Apple Valley couple put abortion to an online vote

November 18, 2010 - 11:16 PM

A suburban Twin Cities couple touched off an Internet frenzy Thursday with their "birth or not" website -- an online poll on asking whether the woman, who is 17 weeks pregnant, should have an abortion.

"We wanted to give people a chance to voice their opinions in a real situation where it makes a difference," said Alisha Arnold, 30, of Apple Valley.

She and her husband, Peter Arnold, began the online vote because she was still healing emotionally from the most recent of three miscarriages, she said. They weren't sure whether she was ready for a baby.

"I wanted to wait longer because I was losing weight and living a healthier lifestyle," she said. "I wasn't sure what to do."

The solution: a poll. "We are using it to help determine our decision, but we will still make the final decision," she said.

News of the couple's Web poll spread to news websites and blogs. Bloggers debated whether it was a hoax, an effort to influence the nation's debate on abortion or simply a bizarre use of the Internet to publicize a normally deeply private matter.

Arnold said she and her husband, who was away on business Thursday, are both computer software trainers. She said they had been contacted by news outlets from Seattle, Canada and locally. They've also received some hateful e-mails, like "we were idiots and don't deserve to be parents and were irresponsible," Arnold said.

The public can weigh in until Dec. 7, the site says.

On Thursday, the vote was 23,840 to 5,978 for birth.

Staff writer Josephine Marcotty contributed to this report.

Link to photo

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/11/19/2010-11-19_couple_insists_abortionbyvote_website_is_not_a_prolife_hoax_bloggers_try_to_prov.html

Stick-up suspect flees scene on mower

11/18/2010

Aiken Standard

10:55 AM

Staff reports

An Aiken man is in custody after a morning incident in which a clerk was beaten with a stick and the suspect tried to flee the scene on a riding lawn mower.

Ricky New is charged with assault and battery, first degree, and armed robbery. 

Capt. Troy Elwell of the Aiken County Sheriff's office said the suspect entered the Kent's Corner convenience store this morning at 1925 Edgefield Highway.

"The suspect entered the store armed with a stick and demanded money from the clerk before assaulting her. He received an undisclosed amount of money and fled the scene on his getaway vehicle, a Craftsman riding lawn mower," Elwell said.

Deputies located and detained the suspect a short distance away. The condition of the clerk was not released.

He is currently being held at the Aiken County Detention Center.

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20101118/NEWS010702/311180048/1055/NEWS/Pot-smoking-tot-s-mom-pleads

Pastor to church leaders: Get off Facebook or step down

Nancy Shields • STAFF WRITER • November 17, 2010

FRANK/AP Rev. Cedric Miller, at Living Word Christian Fellowship in New Jersey, ordered his church leadership to delete their Facebook accounts because too many couples had strayed from their marriages.

NEPTUNE — Rev. Cedric A. Miller has had it with what he says Facebook is doing to couples coming to him for help and is giving his married church leaders until Sunday to get off the social-network website or resign their posts.

Miller, senior pastor at Living Word Christian Fellowship Church, the popular interdenominational and evangelical church on Route 35, said a large percentage of his counseling over the past year and a half has been for marital problems, including infidelity, stemming from Facebook.

Miller said there was no problem when people just met with friends from high school in a platonic way.

But that has changed, he said, and now people are reigniting old passions and connecting with people who should stay in the past. He said a marriage can be going along fine when someone from the past breaks through and trouble begins.

"It's to the point now that this Sunday, anyone in our church in a leadership position and who is married and is on Facebook has to resign their church position if they do not give up Facebook," Miller, 48, said Tuesday.

He plans to speak on the subject at the 9:30 a.m. Sunday service, getting up to preach about 10:15 a.m.

"I spoke on it a few weeks back, and just admonished people that there's a reason why your past is the past and hopefully you have grown in the Lord, matured to not link up with a past that for many people is a Christless past," Miller said.

"Married couples are going on Facebook and what happens can end up in my office," the pastor said. "I know from where we stand in the Christian perspective, the connection is inappropriate."

Miller gave examples of church officers as the associate pastors, deacons, ministers, and auxiliary leaders. "I do have authority over the leaders — not the congregation at large," he said.

"The average citizen is going to see my action as controlling, not that I care about that," Miller said. "I'm not concerned with being politically correct. I'm trying to save families and marriages."

