For someone who came into office pledging more respect for the US from the rest of the world, the president’s not doing a very good job.

[Sunday morning update]

Why the world’s leaders find it easy to say no to Obama:

It isn’t just that that no one has cut Obama any slack. World leaders seem to be taking pleasure in rebuffing him, disappointing him, even, in some cases, mocking him. French President Nicolas Sarkozy famously called Obama an “inexperienced, ill-prepared” leader.

Praising and admiring Obama are still common, but raising doubts about him, even scoffing at him, is now becoming fashionable. Although he is still popular among Europeans and more popular with Muslims than his despised predecessor, Obama is being tagged with the unflattering label John Quincy Adams earned before he lost the 1828 election: “Adams can write, Jackson can fight.”

Oh, he can fight all right. But only when it comes to domestic enemies. It’s the Chicago Way.

…less crime:

More guns equal more crime? Not in 2009, FBI crime report shows. FBI’s latest crime report, for the first half of 2009, shows America is a less violent place even though ownership of guns has surged.

No surprise to anyone who understands how the real world works.

This is interesting, and encouraging:

…because of the Senator DeMint’s objection, unless the House votes for the Senate bill unchanged — which is highly unlikely (see below) — then the Senate ObamaCare bill must be amended on the House floor to gain the votes they need to pass it on the House floor. And because of Senator DeMint’s objection to the appointment of the conferees, there will be no conference, or conference report.

If the House amends the Senate bill, they then have to send the amended bill back to the Senate — where all the 60 vote margin cloture votes still apply — cloture on the motion to proceed, and cloture to end the filibuster and cloture on any amendment.

Do I believe that this objection to the appointment of the conferees will kill ObamaCare? Yes, if the progressives or those 64 House Democrats who voted for the Stupak amendment do not roll over and play dead.

This monkey wrench may explain why the White House is putting out the word that it wants the health care bill to pass the House after the State of the Union, in February.

The longer this takes, the better the chances of it dying. It barely made it through the House the first time, and a lot of the Blue Dogs have to be rethinking their position, while the left will want to stand on principle (to the degree that they have any).

Pete Wehner:

These people strike me as hermetically sealed off from how most of the rest of the country view this subject. As these backroom deals become more and more widely known, anger will swell up among voters. It is bad enough to jam through a bill on a strict party-line-vote against overwhelming opposition from the public; for it to have happened only because various Members of Congress were (legally) bribed will magnify the intensity of the opposition. And for politicians to take such obvious pride in the pay-off will make things even worse. The populist, anti-Washington wave out there, which is already quite large, will only grow, and grow, and grow.

They do seem to be completely tone deaf to how sane people view this. And I hope that there’s a terrible retribution for them at the polls next fall.