Berlin

Posted By: Nick

 
I’m really beginning to question the intelligence of the McCain campaign.  While Obama was in Berlin for his speech to 200,000 people, John McCain went to a German restaurant in Columbus, OH.  It’s such a ridiculous move, I can’t even fathom how the McCain campaign thought that this would be a good response to Obama’s stop in Berlin.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfEg_HKrSrw]

Posted By: Nick

 
Some of my favorite pictures from Obama’s Berlin Speech:

Posted By: Neil

 
Senator Barack Obama was not my first choice for president, nor was he my second. But I always admired the fact that, like President Clinton, he writes a majority of his own stuff. As a writer and communications guy, this means a lot to me.

And so I was blown away by this quote from Obama in Berlin today:

“So history reminds us, that walls can be torn down, but the task is never easy. True partnership and true progress requires constant work and sustained sacrifice. They require sharing the burdens of development and diplomacy, of peace and progress. They require allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and most of all, trust each other.”

We need a President who can lift us up. Lord knows we’ve had our share of difficulties this decade. I believe that Barack Obama can do this and help put our country back on track for prosperity and pride.

Words have such significance: they truly have the power to move mountains. Oratory like this should raise your heart rate. Oratory should blow the doors off the place. We should be talking about not being satisfied with past solutions, we should be talking about fighting for what we believe and the progress our country needs.

With all of the economic woes, soaring prices of gas, failing infrastructure, an endless & senseless war in Iraq, a forgotten war in Afghanistan, increased home foreclosures and the real threat of global warming, it is becoming apparent that we need someone to help lead us out of the mess our government has put us in.

Sen. Obama says that “walls can be torn down, but the task is never easy.” He couldn’t be more right. The social progress our country has made over the last 200+ years didn’t happen overnight and it wasn’t met with jubilant crowds. There was a time when people were arrested for holding the hand of someone of another skin color. There was a time when people were beaten to death and their bodies dragged through the streets for using the wrong restrooms. Today, we have kids being beaten and tied to barbed wire fences to die because of the gender they love. This is a topic that needs to be met head-on with vigor and zeal.

Further, Senator Obama says that progress and true partnership “require(s) sharing the burdens of development and diplomacy, of peace and progress.” We are in a crisis of confidence on the international diplomatic scene. We need someone who is willing and able to work with the leaders of foreign governments - whether they are hostile or friendly - to achieve our goals domestically and abroad. We need someone who is willing to talk tough, stand up for what is right, sit at a peace table when necessary, and be able to provide a peace table when one is needed. I believe Barack Obama is the candidate to get this done.

So I urge all of you to vote for Barack Obama. Read his policies. Listen to his speeches. Hear his plan for America and the prosperity he intends to restore. We live in critical times, and we need leaders who will reach for the stars and beyond to make this country great again.

The following is Barack Obama’s Speech in Berlin, Germany today (July 24th, 2008).  Full text of the speech below the video.

A World That Stands as One

Thank you to the citizens of Berlin and to the people of Germany. Let me thank Chancellor Merkel and Foreign Minister Steinmeier for welcoming me earlier today. Thank you Mayor Wowereit, the Berlin Senate, the police, and most of all thank you for this welcome.

I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before. Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen - a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world.

I know that I don’t look like the Americans who’ve previously spoken in this great city. The journey that led me here is improbable. My mother was born in the heartland of America, but my father grew up herding goats in Kenya. His father - my grandfather - was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.

At the height of the Cold War, my father decided, like so many others in the forgotten corners of the world, that his yearning - his dream - required the freedom and opportunity promised by the West. And so he wrote letter after letter to universities all across America until somebody, somewhere answered his prayer for a better life.

That is why I’m here. And you are here because you too know that yearning. This city, of all cities, knows the dream of freedom. And you know that the only reason we stand here tonight is because men and women from both of our nations came together to work, and struggle, and sacrifice for that better life.

[click to continue...]

Posted By: Nick

 
In a move of sheer genius, the RNC will counter Barack Obama’s Berlin speech by advertising in Berlin, NH; Berlin, PA; and Berlin, WI.  Because Barack can only be in one Berlin to give a speech, the RNC will outdo him by advertising in THREE Berlins.  The ad:

Title: Obama Chooses Washington Over Our Military (60 seconds)

VO: There are few votes as important as funding our men and women in uniform.
VO: But when our military needed necessary resources, Barack Obama failed to stand up.
VO: Obama said that nobody wanted to play chicken with our troops on the ground.
VO: But when it came time to act, he voted against critical resources: no to individual body armor, no to helicopters, no to ammunition, no to aircraft.
VO: The bill Obama opposed even had funding for veterans’ medical facilities and rehabilitation programs.
VO: And why did he say no?
VO: Obama chose Washington politics over the needs of our military.
VO: And Senator McCain?
VO: As a veteran and someone who has always put the public interest first, John McCain stood by our troops.
VO: If Obama can’t rise above politics to support our soldiers in a time of war, then how can he claim to have the strength to change the way Washington works?
VO: John McCain is ready to lead. Barack Obama is not.

Mark Preston, who wrote the CNN snippet linked above, thinks that this is:

certainly a clever way to gain some national press and perhaps gain some buzz in these three battleground states…

Wrong.  It’s a clever way for the RNC to gain some national press and to then be ridiculed for it’s complete inability to come up with any good ideas about how to counter the highly successful Obama trip.