The High Holy Barack Obama in wrapping up his world-wide campaign tour – a tour orchestrated for the media. Obama met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He talked with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. He talked with King Abdullah of Jordan. He talked with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. He talked with Israeli President Shimon Peres. He talked with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. He gave a speech to a crowd mostly comprised of Europeans, people that cannot vote in the US Presidential election. He even had time to get in a workout at a gym.
But Obama cancelled a planned visit to the Rammstein and Landstuhl US military bases in the southwest German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. He couldn’t find the time to visit American troops wounded in action recovering at a military hospital.
And why didn’t Obama visit the wounded troops? One military official who was working on the Obama visit said because political candidates are prohibited from using military installations as campaign backdrops, Obama’s representatives were told, “he could only bring two or three of his Senate staff member, no campaign officials or workers.” In addition, “Obama could not bring any media. Only military photographers would be permitted to record Obama’s visit.” That’s right, since Obama couldn’t use the visit as a campaign photo-op, he canceled it.
Obama and his team set up the visits to military installations before going overseas. After seeing how the media got excluded in Iraq and Afghanistan, they decided it wasn’t worth traveling to Ramstein and Landstuhl to visit the severely wounded troops because they couldn’t bring the campaign and get the photo ops they wanted. Instead, Obama went shopping in Berlin. That’s certainly a revealing set of priorities for a man who wants to lead these troops as Commander in Chief.
Oh, and his speech at Berlin’s victory column? It turned out to be a manifesto for the planet, with an appeal to “the burdens of global citizenship.”
“People of Berlin, people of the world, this is our moment. This is our time,” he declared, offering himself “not as a candidate for president, but as a citizen, a proud citizen of the United States and a fellow citizen of the world.” Wrong, buddy. I, for one, am not a “citizen of the world.” I am a citizen of the United States of America. I am an inhabitant of the world. There’s a difference.
Newspapers compared him to President John F. Kennedy. “The savior is coming,” a German journalist said sardonically as Obama was introduced.
“While Barack Obama took a premature victory lap today in the heart of Berlin, proclaiming himself a ‘citizen of the world,’ John McCain continued to make his case to the American citizens who will decide this election,” spokesman Tucker Bounds said in a statement. “Barack Obama offered eloquent praise for this country, but the contrast is clear. John McCain has dedicated his life to serving, improving and protecting America. Barack Obama spent an afternoon talking about it.”
On Tuesday, aides attempted to invoke White House rules and traditions by requiring reporters to withhold the names of senior advisers who brief the press. But they were reminded twice by reporters that they were not in the White House and that Obama was not the president. Seems as though The Right Reverend Obamessiah already believes he’s the President.
McCain opened up his Columbus, Ohio, town hall meeting with Tour de France champ Lance Armstrong by taking a well-crafted shot at the media. “You have billed this event as a Presidential Town Hall, and I sincerely hope that the next president is here this evening. My opponent, of course, is traveling in Europe, and tomorrow his tour takes him to France. In a scene Lance would recognize, a throng of adoring fans awaits Senator Obama in Paris — and that’s just the American press.”
Obama is dangerous. Not only does he see himself as the de facto President months before the election, but he also sees himself as some sort of Savior Of The World … a world under his Socialist leadership.
1 response so far ↓
1 teqjack // Jul 26, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Ah, but BHO had an explanation:
“Well golly, even though I’ve visited other hospitals like Walter Reed, under the same rules, and knew the rules and reasons and agreed, it never occured to me before that it might be seen as political. So instead of visiting, just like I have before, now that it might look like I was campaigning, I decided that visiting a gym and doing some shopping while the press was around was much more non-political. As to that retired General who got bent out of shape at being called what he is, one of the people working for me, now that he has talked about something he should not, well… there is still room under those buses we got cheap from my fellow Ds in New Orleans, whose do-nothing strategy worked so well, just like our “we will do nothing about energy except to steal your profits, threaten to take over your operations unless you drill, and refuse to let you drill.”