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Listed below are comments made by moderate_observer between Wednesday, 29th July 2009 and Monday, 19th October 2009.

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From Wall Street to Main Street to Skid Row 03:13am on 19 Oct 2009 by the way, im sure that Obama is not the first president to use tax payer funded transportation to travel to vacations or outings. All of a sudden this sort of things matter? Wherever an American president goes, whether its to the toilet or to a banquet it cost tax payers a lot of money, I have never heard anyone nit pick over expense records of an administration in such detail until these past 9 months. I suppose this is to be expected when a president most hated by the right since....... the last democrat President. Politics in DC is all talk, glamour and glitter, no productive results (unless you can afford a lobbyist of course).
From Wall Street to Main Street to Skid Row 03:04am on 19 Oct 2009 neil what we are seeing are employers on strike. A notion that seems very foreign to most who believe people that produce will always produce enough to be taxed. American society is tax averse and with the histeria surrounding Obama's plans what else would be expected?
Obama's 'post-euphoria pre-delivery' phase 11:55pm on 23 Sep 2009 so after 8 years of Bush it took 9/11, lying about WMDs and iraq, bailing on afghanistan, not catching bin laden, leaking CIA agent identities, letting people drown in new orleans and finally an economic collapse that brought down many of the nations oldest financial institutions before anyone finally decided GWB was a failure.

In contrast 8 months after Obama takes over the mess created by his predecessor, some are already declaring him a failure. Premature , isnt it? He is setting the groundwork of his agenda but they are not willing to give it a chance because they are not interested in his success.

That's just politics. It wasnt designed to be fair or practical.
How Carolinians see the race row 4:00pm on 17 Sep 2009 #63 well said , the issue deep down is not about race. In washington it is not about race, but race is just another tactic used to bring people together against obama. fear and race. Rush Limbaugh , with his black kids vs white kids comment is a perfect example. He knows better than to believe this statement to be true, but he willingly spout lies to his listeners so they will run to their destruction and destroy everything close to them because they believe the lies he tells. Making his listeners paranoid so that they will turn against anyone who he says is bad. This is the lowest form of human being because he knows better. Just another pupper master pulling the puppet strings of an uneducated mass.
How Carolinians see the race row 3:39pm on 17 Sep 2009 if their wasnt a grain of truth to Carter's statement's it would have been dismissed and nobody would be trying so hard to defend against it. More inflammatory things have been said by Carter and others in influential positions, but did not receive such attention.

The point is that their are racists coming to these protests and they march among the protestors who are protesting only against policy. The fact that the republicans are not denouncing this sort of behavior is what makes it bad.

Rush Limbaugh, is an influential conservative, but not a policy maker, he is so important , that the chairman of the republican party apologized to him for criticizing his views, the pressure to apologize came from within his party and from the party's supporters. You have rush limbaugh saying that in Obama's america it is Ok for a black child to beat on a white child while black children cheer them on. He says all this and the republicans are mute and now saying 'oh rush is just an entertainer' . The problem with this is that their are viewers who listn and believe what he says and are stricken with fear when they hear these things. especially since they are mainly white.

To allow these messages to be conveyed to your party base and not denounce it is the same as being the ones directly conveying these messages.
Press #3 for linguistic diversity 10:38pm on 12 Sep 2009 face it, their are many languages spoken within the united states from all over the world, spanish being the most popular due to the US closeness to other spanish speaking nations. However, I highly doubt that anyone would be complaining if these spanish speakers came from spain but since many of these migrants are coloured and migrating from mexico, who are often stereotyped as maids and farm workers and so on many zenophobic and often racist citizens are upset about it. In places where central americans often migrate to, it is often in the less liberal southern states who do not like anyone or anything coming into their space with different cultures or attitudes.
Time to say goodbye 2:50pm on 30 Aug 2009 the berlin wall would have fell with or without raegan, the soviet union was broke, that berlin wall speech was a well timed photo op, just like the infamous 'mission accomplished' speech by GW Bush should have been. Raegan was obviously the better politician (he made grenada look like a second world war victory :) ).