'He has been heartbroken over this situation" said Hazel Samuels of Asbury Park, who chairs the church's board of trustees. Samuels is single and not on Facebook. "It's a misuse of Facebook. People just don't use it properly."

Miller said has a Facebook account and that his wife has his password as well as one of the church elders. He has six children and uses Facebook to follow what they're doing, he said.

But he will drop off Facebook by Sunday as well.

Miller said that often the people he counsels go to another church but want to keep their marriage problems as private as possible, so they come to him. Often, it requires months of counseling to keep a couple together, he said.

Facebook, founded in 2004, has more than 500 million users worldwide.

"I wouldn't say Facebook is the problem," said William Rosenblatt, an Ocean Township psychologist and therapist. "What I would say is we live in a rapidly changing world, and we are facing stresses and opportunities that we've never had to face before.

"Facebook doesn't create dissatisfied marriages," Rosenblatt continued. "People who are dissatisfied now have better means of creating support systems and networks that are much more vast, and it's much easier to connect with people that way.

"I would see the pastor's decree as sort of another example of how, when we as a group are faced with dramatic change, there are three paths people take," Rosenblatt said.

"One path is we need to go back to the way things were, the conservative path," he said. "Another group are those who just want to rush ahead and change everything. Then a third group says, let's not paint this black and white. Let's be mindful and thoughtful how we do this."

Miller and his wife, Kim, also a pastor, started Living Word in their home in 1987. It has grown to about 1,100 people on the rolls and 500 to 600 attending Sunday services, Samuels said.

Miller has played a significant community role as a pastor and is a leader in the ongoing Asbury Park-Neptune relief efforts for Haiti.

"I've had people come to me in trouble because of the computer in general — a lot of computer widows — but not Facebook," said the Rev. Porter Brown, overseer at Faith Baptist Tabernacle in Asbury Park.

Brown said he's contemplating setting up a Facebook site to increase the church's communication with his congregation and community. At the moment, he said he sendse-mails to young people to let them know about the upcoming Sunday sermon so they can send him questions ahead of time.

"We continue to share with our folks that the Internet can be a good thing to use, but it has its own kind of dangers. Any access to people unfiltered may not be good."

The number of people subscribing to US cable television services has suffered its biggest decline in 30 years as younger, tech-savvy viewers lead an exodus to web-based operations, such as Hulu and Netflix.

The total number of subscribers to TV services provided by cable, satellite and telco operators fell by 119,000 in the third quarter, compared with a gain of 346,000 in the third quarter of 2009, according to SNL Kagan, a research company.

Sony’s PlayStation 3 can now access Hulu services

Although television services offered by telecoms and satellite providers added subscribers over the period, cable operators were hard hit, with subscriber numbers falling by 741,000 – the largest decline in 30 years.

The figures suggest that “cord-cutting” – one of the pay-television industry’s biggest fears – is becoming a reality as viewers drift to web-based platforms.

Online TV services are stepping up their efforts to reach new viewers and become profitable: Hulu, which is owned by News Corp, Walt Disney and NBC Universal, has slashed the cost of its online subscription service by 20 per cent to $7.99 per month and offers a vast array of film and TV programming.

Jason Kilar, Hulu’s chief executive, has maintained that Hulu, which is exploring an initial public offering, complements pay-television services.

Yet the data suggest that the growth of Hulu and Netflix, the DVD subscription company which began testing a $7.99 per month streaming-only service last month, has become problematic for cable operators.

Ian Olgeirson, senior analyst at SNL Kagan, said it was becoming “increasingly difficult” to dismiss the impact of web-based services on the pay-TV industry, “particularly after seeing declines during the period of the year that tends to produce the largest subscriber gains due to seasonal shifts back to television viewing and subscription packages”.

Hulu’s revenues are increasing sharply: the company is projected to generate more than $240m in 2010, up from $108m in 2009. It has extended the number of devices that can access its subscription service to include Sony’s PlayStation 3 console and will add internet-connected devices, including Vizio, LG Electronics and Panasonic Blu-ray players, in the next few months.

Devices such as Apple’s iPad also appear to be accelerating the move away from traditional multichannel television.

Research from The Diffusion Group, a technology research company, found that more than a third of iPad users were likely to cancel their pay-TV subscriptions in the next six months.

