Germany: Obama too strong a leader to be deterred

[Blue_Tires]

PARIS

President Barack Obama is too strong a leader to be deterred by his party's setbacks in the U.S. midterm election, Germany's foreign minister said Wednesday, but there was some concern that Democratic losses in Congress could affect Obama's nuclear disarmament plans.

"One would massively underestimate the president of the United States if one wanted to think that he would be weakened in foreign policy," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told ZDF television, noting that the U.S. campaign was driven by "domestic and economic issues."

"America is a strong country; the American president is a very strong and decisive president," he added.

Obama's Democrats held onto the Senate in the vote Tuesday but gave up their majority in the lower house to Republicans, which could make it harder to pass new legislation.

Westerwelle called on new members of Congress to support Obama's nuclear disarmament bid.

"We cannot fall back on the issue of disarmament," Westerwelle said. "I call on those newly elected to support the president's initiative on this."

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9J8O3680.htm

[babylonsister]

1. Very nice to read there's optimism for our President; too bad

there isn't more here.

[Blue_Roses]

4. isn't that the truth

it's a sad day in America when Germany has better things to say about OUR president than the president's own country. Germany knows what it's like to have a dictator and they don't want that to happen to us. The repubs would love nothing more than to have their party dominate everything.

[Cal33]

7. Obama may be strong in foreign affairs, but he sure doesn't know

how to handle the sicko Neocons and Tea Partyers here at home.

I wonder if there is some of that "Stockholm Syndrome" in his
personality make-up. The more you mistreat him, the more he
tends to make up to you! Anyway, it's an interesting thought.

[Hubert Flottz]

2. Germany knows who the real Nazis are around here!

And it ain't the democrats.

[T Wolf]

3. I agree. Obama will not let the Democratic losses hinder his capitulation to the GOP.

He established a great record of selling out principles in his first two years.

He will only improve on that record in his final two years.

[msongs]

5. change we can believe in? well there's till time tochange his ways....maybe nt

[SammyWinstonJack]

6. heheh.

:evilgrin:

[DaveinJapan]

8. K&R...nt

[Catherina]

9. Nuclear disarmament for countries we don't like too much

I'll take Obama's commmitment seriously when he leads by example.

Obama isn't too much into nuclear disarmament when his administration asks Congress for over $7 billion for nuclear weapons for 2011, an increase of $624 million. Obama has eclipsed Bush in military spending including Nuclear Arms.

"I have embraced the vision of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan through a strategy that reverses the spread of these weapons and seeks a world without them. And seek to reduce our stockpiles and launchers."
BARACK OBAMA

Ronald Reagan huh?

"The budget for new and modified nuclear weapons is increasing on President Obama's watch. We will call on the government to stop funding the continued development of nuclear bombs and to, instead, use the monies to meet human needs, including the irreversible dismantlement of U.S. nuclear warheads and immediate cleanup of the radioactive and toxic wastes at Livermore Lab and other locations contaminated by nuclear weapons. ...

"We will demand that the United States live up to its disarmament obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). We will forcefully point out that the present scheme to spend $180 billion to build new bomb plants and new nuclear bombs under the rubric of 'modernization' is not only out of compliance with the NPT, but is also morally and fiscally bankrupt."

MARYLIA KELLEY, executive director of Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment) located in Livermore, California

"When President Obama called for a world without nuclear weapons in Prague last year, the world cheered and he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Which will it be, President Obama, nuclear disarmament or nuclear buildup? You can't have it both ways."

JOHN STEINBACH, Hiroshima/Nagasaki Peace Committee of the National Capital Area

[blindpig]

10. Sez the business mouthpiece.... n/t