More to the point, I couldn’t care less if you and your ingrate friends are or aren’t offended by the insults of our tawdry first couple. Obama and his cast of clowns and twits unfortunately represent all Americans, and as such, they should at least make more than a dismissive attempt at honoring a foreign official. I don’t care if they’re from England or Kiribati, the Presidents attitude is assumed to be a reflection of the country’s attitude. While you may not be offended, I sure as hell am offended by the shabby display of the POTUS.

He lost one eye. As far as I know, the other works fine. Maybe that’s how he manages to constantly refer to written notes when he speaks in Parliament etc. (Oh, and multi-region DVD players are very common over here, if that’s another thing that’s bothering you.)

… most Brits must suffer the same level of vision problems as their PM

Classy. May you never lose an eye, as Brown did.

Still, by all means go back to your bleating about something that’s a non-issue to the people you’re supposedly being offended on behalf of. It’s marginally amusing, but in the end totally stupid.

I found this to be the most well-researched article so far, on just insulted the Brits are, over this grand insult. They’re even quoting MEchelle’s Princeton thesis.

http://headingright.com/2009/03/12/44-obamas-shaky-start-on-foreign-policy/

I found it in, believe it of all places, AOL’s Political Machine section.

Oh give me a break. Speaking as a “Brit”, rather than a p[artisand right-wing hack, that article’s a POS.

Actually, a lot of us “Brits” are laughing our socks off as some of you try to convince yourselves that we’re feeling “insulted”.

Brown was in power along with Blair when we were blatantly and repeatedly lied to in order to get us embroiled in Iraq, and as long-time Chancellor of the Exchequer, it was under Brown’s watch that we staggered into this current financial calamity.

We couldn’t give a stuff about gifts. It’s obvious to anyone but a biased moron that Gordon was busy trying to ingratiate himself with Obama as much as possible, after eight long years of sucking up to G.W. The UK got little enough in return for all its efforts during G.W.’s reign of terror – the gladhanding of Blair made quite a few of us sick to our stomachs. If there’s any residual coolness in the US-UK governmental relationship, maybe it’s a result of those long years politicians like Brown spent as Bush’s lapdogs.

As it was, the rare honour of being allowed to address Congress will have much more than compensated for any of the imagined slights you keep banging on about anyway.

You’ll find that most “Brits” are actually quite taken with your new president. With luck, he may help to drag politics in our own country back from the centre-right morass it’s been mired in for too long.

I was once responsible for selecting a gift for the chief executive of a country. I asked some trusted locals about what a prestigious gift for a distinguished person would be and they all pretty much came up with the same answer. Frankly, I wouldn’t have selected that gift for a pig’s Bar Mitzvah (multiple puns intenteded), but I went ahead and bought the damn thing anyway and caught considerable shit about it from my boss–until he have it to the chief of state.

The guy went absolutely nuts over the gift, which wasn’t that unusual as he came from a culture of habitual effusiveness, but he then carried it and used it wherever he went (for all I know, he might still be carrying and using it which, considering the country he is from, is a considerable accomplishment). He would pull it out during interviews with reports and say that it was a gift (without telling who it was from, of course) and say, “Isn’t it beautiful?” One time I was having a drink with a reporter after such an interview and the reporter was speculating on “..which one of his mistresses gave him that damn thing.” Luckily, I take my scotch neat, or I probably would’ve swallowed an ice cube.

Not to make too fine a point of it, but if I, as a junior spook, could get it right for a chief of state, how come the shitheads across the river can’t ever translate a simple Russian word for a foreign minister?

Indeed, a detailed look at recent survey data shows that the opposite is most likely true. The American people are coming to express increasingly significant doubts about his initiatives, and most likely support a different agenda and different policies from those that the Obama administration has advanced.

Polling data show that Mr. Obama’s approval rating is dropping and is below where George W. Bush was in an analogous period in 2001.

Rasmussen Reports data shows that Mr. Obama’s net presidential approval rating — which is calculated by subtracting the number who strongly disapprove from the number who strongly approve — is just six, his lowest rating to date.

Overall, Rasmussen Reports shows a 56%-43% approval, with a third strongly disapproving of the president’s performance.

This is a substantial degree of polarization so early in the administration. Mr. Obama has lost virtually all of his Republican support and a good part of his Independent support, and the trend is decidedly negative.

full article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123690358175013837.html

http://headingright.com/2009/03/12/44-obamas-shaky-start-on-foreign-policy/

I found it in, believe it of all places, AOL’s Political Machine section.

I just don’t think the entertainment types can admit they were so far off.