Free Republic

It is not even close: In a world poll of the U.S. presidential race, President Barack Obama is the clear favorite over Governor Mitt Romney. By a margin of 50-9 percent, Obama is favored in the poll of 21,797 respondents in 21 countries around the world. "France was the most strongly pro-Obama (72%)," according to the BBC. The only country that would select Romney over Obama is Pakistan, though neither candidate gets more than 20 percent of the support in that country. And the country where Romney polls the highest? Kenya. But even there, Romney's support does not even eclipse...

A BBC World Service opinion poll has found sharply higher overseas approval ratings for US President Barack Obama than Republican challenger Mitt Romney. … France was the most strongly pro-Obama (72%). …

BOSTON, Mass. — Stop the drone attacks. Be tougher on terror. Help immigrants. Boost trade. Fix your economy, and help us fix ours while you’re at it. The world has plenty of gripes with the United States.And they cover a lot of ground. How US policies play out overseas has been shaping countries’ trajectories for generations, much to the international community’s chagrin or delight.Foreign affairs might not be the focus for most US voters, who tend to worry more about the economy and hospital bills. But talk to people on the street from Havana to Hong Kong and you’ll get...

Of all the things to laud in Britain's long history, the director of the opening ceremonies for the London Olympics chose for his second act ... universal health care. Yes, that "NHS" spelled out by hospital beds in Friday's opening ceremonies stands for Britain's National Health Service – the government-run universal health-care system that director Danny Boyle called an "amazing thing to celebrate."

A Romney campaign official has blasted Boris Johnson, the London Mayor, as an ‘eccentric, odd fellow’ whose public attack on the Republican candidate was ‘unbecoming’ and an indication of his bias towards President Barack Obama. The official said that Prime Minister David Cameron’s ‘wisecrack’ about it being harder to stage an Olympic Games in London than ‘in the middle of nowhere’ – an apparent reference to Salt Lake City, where Romney oversaw the 2002 Winter Olympics – was ‘probably appropriate, albeit awkward’ and unfortunate for Romney ‘Johnson on the other hand lived up to his reputation as an eccentric, odd...

dpaAs America's first black president, Barack Obama electrified an entire nation. But now that the nation is in crisis, he seems unable to connect with the people. He wanted to change America and restore its reputation in the world. But now his opponents are dictating the country's political course.

President George W. Bush has canceled an event in the famously neutral country Switzerland because of expected protests to his presence there. Bush was supposed to give the keynote address at a Jewish group's charity gala on Feb. 12 in Geneva. Leftist groups had planned to protest the visit, according to news agencies. But several human rights groups had also filed criminal complaints against Bush, demanding that he be taken into custody if he stepped on Swiss soil and investigated for allegations of ordering torture.

In the days after the Republican US presidential contender Senator John McCain chose then Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, the Democratic party hierarchy started to panic. In the short period between her convention speech and her Katie Couric interviews, Palin looked to many like an inspired choice. Then US senator Barack Obama had become exasperated by the propensity of the party establishment to panic at every turn of the election. Just then, a picture of him staring straight ahead and pointing at the camera went viral. On top, it read: “Everyone chill the f*ck out.” Below, it...

Passion Fades for Barack Obama, The Perfect Poster Boy Like many others, I fell for Barack Obama somewhere in the middle of Bush's second term, writes Gill Hornby. By Gill Hornby 11 Dec 2009 I've probably been in denial for a few months now. Turning a blind eye, trying not to overreact to the little things, even though all the signs were there. But now it might just be time to face up to it. Another political love affair is over. Another one has let me down. President Obama's acceptance speech at the Nobel Prize ceremony wasn't the last straw,...

Germans don't want KSM or the other turds to die.

Europe melts for Michelle By: Nia-Malika Henderson and Jonathan Martin April 4, 2009 06:33 PM EST He was cool and understated, the slightest bit aloof. She choked up as she told young minority girls to follow their dreams. He gave speeches. She gave hugs. And while Barack Obama came to Europe as the American president, Michelle Obama came as something entirely different – almost an American tourist, but the kind even jaded Europeans could love, big-hearted, curious, sophisticated yet accessible. They simply melted for Michelle. Of course, the Europeans were eager to gush over a First Couple not named Bush....

