Obama Apologizes to Germany for America

Barack Obama delivered a rousing speech to a German crowd estimated at over 200,000 strong this past week in Berlin, during a campaign trip overseas. It's a familiar scene because this is where Obama is strongest: Delivering a prepared speech in front of a large crowd. This one was particularly bad because a) He delivered it while pretending to be POTUS; b) He delivered it on foreign soil while campaigning for a U.S. election; c) He apologized to foreigners for the alleged sins of this country.

Read Obama, Don't Listen
As I listen to his speeches now, I mentally separate the variations in his tone and pitch from the actual content of the speech. When you do this it's much easier to focus on how lacking and wrong the substance of his words actually are. And when you notice that the screaming fans are so caught up in the emotion his voice is able to generate (that you're separating/ignoring) and not the content, you realize that people aren't listening and don't care what he's actually saying, and the idea that these lemmings will vote for him in this condition is truly frightening.

I just ran across a piece in The Weekly Standard by Andrew Ferguson where he attempts to do an "in-depth" look at the speech itself. He starts off by mentioning that he had missed the speech on TV (as did I) and so went to Obama's website to actually read the thing. Then he describes, 10 times better than I just did, why it's so instructive to read Obama's speeches rather than watch or listen to them:

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.

What Ferguson concluded as he read the speech was that there really wasn't much to say about it, because Obama himself really wound up saying not much of anything:

Instead, in the heart of Europe, before 200,000 breathless admirers, Obama pulled himself up to his full height, lifted his chin, unlimbered those eloquent hands, and said nothing at all.

Ferguson, thus, instead spends the rest of the piece describing Obama-as-human-cliche-machine, which is entertaining in itself.

The Substance of the Speech
The text of Obama's speech in Berlin can be found here (ht: Power Line). It has all the normal fear-mongering about global warming and how the Obamessiah will make that go away for us, as well as the afore-mentioned verbiage about how America hasn't lived up to its own ideals about truth and justice.

Laura Ingraham, unusually substantive in her daily email blast, had this to say:

Make no mistake: Barack Obama's speech in Berlin's Tiergarten park was one of the most revealing and, frankly, terrifying moments of the campaign so far. We witnessed a man who may very well be the next president of the United States APOLOGIZE to a bunch of foreigners for his own country's failings! He told the crowd of 200,000 that he addressed them "as a fellow citizen of the world" and then dropped this bomb: "I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we've struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We've made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions."

Apparently lost on Obama and the crowd was the incredible irony that a Nazi flag would be flying over Berlin at this very moment if it weren't for the sacrifices made by the United States and our allies in WWII; hundreds of thousands of Americans died to liberate Europe and prevent the spread of tyranny around the world.

The crowd, of course, was enthralled with the speech. But there's a very simple reason why Obama's been received like a rock star everywhere he goes in Europe: the European people have no desire to see America remain the world's number one power!

Here's the bottom line: The United States can't afford a commander-in-chief who travels to other countries with his hat in his hand and begs for some understanding. We need a president who will stand up for America, not apologize on her behalf. And if Obama had no qualms about delivering this speech to the European public, what's to stop him from doing it in private with Ahmadinejad in Iran?

Say goodbye to America, the superpower; say hello to America, the good global citizen.

At the end of the day, none of these Germans, who were treated to a free concert and free beer just before Obama's appearance (heard that on the news?), cheer for him because he's proposing that America is not enough like Europe, and that he'll fix that. And they can cheer all they want, because none of them will be able to vote for him in November. The last thing this country needs is to be more like Europe, which is in the throes of death even now. America has risen to greatness because we have perfected what Europe started (and then abandoned): a Judeo-Christian based, capitalistic society with a secular government. The further we get away from that ideal, which is what the Left is always pushing for, and the more socialistic and atheistic we get, like Europe, the more tenuous our survival becomes.

Yet Another....Idiotic Liberal Proposal

With Obama spewing so much moronic rhetoric lately, I had forgotten there are other liberals in the legislature, too. All the attention is on gas prices these days, and you've got Nancy Pelosi out there claiming that President Bush's "failed energy policy" is the reason for high gas prices, and that conservatives' call for more drilling out in the ocean and in Alaska is a "hoax, hoax, hoax!" She claims that drilling where we believe there are millions of barrels of oil (increasing the global supply) would do nothing to lower gas prices. Her alternative? Pull some barrels out of our strategic reserve (increasing supply). Wait, I thought increasing supply wouldn't solve the problem, Nancy? What's wrong with this picture? How does a woman this stupid actually get to be Speaker of the House, third in line for the Presidency of the U.S.?

Now I see we have this one state legislator in Michigan, an old guy named Aldo Vagnozzi (a D, of course), saying, "hey, let's lower the speed limit back down to 55 again. That'll save gas and lower prices." The scarier thing is he's actually got John Warner, conservative Repub in the Senate, listening. We want to bring back the 70's? Really? Well I guess we're already contemplating doing that by electing Empty Suit president, right?

