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One People !! One World !! One Leader !! In 2008, Barack Obama gave a speech to an adoring crowd of Germans at Berlin's Victory Column. Built in 1873, the monument had been moved to the site by Adolph Hitler as a celebration of national socialism. "At the core of the socialist outlook on life is what Friedrich Hayek described as 'the fatal conceit.' Far from any conscious or conspiratorial intent, a socialist's fatal conceit stems from his egotistical assumption that...

Influenced by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert's recent claims on MSNBC's Morning Joe that the McCain campaign deliberately included "phallic symbols" along with images of attractive young white women in an ad attacking Barack Obama to exploit racial resentment, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann latched onto this theory on Monday's Countdown show and observed that the ad featured "two underdressed blondes mixed with the black guy," and contended that the ad included "three phallic symbols, two blondes and Barack Obama," opining that the ad is an example of "miscegenation," and that it suggests Obama is "going to wind up dating...

Sen. Barack Obama's recent speech in Berlin may have been a hit with American journalists. That, however, is due to most journalists' politics, not to the profundity of Obama's remarks. They were neither profound nor stirring. Indeed, a careful study of the speech should lead an impartial observer to be concerned about Obama's grasp of the world. I started my analysis last week; I conclude this week. Let me begin with that which was praiseworthy. Obama: "This is the moment when we must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it. This threat is real and...

Between this and last week’s Godwin-ing of the crowd scenes, I’m honestly curious to see where the left takes the critique next. One would think they’d either run out of cards to play or would quietly pocket the ones they have left lest they make themselves look more ridiculous, but each new day brings a fresh load of semiotic ore mined. It’s the “Ulysses” of campaign ads — the only limit on what it means is your own imagination. Still, Herbert’s reading warrants special mention, not only because it manages to be simultaneously exceedingly paranoid and pedestrian but because he...

Anyone who wants to understand Barack Obama would do well to stay away from the radio and the TV. Obama is a theatrical presence. That's what it means to be "charismatic": To an unnerving degree his appeal relies on sight and sound rather than sense. Better, in my opinion, to stick to the printed word. On paper (or the computer screen) his words can be thought about and chewed over. You can understand him at your own pace, undistracted by that rich baritone, the regal bearing, the excellent drape of his Burberry suits. The printed word has its problems too,...

Obama gets a German crowd together by free rock concert before and after the speech, and he is viewed by MSM as iconic in Europe. Obama apologized to Germany for USA world aggression - to all people, Germany????? He said he would repair US relations with Germany - as if it was the USA's fault? He said that he would tear down walls between our nation and the world. Those walls are called borders and sovereignty: 1) the right to make our own laws, 2) the right to commit and direct our own troops in the defense of that sovereignty,...

WITH gestures that ranged from a wink to a sneer, most anyone you met here this week volunteered the view that Barack Obama’s visit to Europe caused unprecedented frenzy. But it’s been hard for me to find a European, aside from two Harvard-educated friends in Paris, who confessed to excitement — not just about the visit, but the prospect of an Obama presidency. It is true that Der Spiegel, the German newsweekly, featured Mr. Obama on its cover, topped by the words “Germany Meets the Superstar” — but the cover was satire, and nasty satire at that. The editors managed...

The headline on the website of German magazine Der Spiegel about Barack Obama's speech in Berlin: "Huge Crowds Left with Mixed Feelings." Two hundred thousand turned out for the speech, but CNN's Candy Crowley reported an "absence of euphoria" at the event. As Senator Obama went global with "Yes, we can" and "Change we can believe in" he left at least some of the horde in Berlin scratching their heads. Perhaps these Germans, out to hear what all the excitement was about, were looking for leadership and substance rather than kumbaya. What they got was the global version of "There...

An American presidential candidate travels to the very center of Europe and draws a huge cheering crowd. George W. Bush obviously could never do that. Nor could John McCain. For the many Americans sick to death of eight years of confrontation and quarrelling with friends and allies, Barack Obama’s visit to Berlin presented an exciting and hopeful picture. This is how things should be! It was a great moment — so long as you viewed it with the sound off. But if you listened to the speech, you heard an ominous and disturbing statement, one that raises the same unsettling...

Obama's damp squib speech today to 50,000 Germans (yes, that's all that was actually there, despite the free food, free drink, and the concerts) started off with Obama recounting to the Germans their own history. They must have loved that. There's nothing better than being told something you already know and was very personal to you by someone who wasn't there and had no part of it. It crossed my mind as he droned on, just what would have Obama done had he been in the Senate when the Berlin Airlift was proposed? Would he have supported it or would...

"Obama Addresses 200,000 in Berlin" -- thus ran the AP headline the day after Barack Obama's much-hyped speech in front of Berlin's Siegessäule or "Victory Column." This 200,000 figure has quickly become the standard estimate of the crowd for Obama's speech in both the American and the German media: so standard indeed that it is for the most part not even treated as an estimate. The estimates given by German public television ZDF actually during the event, however, were as many as 10 times lower. ZDF began its special "Obama in Berlin" coverage [German video] at 6:45 p.m. Central European...

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness. The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow....

Radical optimism is America’s contribution to the world. The early settlers thought America’s founding would bring God’s kingdom to earth. John Adams thought America would emancipate “the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.” Woodrow Wilson and George W. Bush preached their own gospels of world democracy. The great illusion of the 1990s was that we were entering an era of global convergence in which politics and power didn’t matter. What Obama offered in Berlin flowed right out of this mind-set. This was the end of history on acid. Since then, autocracies have arisen, the competition for resources has...

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness. The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow....

One People !! One World !! One Leader !!"At the core of the socialist outlook on life is what Friedrich Hayek described as 'the fatal conceit.' Far from any conscious or conspiratorial intent, a socialist's fatal conceit stems from his egotistical" -- continued at http://grandoldpartisan.typepad.com/blog/2008/07/the-obama-speech-at-the-hitler-monument.htmlThis article is adapted from page 15 of Back to Basics for the Republican Party, the acclaimed history of the GOP cited by Clarence Thomas in a Supreme Court decision.

Now that Barack Obama's photo-op safari through the Middle East is over -- "Look, Obama-nation, I bagged the Western Wall!" -- I find there's still that detail about Jordan's King Abdullah II himself chauffeuring America's Sen. Obama (also himself) to the airport worth lingering over. There the two men were, alone on the road -- at least, alone on the road in the middle of a full-metal motorcade -- cruising in the king's Mercedes 600 to the candidate's "Change you can believe in" Boeing 757 charter jet. What did they talk about? Since the traveling press didn't even find out...

<p>Obama, all his advisers, and the fawning MSM are clueless.</p> <p>As mistakes go, I would say this is the ultimate. A prepared speech (not an off-the-teleprompter gaffe), announced days in advance to the world. How is a mistake this huge possible? There is no chance he misread (misspoke), otherwise, there would be no mention of Belfast in that portion of the speech.</p>

Berliners spent the whole day trying to catch a glimpse of Barack Obama. The rumor that he had spent the afternoon working out at the hotel gym took on all the significance of an Elvis sighting. Until 7:21 p.m., that is. The sentences grows louder and louder; they start to drown out the applause. At the end of most of his speeches in the US, Obama tells his audience that he loves them. But in Berlin he just said "thank you." For a moment, it was plausible to think that he wanted to quickly aunch a global transformation through this...

Anyone who saw Barack Obama at Berlin's Siegessäule on Thursday could recognize that this man will become the 44th president of the United States. He is more than ambitious -- he wants to lay claim to become the president of the world.