STRASBOURG, France – Welcomed with thunderous cheers, President Barack Obama pledged on Friday to repair damaged relations with Europe, saying the world came together following the 2001 terrorist attacks but then "we got sidetracked by Iraq." "We must be honest with ourselves," Obama said. "In recent years, we've allowed our alliance to drift." The new U.S. president said that despite the bitter feelings that were generated by Iraq, the United States and its allies must stand together because "al-Qaida is still a threat." At a town-hall style gathering before a French and German audience, Obama also encouraged a skeptical Europe...

As a result of the historic election of Barack Obama in the U.S., other countries have started wondering whether a similar occurrence would be possible in their nations — none more so than the Obama-worshiping United Kingdom. Its press, race industry, and political classes are all aflutter about whether or not it would be possible for a minority to become prime minister of the country. Many doubt that a minority could make it to 10 Downing Street any time soon.....

Over the past two weeks the outpouring of British newspaper, radio, and television punditry has been staggering in volume. Staggering in variety? No. One theme that seems to obsess British journalists has been a grim, humorless regurgitation of the most negative aspects of American history. My very left-wing friends may have complained that they lived in a “police state” under the present administration, but the fact that President Bush has not declared martial law, or that police and army did not deploy to massacre the crowds in Grant Park on election night, puts paid to any notion that the United...

Nobody is happier about the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States than the folks at the United Nations. It is as if they finally discovered kryptonite, and Superman will soon be disabled. The U.N. is an uncomplicated place. Every sick, unsatiated tyrant, European has-been, or miserable wretch brainwashed about the Great Satan wants to take America down – unless they are able to immigrate of course. Their modus operandi? The United Nations. The beauty of it, from the perspective of the majority, is that Americans are paying for their own demise. Americans are even convinced...

Reaction in Britain to Barack Obama’s victory has been predictable, given that the country leads Europe and much of the world in knee-jerk anti-Americanism — which, more often than not, is actually anti-Republicanism — and is also consumed with its own version of white guilt (post-colonial in our case), and entranced by notions of multiculturalism. Commentators have obsessed over the racial aspects of the election, and have expended so much energy gloating over the demise of George Bush that you’d think that it was he, and not McCain, whom Obama had defeated. But a few pundits have managed to control...

Hamburg, Germany ---------------------- Milan,Italy ---------------------- Geneva, Switzerland ---------------------- Washington DC, USA ---------------------- Obama,Japan ---------------------- Rome,Italy ---------------------- Paris, France ---------------------- Jakarta, Indonesia ---------------------- Honk Kong, China ----------------------

PARIS – Barack Obama's election as America's first black president unleashed a renewed love for the United States after years of dwindling goodwill, and many said Wednesday that U.S. voters had blazed a trail that minorities elsewhere could follow. People across Africa stayed up all night or woke before dawn to watch U.S. history being made, while the president of Kenya — where Obama's father was born — declared a public holiday. In Indonesia, where Obama lived as child, hundreds of students at his former elementary school erupted in cheers when he was declared winner and poured into the courtyard...

VIENNA, Austria -- She was a stranger, and she kissed me. Just for being an American. It happened on the bus on my way to work Wednesday morning, a few hours after compatriots clamoring for change swept Barack Obama to his historic victory. I was on the phone, and the 20-something Austrian woman seated in front of me overheard me speaking English. Without a word, she turned, pecked me on the cheek and stepped off at the next stop. Nothing was said, but the message was clear: Today, we are all Americans. For longtime U.S. expatriates like me - someone...

CNN) -- Europe's expectations of a Barack Obama presidency are vibrant, vast and probably incapable of fulfillment by any president, let alone one who will come to office in the middle of a worldwide economic crisis and with huge, unfinished business in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is no doubting the buzz and the optimism that the election victory of an African-American candidate has brought. Most in Europe are instinctively America's friends and, after the unilateralism of the Bush years, they want to have something to love about America again. Obama's arrival, they hope and believe, will give them that opportunity....