The cable industry has launched a vigorous defence against cord-cutting: companies such as Comcast, which has agreed to buy NBC Universal, are backing “TV Everywhere”, which gives subscribers access to channels and programming online, and via their cable box.

An uproar over Palin — Bristol, that is

The 'Dancing with the Stars' contestant is voted by viewers into the finals. Critics charge that 'tea party' activists did some scheming at the ballot box in favor of Sarah Palin's daughter.

Marie Elena Fernandez

Los Angeles Times

November 18, 2010

Bristol Palin, left, and her partner Mark Ballas perform during "Dancing with the Stars." (Adam Larkey / ABC)

When TV viewers voted Bristol Palin into the finals of ABC's "Dancing with the Stars," one of prime time's most popular shows, her opponent Brandy cried, a Wisconsin man shot his television in disgust, and the blogosphere lighted up like a Christmas tree on fire.

It was the seventh consecutive time this season that the 20-year-old newcomer to dance performance had beaten out an opponent despite having lower scores from the judges on TV's second most-watched program, which draws an average audience of more than 20 million. The reason for her surprising success, charged fuming critics and some viewers across the Internet, was that "tea party" activists had spearheaded a campaign that essentially stuffed the show's ballot box in favor of Sarah Palin's daughter.

This latest reality show tempest highlights the power of popularity over talent when mostly unregulated public voting is involved and, perhaps more dramatically, the polarizing effect of the Palin family name, which received prominent attention earlier this month in one of the most heated elections in recent memory.

Dems vent to leaders as losses set in

The meeting, which began at noon, stretched on for hours after the caucus passed a resolution allowing first defeated members and then returning lawmakers to address their colleagues for five minutes apiece. Staffers were kicked out of the meeting.

While many Democrats offered kind words, thanks and support for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), defeated Reps. Allen Boyd (D-Fla.), Travis Childers (D-Miss.) and Bill Foster (Ill.) called for new leadership, lawmakers said.

Boyd told The Hill that leaving Pelosi as the public face of the caucus would undermine candidate recruitment efforts in 2012.

“I don’t know how you recruit for some of these seats,” said Boyd. “How are you going to recruit somebody to run — a moderate, Blue Dog Democrat — to run down there? Can’t do it.”

Democrats are girding for an internal showdown on Wednesday as they meet for caucus elections over the objections of a growing number of lawmakers who want them postponed. Pelosi surprised many Democrats two weeks ago when she announced she would seek to stay on as the caucus leader.

Two Democrats, Reps. Peter DeFazio (Ore.) and Marcy Kaptur (Ohio), plan to call for a secret-ballot vote on their proposal to push the leadership elections into December, a scenario that would give opponents of Pelosi more time to rally support for ousting her from the party leadership.

Lawmakers described a tense meeting where members offered candid views of why they believed their party had lost at least 60 seats and their majority just two years after a historic presidential election where everything seemed to be going in the Democratic Party’s direction.

“People are being very forthright about what went right and what went wrong, how they feel about their colleagues,” Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.) said.

Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) called the outpouring “cathartic.”

The caucus gathering was one of several meetings planned for this week where House Democrats are airing their frustrations with the party message, strategy and leadership. Pelosi is trying to hold onto power despite the Democratic defeat, arguing that the election results were a reflection of an ailing economy and not her own low standing with the public.

While the liberal Speaker retains broad support within a smaller and more left-leaning caucus, a smattering of lawmakers from both sides of the ideological spectrum have said she should step aside. The conservative dissidents are now led by Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.), who confirmed on Tuesday that he would challenge her for minority leader.

Shuler reiterated that he did not have the votes to win the race, but he said his leadership bid was not a protest campaign. “It’s not sending a message, it’s standing up for what you truly believe in,” Shuler said. “This is about we have a leadership that lost the most significant votes in almost a century. That’s what it’s really about, is getting that changed.

 “In the NFL,” the former Washington Redskins quarterback added, “if you lost significantly, you were replaced.”

 Shuler, who was first elected in 2006, said he was not actively collecting votes and did not know how much support he had. While only a handful of Pelosi foes have told The Hill they would back Shuler, one Blue Dog Democrat said Shuler could expect a minimum of 30 votes in the caucus election. Nearly 100 would be needed to win.

As Shuler launched his own quixotic campaign, DeFazio and Kaptur stepped up their push to delay Wednesday’s leadership elections until after the Thanksgiving recess.

