago and her ratings started dropping might tell you something.

Telegraph

How to make a million in five years (become a Euro MP)

Evidently the downturn in the world economy has not affected the Euro MP's much. In fact, business has never been better.

In the small studio's near the EU Parliment.....Belgians call them les cinq à sept (five to sevens) because people using them, leave work at five and arrive home to their wives at seven. They seem to have been enthusiastically adopted by some members of the nearby parliament for daytime hanky panky, or as the above video from the movie "Anchorman" shows..... "afternoon delight"

How can MEPs afford the luxuries these tough times? Well, Brussels is a bubble that has escaped the recession, thanks to the many millions that European taxpayers pour into the pockets of Euro-parliamentarians and Eurocrats alike, for adventures like this.

The Euro fatcats enjoy allowances that enable them to save £1m during a single parliament election, and vastly outpace the British for sheer effrontery, and they do so without having to account for themselves.

Read the investigative report in THE TIMES

USA looks pretty good as Europe meltsdown

As bad as the economy is in America, the situation is much worse in the Europe. Iceland is bankrupt and the government has been toppled. France and Latvia are facing rioting in the streets. Other European governments are watching their currency value collapse and unemployment rise to staggering levels.

France paralyzed by a wave of strike action, the boulevards of Paris resembling a debris-strewn battlefield. The Hungarian currency sinks to its lowest level ever against the euro, as the unemployment figure rises. Greek farmers block the road into Bulgaria in protest at low prices for their produce. New figures from the biggest bank in the Baltic show that the three post-Soviet states there face the biggest recessions in Europe.

This is not a cumlitive effect.....this all happened in just the last week. Just goes to show what I've always said about the news media and politics in Europe...they love to focus their populace on everything bad about the US, to keep them from seeing how bad it actually is in their own backyard. Any wonder why they love Obama so much?

Obama's Victory...........A Foreign View

Editorial in Toronto Sun

A victory for the hysterical Oprah Winfrey, the mad racist preacher Jeremiah Wright, the US mainstream media who abandoned any sense of objectivity long ago, Europeans who despise America largely because they depend on her, comics who claim to be dangerous and fearless but would not dare attack genuinely powerful special interest groups. A victory for Obama-worshippers everywhere.

A victory for the cult of the cult. A man who has done little with his life but has written about his achievements as if he had found the cure for cancer in between winning a marathon and building a nuclear reactor with his teeth. Victory for style over substance, hyperbole over history, rabble-raising over reality.

A victory for Hollywood , the most dysfunctional community in the world. A victory for social democracy even after most of Europe has come to the painful conclusion that social democracy leads to mediocrity, failure, unemployment, inflation, higher taxes and economic stagnation.

ENTIRE EDITORIAL

Belgium wants their own "Messiah"

An article in the Wall Street Journal today "Europeans Pine for an Obama of Their Own" probably wouldn't be a bad idea for Belgium....but I'm not sure even "The Messiah" himself could get the Flemish and Walloons together. Belgium has to have the most dysfunctional politicians in the history of the planet. He should maybe start out slow by practicing on Quebec first.

Ever since Barack Obama’s election began to look secure, Europeans have dreamed of finding a charismatic post-ideological race-conciliating leader of their own.
Imitating the Obama campaign’s strategic marketing campaign, European supporters printed T-shirts, buttons and bumper stickers of their own. They organized raucous parties on election night and cocktail parties on Tuesday to watch the swearing-in.

All major European national TV networks are carrying the event live. On Tuesday, in downtown Brussels, vendors sold “Obama Belgium” T-shirts. Some residents hung American flags on their balconies, something usually seen only in the country’s south, where the Battle of the Bulge was fought. READ MORE

What Europeans think of each other

This is a basic backgrounder for Americans, primarily, who might think Europeans do nothing all day but bitch about Americans. Don’t get me wrong—they do love bitching about Americans. But they also like bitching about each other, as well.

Bordering countries, especially, have complex caricatures of each other, even when an outsider might think they’re more or less the same. The following is based on my numerous interactions with Europeans. Here’s a run down:

Trading Sex for Tuition

You don't need to go to the Red Light districts of Europe anymore for sex, just drop by the campus of one of the University's.

According to a study conducted by student’s union ‘Sud Etudiant’ and published in 2006 by French daily Le Figaro, a small army of around 40, 000 students, mostly women aged between 19 and 25, sell their bodies to pay for their studies. The phenomenon is not only French, but pan-European and rapidly gaining ground. Countries like Poland or the United Kingdom are not strangers to the problem, where you need to be a near-millionaire to study. READ MORE

Brussels Airlines anniversary sale

If you’re planning to buy a plane ticket to fly from Brussels to anywhere in Europe or Africa (Brussels Airlines destinations, that is…) you might want to wait another day to take advantage of the anniversary sale they’re having starting at midnight on November 1st (well, 00h01) and running through Sunday, November 4 at 23h59.
All destinations are included in this sale, which discounts 25% off the fares (not taxes and other fees), BRUSSELS AIRLINES

Air Traffic Europe

Look at all the zillions of planes coming in and going out, they look like little grubs on the screen.