Charlie Rose

REMant  01/12/2010 10:36 PM Report

Seeing Obama on the TV screens in the Pariser Platz was a bit too much like "Big Brother" for my taste. I think he was very badly advised. The U S of A had precious little to do with events in Eastern Europe 20 yrs ago, and Britain and France even less, and they would all have been advised to have taken a back seat, IMHO, tho I surmise Merkel had something to do with all this hoopla and it would have been difficult to refuse. I appreciate what appears to be a change in her Afghanistan policy, but it seems to me to be a distinction without a difference. In 1965 LBJ talked about lifting Vietnam (and everyone, everywhere else out of poverty, etc), but a year later he was shouting about not letting any more dominoes fall to Communism. In fact he always had those two sides to his character, as does she and I think most Americans. Karzai thinks he is above elections, like Diem, and Afghanistan is not a democracy. What she is crying about in general is that the US can no longer use its financial power to force others to pay our debts, and back into subservience and destitution. Not to say Bernanke, Summers and the European central bankers aren't trying as hard as they can, but it is like Britain trying to get back on the gold standard. It will not happen and most certainly not by printing more dollars - the issue of the Depression being the irretrievable loss of the British Empire in WWI. And the business this time was hardly only the Bush admin's fault, but her husband's, as well, along with Reagan, Nixon and Johnson. She would have made IMHO an awful president, but no matter, because I'm fairly convinced that ppl will be happy in a few years to say good riddance to the man who won, as they have every one of them for the last 40-50 yrs at least.