It's official: Sen. Barack Obama will speak in Berlin before the Victory Column in the Tiergarten with the Brandenburg Gate just down the road. So much for the controversy swirling around the prospect of Obama speaking at the Brandenburg Gate (Charles Krauthammer has an op-ed pasting Obama for what he deems his dangerous hubris in today's Washington Post). The Victory Column opened in 1873 -- you can walk up inside to the top for a splendid view of Berlin -- to commemorate Germany's triumph over Denmark. Things soon went awry, as the impetuous young Kaiser Wilhelm tried to outdo his old man and launched a catastrophic preventive war in 1914. Sound familiar? Bush has more in common with the Kaiser than you might think.
Obama's visit will highlight a modern, more enlightened Germany. Today it's Germany that's offering lessons in morality to a United States that has gone astray. But some thing remain the same -- beer and sausages remain a staple of the German diet. Given the difficulties Obama has had in the United States with quaffing beer and hanging out with the locals, his greatest problem in Deutschland may be dealing with the local cuisine.
Still, Obama is wildly popular in Germany and any culinary transgressions are likely to be forgiven. He offers a chance to tip the beauty contest scales in America's favor again. Perhaps Obama's appearance at the Victory Column even provides a premonition of his own victory in November?
He will be our next President, but it is not November yet...
Obama/? 08'
Kennedy was greeted with cheers in Berlin, So was Reagan. Bush is afraid to leave the armored limo.
It is going to be great seeing an American politician greeted enthusiastically by world crowds.
(Obama should do something bold like do the first minute of the speech in German)
Obama is there at Germany's invitation, it is the German officials who picked the site.
You reporters need to get a life!! Or if you are so determined to go and blame someone, go blame the the Germans for giving their building the names they do!
(That's what the 'Tiergarten' is.)
A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Why the long face?" Barack Obama replies, "His jockey just lost his health insurance, which should be the right of all Americans."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-borowitz/obama-releases-list-of-ap_b_112837.html
'Obama Releases List of Approved Jokes About Himself'
This world is crying out for some pragmatic, common-sense based leadership. After hundreds of years of religious and ideological wars, it's refreshing to find leadership that draws good ideas from wherever they can be found, that rejects bad ideas no matter how close to home they originate. Leadership that emphasizes what we have in common instead of what we differ about. Leadership that understands compromise not as weakness, but as a necessity for peaceful living. Leadership that recognizes the global interconnectness that will now forever define the planet.
It amazes and delights me that our youth are leading this common sense, pragmatic effort to focus of the real and pressing challenges we face, and set aside the ideological fighting. Bravo, youth!
This will be an uber inspirational and historical event for the world to see on so many levels and put America back where it belongs.
Our greatness as a country is our ability to continuously reinvent ourselves. America needs to remind the world that here we are of many ... Obama is E Pluribus Unum
people around the world will compare the huge difference between the two candidates.
Home run for Obama ,game over.
He also has more in common with Hitler than you might think. After all, his grandfather was banker to the German industrialist who bankrolled the Nazis.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar