Obama to Meet With Abbas During Mideast Swing

(NEWSER) - Europeans may have longer lives and longer vacations, but red-blooded Americans don't want their socialist ways on this side of the ocean, right wing media mouths are eager to remind everyone, MIchael Freedman writes in Newsweek. Underlying much of the opposition to health care reform is the fear that it's part of an anti-American conspiracy to transform the US into a "European social welfare state," according to Rush Limbaugh. More»

(NEWSER) - President Obama’s election has increased America’s standing in the world, new polling shows. Global attitudes toward the US have been bolstered by Obama’s election to levels not seen since the Clinton administration, the New York Times reports. In Indonesia, for instance, where the president spent part of his childhood, 73% of respondents said their opinion of the US improved with Obama’s election. More»

For a while, inaction may be the best course

(NEWSER) - From Iran to Venezuela, President-elect Obama's best foreign policy option is to lie low for now, John Barry writes in Newsweek. Sudden forays into tricky hotspots—think Bay of Pigs, or President Bush's North Korea missteps—can prove costly, and most of the world's problems need a breather anyway. In Iraq and Israel, for example, no headway can be expected until next year's elections. More»

The media fawns, McCain glowers, but Obama gets raves: Dowd

(NEWSER) - The better Barack Obama’s foreign excursion goes, the more nervous Republicans get, Maureen Dowd writes in the New York Times. Images of John McCain happily sharing a golf cart with Bush 41 don’t contrast well with images of Obama happily sharing a helicopter with David Petraeus. But there is also an element of arrogance in the trip. More»

Careful change is what Europe wants to believe in

(NEWSER) - The vast majority of Europeans are hoping Barack Obama will be elected president, according to polls that give him as much as 86% support among voters in France, Britain, and Germany. The overwhelming support reflects a hope for a new era of unity with the US, writes Roger Cohen in the New York Times. But Obama mustn't succumb to the temptation, Cohen warns, to ofter more than he can deliver. More»