Sonic youth...
Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe. No doubt, there will be differences in the future. But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together. A change of leadership in Washington will not lift this burden. In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more — not less. Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.
That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.
The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.
U.S. Senator Barack Obama
Direct and forthright...
Y'hear the one about the Yank being welcomed by 200,000 Germans?
Yeah, what a thought. Weird, isn't it? Who'd of thunk an American pol could draw such an approving crowd?
Well, he did and despite the bile and gall of a host of Republican spoilers (no doubt eager to further entrench the U.S. as the most hated country on Earth), Obama proved himself capable of resurrecting America's appalling image abroad.
We face peak oil, climate change, food shortages, an extended Depression, and increasingly bitter and divisive resource wars. Like it or not, people see in Barack Obama shades of Jack Kennedy and Nelson Mandela. They see youth and they see hope. More — they feel it and, in a political world ruled by smoke, mirrors, and sleight of hand, such feeling matters more now than ever before.
In short, we need this guy. Desperately. Despite those who'd pretend otherwise.
It's as Lucy Powell, a British parliamentary candidate, says: "Yesterday's scene in Berlin was phenomenal — like nothing I can remember in my lifetime concerning an American politician — with thousands of people flocking to get a glimpse. What a contrast to the division, anger and tension that dominated Europe and US relations in the pre and post Iraq war era."
Not forgetting that, beyond its obliteration, we've yet to reach a post-Iraq era.
And it's as Robin Oakley, CNN's European political editor, puts it: "He is one of those politicians who reaches parts other politicians don't reach. After the unpopularity of George W. Bush, the world is waiting to love America again, and many see in Obama, with his youth and his optimism, somebody who can bring that about."
Americans would be crazy to turn their backs on a man who might well represent their final chance to "...do the other thing."
Vote him in now. We'll crucify him later. Trust me.
Barack Obama proved yesterday why November's presidential election will end in a 50-state sweep. John McCain has no chance. It's like George Bush climbing into the ring with Mike Tyson; one thundering left hook and the Crawford Caligula would be sprawled across the canvas in a pool of his own blood. "No mas"! The same fate awaits the crabby senator from Arizona. The polls are skewed to look like there's a political horse-race going on. There isn't. It's a complete rout. There's one well-toned thoroughbred striding from venue to venue electrifying the ever-increasing throngs, and one doddering old mare limping towards the glue-factory. Someone should put a stop to it before McCain gets hurt.
Mike Whitney | McCain Cries "No Mas!"
The Alternative is More of the Same
The death knell...
And to those who believe that threatening statements fall upon indifferent ears we say in one voice: that it is totally abhorrent for the President of Iran to call for Israel to be wiped from the map of the world.
And I promise that just as we have led the work on three mandatory sanctions resolutions of the UN, the UK will continue to lead - with the US and our EU partners - in our determination to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapons programme. The EU has gone beyond each of these resolutions. Last month we took action against an Iranian bank involved in proliferation. We stand ready to lead in taking firmer sanctions and ask the whole international community to join us. Iran has a clear choice to make: suspend its nuclear programme and accept our offer of negotiations or face growing isolation and the collective response not of one nation but of many nations.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown
Dumb and dangerous...
And this is what passes for reality in the minds of the dumb and dangerous? Yes, it's as full of high-flown rhetoric as Obama's speech but, in as much as the images tell their own stories, that's where any similarity ends.
The Pain of John McCain
Sidney — Watching John McCain
Having watched Barack Obama's Berlin speech (courtesy of Norm Jenson) and having noted the Kenyan counselling a miserable Gordon Brown, the vicious and facile backlash of fascistic righ-whingers driven to apoplexy and near-hysteria worldwide by the lanky candidate's international allure proved almost amusing. Given their candidate's impersonation of Gerald Ford doing Ronnie Reagan impersonating George W. Bush, it's certainly not surprising. Thing is; John McCain is a hopeless, clueless, embittered, flip-flopping loser in need of a thorough beating. Frank Rich is worth quoting at length:
“We have one president at a time,” Mr. Obama is careful to say. True, but the sitting president, a lame duck despised by voters and shunned by his own party’s candidates, now has all the gravitas of Mr. Cellophane in “Chicago.” The opening for a successor arrived prematurely, and the vacuum had been waiting to be filled. What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them.New York Times | How Obama Became Acting President
Mr. McCain could also have stepped into the leadership gap left by Mr. Bush’s de facto abdication. His inability to even make a stab at doing so is troubling. While drama-queen commentators on television last week were busy building up false suspense about the Obama trip — will he make a world-class gaffe? will he have too large an audience in Germany? — few focused on the alarms that Mr. McCain’s behavior at home raise about his fitness to be president.
Once again the candidate was making factual errors about the only subject he cares about, imagining an Iraq-Pakistan border and garbling the chronology of the Anbar Awakening. Once again he displayed a tantrum-prone temperament ill-suited to a high-pressure 21st-century presidency. His grim-faced crusade to brand his opponent as a traitor who wants to “lose a war” isn’t even a competent impersonation of Joe McCarthy. Mr. McCain comes off instead like the ineffectual Mr. Wilson, the retired neighbor perpetually busting a gasket at the antics of pesky little Dennis the Menace.
The week’s most revealing incident occurred on Wednesday when the new, supposedly improved McCain campaign management finalized its grand plan to counter Mr. Obama’s Berlin speech with a “Mission Accomplished”-like helicopter landing on an oil rig off Louisiana’s coast. The announcement was posted on politico.com even as any American with a television could see that Hurricane Dolly was imminent. Needless to say, this bit of theater was almost immediately “postponed” but not before raising the question of whether a McCain administration would be just as hapless in anticipating the next Katrina as the Bush-Brownie storm watch.
When not plotting such stunts, the McCain campaign whines about its lack of press attention like a lover jilted for a younger guy. The McCain camp should be careful what it wishes for. As its relentless goading of Mr. Obama to visit Iraq only ratcheted up anticipation for the Democrat’s triumphant trip, so its insistent demand for joint town-hall meetings with Mr. Obama and for more televised chronicling of Mr. McCain’s wanderings could be self-inflicted disasters in the making.
Mr. McCain may be most comfortable at town-hall meetings before largely friendly crowds, but his performance under pressure at this year’s G.O.P. primary debates was erratic. His sound-bite-deep knowledge of the country’s No. 1 issue, the economy, is a Gerald Ford train wreck waiting to happen in any matchup with Mr. Obama that requires focused, time-limited answers rather than rambling.
During Mr. McCain’s last two tours of the Middle East — conducted without the invasive scrutiny of network anchors — the only news he generated was his confusion of Sunni with Shia and his embarrassing stroll through a “safe” Baghdad market with helicopter cover. He should thank his stars that few TV viewers saw that he was even less at home when walking through a chaotic Pennsylvania supermarket last week. He inveighed against the price of milk while reading from a note card and felt the pain of a shopper planted by the local Republican Party.
If the erudite, media-friendly Democrat promising to rebrand American expansionism and aggression in every sphere has demonstrated anything, it's that John McCain represents the United States' alarmingly suicidal tendency to celebrate the dumb and dangerous referred to above.