Look, if you want to save some gas and $ by driving 55, Be My Guest. Have a nice day. But imposing a law so that everyone has to do this? You've got to be kidding me. There's about 20 other things you could do that would be less invasive and more effective.

Back to Rep Vagnozzi: "These are the same people who say 'Government should do something about gas prices.' Uh, you either want them to help, or you don't." News flash: No one needs the government to make them drive 55, they can do that whenever they want to. What kind of stupid "solution" is that? He actually gets paid to come up with this stuff.

When people say government should do something about the price of gas, they mean it should do big things like ending the moratorium on offshore oil drilling; allowing drilling in ANWR; encouraging development of clean coal, nuclear energy, and oil shale extraction. In other words, get government out of the way! Reagan said it best: "Government is not the solution; government is the problem." It's as true today as it was 25 years ago.

Obama Flips and Flops All Over the Place

The past few weeks have been brutal, because we now have Empty Suit Obama shifting rapidly toward the center, flipping on just about every position he's ever held; and John McCain, sitting there picking his nose the entire time. It's like watching the Bush White House refuse to defend itself for the past 7 years.

One of my favorite columnists, Charles Krauthammer, has chronicled a number of the flips in his last two columns (here and here). He also points out, in print and on television, the absolute audacity; the intellectual arrogance of Obama, as he not only shifts to the right (which everyone expected), but does so in the span of about 3 weeks (incredibly fast), and to put icing on the cake, Obama and every one of his supporters that I've heard so far insists that his positions have not changed at all!!

The one thing I keep thinking about during this campaign is, "I don't mind my candidate losing as long as everyone truly knows who and what they are voting for." With McCain, we pretty much know what we've got because the guy's life has been an open book. With Obama, we don't know much yet, and so everyone's struggling to figure out what the guy really believes. Well, he has the most liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate, and we can point to plenty of votes he's made in support of radically left ideas, like voting against the partial birth abortion ban and against giving babies who survive an abortion procedure and are born the right to live. We can also listen to his rhetoric, which is clearly leftist/Marxist. We rightly say, then, that he's a leftist, and a radical one, at that.

But a radical leftist cannot get elected POTUS, so he must tack to the center, which he is now doing. So we're left standing here wondering, was he lying then, or is he lying now? And this is why he tries to characterize his flips as non-events.

Let's take a recent one in particular: He says now that while he still wants to begin to pull the troops out right away when he is elected, he might hold off a while if the generals say that's the best course. Given that he made a strong point of saying he would pull them out, a brigade a month, for a year-and-a-half beginning with his first day in office, many months ago, this is obviously a flip, and yet he denies this. It's clearly a flip because I distinctly remember him being asked, even if it's shown that there is progress on the ground, would you still pull troops out? And his reply was "absolutely, because I'm the commander-in-chief," and he's the one who has to make the tough decisions (he left out a single example of such a decision from his life thus far). So he would pull troops out regardless of what his generals said. This is diametrically opposed to what he is saying now.

Krauthammer thinks Obama will get away with this nonsense, and I tend to agree. The Left will not abandon him at this point, because where would they go? Ralph Nader? In short, Obama has nothing to lose. Leftist voters could not care less about what Obama does; they are voting for him even if he abandons every single position (which he's on course to do).

It's truly disgusting. This guy has ZERO experience, zero qualifications for the presidency. He has never managed a single thing in his life. He attended a black racist church for 20 years and his wife talks incessantly about how awful the country is. He has sleazy politician and lobbyist friends from Chicago, a city notorious for corrupt politics. And now he's openly lying about what he believes in, and doing so blatantly, as though he is fearless about getting caught.

Meanwhile, John McCain sits around and does virtually nothing. The man has 10 times as compelling a personal story as Obama does, and his family is a model military family that has served this country for almost a century at the highest levels. And yet, he gets in front of a camera and looks like he's about to fall asleep. He points out that Obama is flipping, but does so quietly and almost puts me to sleep in the few seconds they show him out on the trail.

Days like these, it really looks like Obama could win the presidency, and God Help Us if he does.

Tour de France 2008 Underway!

Every July, I get excited for two main reasons: First, it's Independence Day! Barbeques, fireworks, our country's birthday! No holiday beats Independence Day for patriotism and good times. Second, it's the month of the Tour de France, the world's most important cycling event.

Most Americans couldn't care less about cycling, much less French cycling. But most hard-core recreational cyclists, like me, enjoy following it at least to some extent. I'm a little more crazy than most; I actually watch most of the 4 hours of live coverage available on "Versus" every day. To me, it's exciting and relaxing at the same time.