DeFazio said Wednesday that 19 Democrats had signed on to a letter asking for a postponement and that he would ask for a vote at the outset of Wednesday’s leadership election meeting.

That effort could gain support from members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who had lingering questions over a deal brokered by Pelosi to create a new elected leadership position for Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), who accepted the post to avoid forcing the caucus to vote between him and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) for minority whip.

The CBC was scheduled to meet with Pelosi late Tuesday.

Still, other Democrats said the caucus should go ahead with the leadership elections before the Thanksgiving recess. “Just go do it,” Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said.

Rep. Robert Andrews (D-N.J.) said a large majority of Democrats still think Pelosi is best suited for the job.

“Most members, by far, suggested she should run,” Andrews told reporters. “I think she’ll be successful [Wednesday]. There’s a broad consensus ... that she will bring us back.”

Asked if Pelosi’s unpopularity in certain parts of the country could harm the party in 2012, Andrews dismissed the criticisms as an inevitable consequence of Pelosi’s effectiveness as a Speaker.

“Of course she’s going to be vilified,” he said, “because she got things done.”

Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) said much of the discussion focused on how, looking forward, Democrats could sell their brand of legislating to voters who soundly rejected it in 2010.

“The talk in there is how to sell our message,” Ackerman said as the meeting neared its sixth hour. “We didn’t market it. People had no clue.”

The legislation passed by Democrats was “great,” Ackerman said, but the party simply “didn’t take credit” for it.

“It was easy to pin the tail on Nancy,” he said.

Sean J. Miller and Mike Lillis contributed to this article.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/hottopics/detail?entry_id=77239

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/r/25807193/detail.html

http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/pets/galleries/animal_kingdom_oddities/animal_kingdom_oddities.html

Impeach Obama? What about Bush?

5:07 PM EST

November 11, 2010

Peggy Alley says President Obama should be impeached (Nov. 8, Article found under this one).   I remind Ms. Alley however, that all the conditions she mentions, including enforcement of immigration laws, existed, and in most cases were created, during the Bush administration.   American citizens were losing jobs, having their homes foreclosed on and having to choose between food and prescriptions.   Illegal immigrants were coming into the country in record numbers and sending their children to public schools.   In addition the Bush administration embroiled us in two wars and lied about the reasons for one of them, resulting in the deaths of thousands of young Americans.   We rewarded President Bush with a second term.

If we didn't impeach President Bush or even possibly charge him with war crimes, it is ludicrous to suggest impeaching a president who has spent two years trying to fix these problems with progressive reforms while being impeded on all sides by Republicans whose only interest is in the failure of this president.

Ann Power

Catonsville, Maryland

The Baltimore Sun

Obama should be impeached

2:56 PM EST

November 8, 2010

In response to the op-ed "Should Obama walk away?"  (Nov. 8), I say President Obama should be impeached for refusing to enforce our federal immigration laws.   At a time when American citizens are losing jobs, having their homes foreclosed on and having to make decisions between food and prescriptions, the president is allowing millions of illegal immigrants to sneak into our country, take resources and benefits that belong to citizens and send their children to our already overburdened public school systems.   Enough is enough!

Peggy Alley

Baltimore, Maryland 

The Baltimore Sun

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/

JOHN BRESNAHAN | 11/16/10 11:57 AM EST Updated: 11/16/10 12:11 PM EST

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) has been found guilty on 11 ethics charges, ending a two-year investigation into his personal finances.

A special eight-member panel of the House ethics committee, after deliberating for roughly six hours, found that there was "clear and convincing evidence" that Rangel had violated House ethics on 11 of the 13 charges he faced heading into a rare public ethics trial.

Rangel, 80, walked out of his ethics trial on Monday, complaining that he had not been given enough time to find new legal counsel after parting ways with his previous law firm last month. The full ethics committee will now consider punishment for Rangel, and possibly refer the case to the House floor with a recommendation for a sanction against the lawmaker. Rangel is likely to face either a reprimand or a censure from his House colleagues.

The sweeping verdict on Tuesday morning offered a powerful conclusion to a two-year ethics investigation that has tarnished the political legacy of Rangel, a Harlem giant who was stripped of his Ways and Means chairmanship while he was under investigation. He came to the ethics trial as a diminished political figure, complaining that he did not have enough money for a lawyer.

