Obamavolk Prepare For Obama Blitz

Mayhill Fowler, HuffPost

BERLIN -- On what used to be the East German side of the
Brandenburg Gate, Linnea and Julia, two American college students, have been
spending this sunny Wednesday afternoon handing out blue postcards advertising
Barack Obama's appearance tomorrow at the Siegessaule, the Uberphallic Victory
statue in the Tiergarten, less than a mile down the boulevard Unter den Linden
on the other side of the Tor.

Although several of the Berlin TV stations are carrying
Obama's speech live, one as part of a two-hour special on the Senator, the city
is beginning to have second thoughts about Obama's decision to make Berlin the site of the
only public speech on his whirlwind European tour. The security cost to the
city is closing on $500,000. Some Germans, moreover, are preparing to not like
what Obama has to say. Niels Annen, a foreign policy expert for the Social
Democrats (the Liberals, as opposed to Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats), has
told Der Spiegel (suddenly the "go-to" media on what's happening
with Obama's Excellent Adventure, as Howard Kurtz quips) that Obama should not
urge Germany to send more troops to Afghanistan. Yet from everything we hear
about the speech, Obama will be urging greater participation from the Europeans
in our historic trans-Atlantic alliance. This is the nice way of saying,
"you have a responsibility to help us in our excellent adventures
abroad."