De-classified CIA documents from that time, now discussed by many media sources have acknowledged that the CIA were not aware of the Soviet Union's imminent collapse because their spy network in the union' was destroyed. I will assume these things take years to establish.

It's ironic there is so much talk about the national deficit today, but nobody seemed to notice it while GWB launched 2 expensive wars while cutting taxes at the same time and depending on the chinese for revenue to pay for the wars. Investors always say its better to take risks with other people's money, so i understand what they may have been thinking while making those decisions, but that risk dd not pay off (for the government anyway, it did pay off for haliburton and other contractors)
and now that its time to recover from those mistakes GWB and his decision makers are on the fringes pretending they had nothing to do with it, hoping everyone will blame it on Obama and forget how they got to this point.

Its like showing up at the dinner table at the end of a feast only to have the bill land on your lap while the other diners make a run for it.
Time to say goodbye 2:33pm on 30 Aug 2009 its amazing, the blog continues without Justin. based on the ongoing discussion i thought i would add that isreal is only of strategic importance to the US foreign policy decision makers and nothing more, no great affection there despite the pretense. If that were to change, the rhetoric from washington will change significantly and we would completely forget that so much national security resources were used to bolster and 'protect' isreal.
Time to say goodbye 4:28pm on 19 Aug 2009 best wishes in the future justin, but I cant help but to conclude from all your blog that you are somewhat an elitist. I hope to be wrong on that.

Like many americans you appear to be willfully ignorant of the harsh realities of many americans. Many do not care about what happens out of their immediate surroundings and declares the american experience to be their own personal experience.

Your coverage always seemed to lack any insight on the problems experienced by others and why they complain. For example, you visited the poorest state in the nation (South Carolina) but you did not venture far outside the realms of the governor sanford's protective bubble. No mention of the serious challenges of residents of the state, no comparison to what their life may have been if they lived in a place like the UK under similar circumstances. No mention of how refusing stimulus funds would affect them. No insight as to why this state does so badly economically. You did not even mention the politically popular 'corridor of shame'.

If you wanted to cover the american experience on the other side, You do not have to look any further thn Washington DC, you spent most of your time there, it is an example of how everyone willfully ignores glaring problems in society. DCs crime rate is one of the highest in the nation, in fact it is one of the most violent metropolitan areas in the country , all this a stone throw away from the White House and the core of US democracy,the most secure area in the world perhaps. I really doubt that anywhere in the UK is like this.

How often is this covered in the press nationally? Almost never, in fact it never makes the news until the crime spills over into tourist areas.
Otherwise it’s a case of, let them kill themselves it is not my problem, let them starve, shut down their schools it’s not my problem unless of course it is happening to me.

Even politicians on the beltway acts as if it does not exist and political discourse seems to be dominated by people who want to be exempt from policy than those who want to be included (health care town hall meetings).

That's an interesting dynamic to write about.

Your blog although entertaining at times did not really seem like much of an indepth coverage of america and it's culture, but more of a summary of the lifestyle of someone who lives among the best of america. So in essence it was more flattery than anything else. I suppose the BBC must have got you better accommodations in the US than you had while in Belgium.
Too European? 7:08pm on 29 Jul 2009 Justin I believe you need to stop rubbing shoulders with the elites if you want to know the real america. Taking a tour with the now defunked Gov. Sanford was no way to discover South Carolina, and at the moment I don't believe you have even touched the surface of San Francisco or even California as a whole, which is now facing a major crisis.

How about you go to a few tough neighborhoods filled with illegal immigrants (perhaps with a few bodyguards and a translator) , talk to law enforcement about their challenges (they see everything) and more averaged folks who are facing many challenges due to the current economy.

When you are done, go visit the midwest, Montana, N.Dakota and so on, and see how different the way of life is there. The U.S.A. is so large and so diverse that many europeans cannot comprehend it. They only see Washngton and Hollywood and New York City and make their conclusions there.

I don't believe that Americans look at the British, the French and the Spanish and expect them to be the same, Europeans from wherever they are should not look at the many regions of the US and expect the same either.In fact the only thing I believe you will find common in all of America , is respect for the flag and and belief in civil liberties (freedom). San Francisco is america Justin, and so is Mississippi.

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