He offered a brief but spirited defense on Monday, then walked out after just 30 minutes, leaving the special adjudicatory panel to try him in abstentia. The bipartisan panel quickly heard the evidence and agreed in less than 24 hours that Rangel had violated a wide range of ethics rules.

Rangel was facing a 13-count “Statement of Alleged Violation” that included allegations that he improperly solicited millions of dollars from corporate officials and lobbyists for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at The City College of New York, failed to disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars of income and assets on financial disclosure forms, illegally maintained multiple rent-stabilized apartments in a luxury Harlem apartment building and failed to pay income taxes on a villa in the Dominican Republic.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/45198.html#ixzz15Sz8FA6S

Sir, There's a Camera in Your Head

The project is being commissioned by a new museum in Qatar. But the work, which would broadcast a live stream of images from the camera to museum visitors, is sparking a debate on campus over the competing values of creative expression and student privacy.

Wafaa Bilal, an Iraqi assistant professor in the photography and imaging department of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, intends to undergo surgery in coming weeks to install the camera, according to several people familiar with the project.

For one year, Mr. Bilal's camera will take still pictures at one-minute intervals, then feed the photos to monitors at the museum. The thumbnail-sized camera will be affixed to his head through a piercing-like attachment, his NYU colleagues say. Mr. Bilal declined to comment for this story.

The artwork, titled "The 3rd I," is intended as "a comment on the inaccessibility of time, and the inability to capture memory and experience," according to press materials from the museum, known as Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art. Mr. Bilal's work would be among the inaugural exhibits of Mathaf, scheduled to open next month.

Because Mr. Bilal is an active professor, teaching three courses this semester and scheduled to teach this spring, his special camera could capture not just his personal activity, but also his interactions with students.

That possibility, of exposing private encounters without participants' consent, has raised concerns among NYU administrators and faculty.

"Obviously you don't want students to be under the burden of constant surveillance; it's not a good teaching environment," said Fred Ritchin, associate chairman of the department.

After Mr. Bilal received the commission, he informed the department chairwoman, Deborah Willis, of his project in January. "I said, what if students are upset?" Ms. Willis recalled. "What if you're documenting what they don't want you to see?"

Ms. Willis and Mr. Bilal brought the issue to the attention of the deans, Ms. Willis said, and Mr. Bilal presented the concept for his project at a faculty meeting several months ago, according to a university spokesman, John Beckman.

"It's fair to say that a good deal of discussion ensued," Mr. Beckman said. The school is still determining what rules it will set for Mr. Bilal and his camera on campus.

During the course of the discussions, Mr. Bilal has informed all of his students of his plans and has agreed to cover the camera with a black lens cap while on university property, according to Mr. Ritchin. Another proposal would require him to turn off the camera while in NYU buildings, Mr. Beckman said.

Mr. Bilal's personal activity is a separate matter, of course. "I guess anybody accepting a dinner invitation will have to realize that certain things will be going on," Mr. Ritchin said.

While Mr. Bilal's project represents a novel challenge for NYU, it is hardly the first time his work has caused a stir.

For a 2008 project, "Virtual Jihadi," Mr. Bilal hacked a video game to insert an avatar of himself as a suicide-bomber hunting President George W. Bush. The work incited a wave of protests, both for and against it, and eventually the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in Mr. Bilal's defense after the exhibition was shut down.

In his 2007 work, "Domestic Tension," Mr. Bilal confined himself to a gallery in Chicago for a month, inviting the public to visit a website where they could "shoot" the artist by remotely firing a paintball gun at him.

And in June, Mr. Bilal tattooed on to his back a map of Iraqi cities for a work called "...and Counting." The names of the cities were spelled out in Arabic script, with dots added to mark the location of American and Iraqi casualties.

The new museum where Mr. Bilal's camera-based work is to be shown is overseen by the Qatar Musuems Authority, whose other projects include the National Museum of Qatar and the Museum of Islamic Art, which opened in 2008.

A curator of the exhibition that includes Mr. Bilal's work says the artist defies categorization. "He's not really a photographer, he's not really a video artist, he's not really a performance artist," curator Till Fellrath said.

"Whatever artwork he creates, he doesn't want people to just look at it, he wants them to participate in it."

