France and America make up...

[max_tranmere]

I quite like Obama, I don't agree he got in because of skin colour, there are a lot
of people who wouldn't have wanted him as President because of that - rather
than the other way round. He receives more death-threats than any President
in history and it is for that reason, his skin colour. A lot of the people in the
deep-south are furious that there's a black man leading the country. One thing I'd
say about being a leader though is that some people can take it in their stride,
where as some people get exhausted by it. Obama looks tired a lot, just like Blair
always did. Many leaders, often people who are older than those two, were never
exhausted by it.

Part of the reason for Obama winning is because he is NOT George
W Bush, and anyone apart from that dickhead would be popular to a certain
extent.

Bush obviously couldn't stand for a third term, he probably wouldn't have wanted
to anyway even if he could as all the millions of dollars he is now earning from
trading off the contacts he made in office were waiting for him. But just the fact
Obama was not him I think made Obama popular enough to win a second term.
I like Obama and I think he's gradually repairing the vast damage that arsehole
Bush did to the world.

[max_tranmere]

"LBJ was absolutely not a good guy. He was a worse crook than Nixon, he
started his political career in Texas by voting fraud, people who crossed him
in Texas ended up dead, and he dodged war service by virtue of his political
position. At least Nixon served in the Navy. Oh, and there was that nasty
business in Vietnam which did not do America's reputation much good at all."

Interesting info there. I was not familiar with it, apart from Vietnam obviously. I
intend reading up more on LBJ.

[max_tranmere]

We will probably be first in the queue, as the USA has always helped us
therefore we feel an obligation to help them. They helped a lot in WW2 obviously,
assisted us politically with the Falklands issue, and would come and help us
hugely if something very bad happened to our island. There have been times
when us backing them hasn't happened though: we never sent troops to Vietnam,
even though they wanted us to; Thatcher and Reagan fell out over the USA's
invasion of Grenada; and Major and Clinton had a bust-up over the war in the
former Yugoslavia. Tony Blair has been the biggest poodle to the USA though
out of all the leaders we have ever had.

[spider]

"USA has always helped us therefore we feel an obligation to help them".

By "we" mean I think you mean "you".

I don't feel any obligation.

Just a bit late turning-up to the party though aren't they?

They were a big help in Suez and NI weren't they?