Although I've been cycling off-and-on since Junior High School, and have known about the Tour all during that time, it wasn't until a few years ago when I realized I could actually watch the event on a little network on my DirecTV dish called "OLN" or "Outdoor Life Network." I started watching and got hooked on the whole experience: The veteran British cycling commentator Phil Liggett and his sidekick, former pro racer Paul Sherwen; the beauty of the French countryside; the quaint French villages with ancient churches and castles in them, where the residents all come out to watch the Tour fly by for a few minutes; the craziness of the long climbs through the Pyrenees and Alps, with fans just inches from the passing riders; the elegant power of the Peloton (the group of 100+ riders) as it winds its way down tree-lined two-lane roads at 30mph; the drama of a breakaway (a small group of riders trying to escape the Peloton) as it struggles to survive the stage; and the frightening way in which a caught breakaway gets swallowed up by the Peloton. I could go on.

I watched OLN's coverage of the Tour for several years, and continue today after they renamed the network "Versus." I got to see Lance win 3 or 4 times, and the year after he retired I got to see Floyd Landis, one of Lance's former teammates, have the best year of his career and win the Tour, only to see it get taken away in a doping scandal (I still believe he was set up). And then last year, yet another American stepped up to play the hero, the cyclist who filled in for Lance at the Olympics in 2004, Levi Leipheimer. Never a podium finisher, Levi got to lead Lance's former team, which was still extremely strong, and did manage to make the podium, but was outshined by his much younger teammate, Alberto Contador, who came out of nowhere to win.

Shake-Ups in the Off-Season
During the off-season last year, a lot happened. Discovery Channel ended its sponsorship of Armstrong/Leipheimer's team, and rather than get a new sponsor, as they had done previously when U.S. Postal Service ended its reign, the team just dissolved. Riders went their separate ways, to different teams. At the same time, in the wake of huge doping/steroid scandals at last year's Tour and throughout the season, Team Astana basically fired the entire team and started over. When they did this, they first hired Johann Bruyneel, the former manager of Discovery Channel / USPS, Lance's manager throughout all his Tour wins. He brought with him Contador and Leipheimer, and they built a quality team, made up of riders who had never ever been busted for doping. They also instituted a super-harsh doping control system over and above what the Tour and the international governing body, UCI, require. All in all, a great setup.

Then the Tour organizers announced that, because Astana had been such a disgrace the previous year, they would not be invited to this year's race. This, despite the complete re-construction of the team, and the fact that the 1^st and 3^rd place finishers from 2007 were on the team and ready to defend the title. And the organizers never budged. Since the Tour is an invitational, they had total control over who can race. So, this year no Contador, no Leipheimer, and no Bruyneel. And frankly, so many of the big stars of the past few years – Ivan Basso, Alexander Vinokourov, Floyd Landis, Tyler Hamilton, Jan Ullrich, Tom Boonen, etc – have been caught doping or with drugs and suspended (and humiliated), that it's hard to know who to cheer for. It's a little disconcerting.

Watching is Different
So this year I'm watching, and enjoying, but I haven't figured out who to cheer for yet, and instead I find myself getting caught up not in the "GC" overall standings, but in the daily stage wins instead. I focused on a small 4-frenchman breakaway yesterday that included young Thomas Voeckler, who carried the yellow leader's jersey for several days a few years back, winning the affection of everyone watching, before enjoying the last-minute catching of the breakaway and the sprint for the finish line by the "God of Thunder," Norwegian Thor Hushovd, and almost caught in the process by a no-name GC contender, Kim Kirchen. And the hard-fought win the day before by Alejandro Valverde. These guys are big names, but not Tour winner names. The real contender has yet to appear, and won't for another week or more. Two of my favorites, though, Armstrong lieutenant George Hincapie and Christian Vandevelde, are only 7 seconds off the lead. How great it would be to see one of those guys win.

Even the commentators are second-string. With Al Trautwig, the host of Versus's pre-race show every day, out covering gymnastics at the Olympic trials this month, Versus tapped the most stiff field guy they could get, Craig Hummer, to fill in for him. Another former racer, Hummer's interviews with racers out in the warmdown areas have always been pretty lame. Now that he's doing pre-race, I try to watch a little because I enjoy Bob Roll, a real nutty American former racer whose trademark is absolutely butchering any French words he encounters during commentaries. And then Phil and Paul will join in for a few minutes of banter, which is fun, but overall the pre-race just isn't the highlight I used to enjoy.

So this weblog has wound up always being about politics, even though it wasn't intended that way. And I just noticed I hit 100 posts the other day (and one comment among them – awesome!!). So to celebrate, I'm mixing it up. I'm going to blog a little about the Tour. Maybe I'll even get some theology mixed in here some day, too. Or maybe some Xbox 360 articles. Who knows? With the political scene so depressing this year, I'm going to have to write about something uplifting before I have to go on medication.