Analysis: Europe is next test for weakened Obama

 

     

WASHINGTON | Mon Nov 15, 2010 2:07pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - If President Barack Obama is not yet convinced that his international star power has faded, his next round of transatlantic summitry should clear up any lingering doubts. 

Coming off a marathon Asia trip where Obama often found himself rebuffed by fellow world leaders, he will head to Europe this week where the agenda will be clouded by a growing divide over economic strategy and a sense of neglect among traditional U.S. allies. 

His challenge is to reassure European partners that, despite political weakness at home and embarrassing setbacks abroad, he remains committed to better cooperation on issues ranging from the war in Afghanistan to the fight against trade protectionism. 

But it will not be easy for Obama, whose Democratic Party suffered heavy losses in this month's congressional elections, to dispel the impression that his stature has been diminished on the world stage. He will attend back-to-back NATO and European Union summits in Lisbon on Friday and Saturday. 

"The tricky thing for Obama is to show the Europeans not only that he's still important to them but that they're still important to the U.S.," said Sally McNamara, a European affairs expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington. 

Accustomed to being at the center of U.S. foreign policy, Europe may be feeling jilted. 

Despite the European love affair with Obama when he was elected two years ago, he has let transatlantic ties slip down his priorities list while focusing on rising Asian powers like China and India and domestic concerns such as high unemployment and an anemic economy. 

It will not be lost on his European hosts that Obama, who visited Europe six times in his first year, is dashing to Lisbon for little more than 24 hours on the ground after conducting a 10-day four-country tour of Asia.

The White House insists that Obama's engagement with economically dynamic Asia will not come at the expense of America's "enduring partnership" with less-vibrant Europe.

But analysts believe sweeping Republican gains in the November 2 midterm elections, which could cause legislative gridlock, will make it harder for him to make progress on top European concerns like financial regulation, climate change and trade. 

BACKLASH FROM EUROPE? 

Obama may also have to deal with fallout from last week's Group of 20 summit in Seoul, where he faced a backlash over U.S. monetary easing policy, resistance to his push for hard targets on global balanced growth and reluctance to join in pressuring China over its currency.

Reflecting a growing estrangement over economic policy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron have strongly opposed Obama's call for stimulating economic expansion with more government spending. They prefer to stress fiscal discipline. 

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble took the rhetoric to a new level earlier this month when he said the Federal Reserve's decision to pump $600 billion into the U.S. economy was "clueless." Germany, China and other big exporters see it as a backdoor way to cheapen the dollar and give U.S. goods a trade advantage. 

Meeting first with NATO leaders and then with heads of the 27-nation EU, the world's biggest economic bloc, Obama will undoubtedly seek to ease tensions.

Topping the NATO agenda will be Afghanistan. Obama wants allies to commit to a blueprint for shifting primary security responsibility to Afghan forces by 2014. He is mindful of NATO's need for an exit strategy in the increasingly unpopular war but hopes to avoid a disorderly rush for the door.

How well he fares could be a sign of how much sway he still holds with Europe. Though Obama remains popular among ordinary Europeans, their leaders are no longer starry-eyed about him.

Many welcome his more multilateral approach after what critics derided as "cowboy diplomacy" under George W. Bush.

But there is also disappointment in Europe that Obama has not done more to advance the fight against climate change or meet his promise to close the military prison at Guantanamo.

Nearly two years after he took office, traditional European powers have also seen their international clout heavily diluted with his push to elevate the G20 over the G8 as the main forum for coordinating global economic policy.

"It's a touchy issue," said Charles Kupchan, an expert on international relations at Georgetown University. "On Obama's watch, there has been a demotion of Europe's voice."

The EU summit was originally scheduled for May in Madrid, but it was called off after Obama decided not to go. U.S. officials said it would have been little more than a photo-op.

Then the euro zone debt crisis erupted, with the near-collapse of Greece's sovereign debt market and a spillover effect on U.S. financial markets and the economy.

That sent officials scrambling to reschedule the summit, which now is sure to discuss Ireland's emerging debt woes.

Obama said last week at the G20 that he had developed "genuine friendship" with some foreign leaders, including Merkel. But European diplomats demurred, saying he had mostly forged working relationships, not close personal bonds.

Born in Hawaii and raised partly in Indonesia, Obama -- who lacks the instinctive European focus of his predecessors -- has declared he wants to be America's first "Pacific president." Europeans may be wondering where that leaves the Atlantic.