--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, feste37 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
It says so in the Guardian! (see the 4th para -- over the top of
course but who cares?) If I were McCain, I would just give up. He
can't compete with this guy. Landslide in November! Remember, you
read
it here first.
Look, I'm no big fan of McCain, but Obama?
All he's done in his life was being a comunity organiser and
apparently not a very successful one.
Oh, yes, I forgot: he has also, at age 46, written two -- count 'em
two -- autobiographies.
And as for policy, no one has ANY idea what he stands for because he
changes his positions from day to day.
So when people look to his past for a clue what he stands for or what
his personality is like, they find that he spent 20 years listening
to a racist demagogue.
Yes, he gives good speech but when he has to speak off-the-cuff he
looks like a deer caught in the headlights.
US elections: Obama wows Berlin crowd with historic speech
For the man who has brought rock-star charisma to electoral
politics,
today saw the campaign rally as pop festival, a summer gathering of
peace, love - and loathing of George Bush.
Taking what he calls his improbable journey to the heart of
Europe,
Barack Obama succeeded in closing down one of Berlin's main
thoroughfares tonight, luring the city's young in their tens of
thousands to stand in the evening sunshine and hear him spin his
dreams of hope, not for America this time, but for the whole world.
The young and the pierced, some with guitars slung over their
shoulders, others barefoot, jammed up against each other to cheer
on a
man who in less than a year has become the world's most popular
serving politician, even if, as yet, he has been elected to no
office
grander than the junior Senate seat for Illinois.
Expectations had been impossibly high, with predictions of a
million-strong crowd filling the Strasse des 17 Juni, the wide
avenue
that links the Brandenburg Gate with the looming, gold-topped
Victory
column of the Siegessäule.
The candidate himself had sought to lower expectations, telling
reporters on the plane from Tel Aviv that he doubted he would be
greeted in Berlin by a million screaming Germans.
Once the Glastonbury-style warm-up bands and DJs had quieted, the
Democratic nominee almost floated into view, walking to the podium
on
a raised, blue-carpeted runway, as if he were somehow, magically,
walking on water. Even from a distance, the brilliant white of his
teeth dazzled.
It was a reminder that the latest edition of Stern magazine features
Obama on the cover, above the line Saviour - or demagogue?
The speech was not one of Obama's masterpieces, but it certainly
cleared the exceptionally high standard he has set himself.
Poetically, he reminded Berliners of what they would surely regard
as
their finest hours, their resilience during the blockade some 60
years
ago - when the Soviet Union tried to extinguish the last flame of
freedom in Berlin - and the fall of the wall in 1989, an event
which
opened the doors of democracy all over the world.
But the loudest applause came when Obama, however subtly, offered
himself as the coming antidote to all that Germans, Europeans,
indeed
most non-Americans, have disliked about the Bush era.
After listing a series of global problems, from genocide in Darfur
to
loose nukes, he declared: No one nation, no matter how large or how
powerful, can defeat such challenges alone. It was a promise to end
the unilateralism of the early Bush years, and the crowd could not
contain their delight.
There was no less warmth when Obama explained his belief in allies
who will listen to each other, who will learn from each other who
will, above all, trust each other.
Again and again he uttered sentences that could never have come from
the mouth of George W Bush, and Berlin could not have been more
grateful.
This is the moment to secure the peace of the world without nuclear
weapons, he said. On Iraq, the aim was to finally bring this war
to
a close. He asked if today's generation was ready to seize the
moment
that was at hand. Will we reject torture and stand for the rule of
law? he asked. Will we welcome immigrants from different lands?
As for the threat of climate change, he spoke in language that could
not have been more sweeping or more epic: This is the moment we
must
come together to save this planet. (Was that saviour or demagogue -
or both?)
He didn't spell out that he would reverse much of the course of the
last eight years, but that was only because he didn't have to.
This is an anti-Bush rally, said one man, an employee of the
German
government, reluctant to reveal his name because of his job.
The last time he had seen such a crowd in the same place was for the
Love Parade music festival, and you can see the similarities, he
said. There was only one dissonant note, but Obama's
