[Would have been better if I'd finished writing when I just watched it, not enough time to go back to remember it all]

Okay, the good parts - I'd recommended Zoo Station in honor of U2, and the Tiergarten was close enough - certainly much better than the Brandenburg Gate.

Second, somewhere around 21 minutes, the speech turned to how immigrants from every nation shaped the US - good image. Walls & bridges okay, thought of Lennon's album. Probably the appeal to Germans was okay, though could have been updated to note as much the post-Wall changes.

Now, let's talk about Dad. Dad was a goatherder the way I was a lawnmower or lifeguard or pizza deliverer. You know, those kid jobs that everyone does - in Kenya that means goatherder. Even if your father's a CEO. Dad's first wife notes that Dad was an office clerk in Nairobi for 5 years before going to America. 5 years.  Nairobi. Big city. White collar job. Intelligent, well educated young man. Left for America at 23. Dad did not go to America for freedom. Dad went to America to further his education. College. To get ahead. Like many from the 3rd world. And of course to get that "Been in America" stamp. Very valuble in 1960. Grandpa had good connections with the British, so I don't imagine Dad wrote letter after letter across the US. His father wasn't just a cook for the British, he was a reasonably wealthy farmer and landholder and was widely travelled. This is not  poverty case or a typical Kenyan family, and I don't like Obama mischaracterizing his family to score endearment points.

Terrorism? Oh God, I thought the progressive side stopped framing things like this 4 years ago (except progressive Joe Lieberman). Terruh, terruh, terruh. Are we scared already? Yes, there have been some attacks, but very few, and we continue to do stuff to try to improve the situation - at least would if we weren't wasting time in Iraq. So why is Iraq the frontline of terror? I don't even understand what we're trying to accomplish in Afghanistan by talking about more troops. Do we have an exit strategy? A gameplan? Osama Bin Laden is supposedly in Pakistan - how does building up troops in Afghanistan fix that? While I'd love to see him hung, isn't it a better use of resources to isolate them, cut off/monitor their communications, bolster the democratic elements in Pakistan & Afghanistan, and only go military if we can't get  handle on it?

Friendship with Russia across the continent? Thanks, but no thanks. Maybe under Yeltsin, but Putin has become a billionaire under his reign, nationalizing oil companies by force, absconding with money, threatening Europe with withholding natural gas and of course getting rid of his opponents in various ways. We can have a friendly arms-length relationship with Russia while deepening our ties with the democratic portions of Europe.

Get rid of nukes? Now? Nope, I'm against. We haven't even addressed China's role in this brave new world, we hope that North Korea's not as close as they keep claiming to be, Iran's certainly got some hight tech motion in both distance and nuclear savvy even if our reports are correct, and I of course don't trust Putin.

Besides making me like Obama less (I know, some of you will find that hard to believe, but I'm starting to think he's actually naïve both in policy and in what he thinks his speeches accomplish), I think it gives a lot of damaging ammo to the Republicans for this fall.

Oh well, maybe everyone's at the beach and will forget it all by Labor Day. Maybe I can close my eyes and it'll be over when I open them. Maybe maybe maybe...

Well, I can't read minds, and none of me choice friends in high places are returning my phone calls, so I can't tell for sure Ryan Lizza was intentionally dropped from that flight or it was just overbooked (funny, he seemed to have been everywhere for the first 6 months of the year - with McCain, Clinton & Obama..). And whether it was retribution for that tacky cover? Don't know that either.

But what I do know is that buried beneath the hooplah surrounding the cover, the article Lizza wrote on Obama's time in Chicago is well worth reading whatever your persuasion. Please click the Rec button if you agree.

Just a year after after MSNBC managed to give us 23 minutes of prime time Hillary cleavage reporting (WaPo only put it on page 1 of its fashion section - 2 years in a row), they're here to tell us Hillary has a new hair-do. This is why the independence of the press is important, the 4th Estate plays a vital role in our public debate, one that we will discover hundreds of years from now when alien space gods divulge our ultimate purpose. In the meantime we'll have to just keep on guessing. Of course they might have spent a few more minutes on Bill's announcement about arranging discounts for malaria and HIV/AIDS drugs for the 3rd world, but that would detract from his good-prez-gone-bad media image. All the print that's news to fit.

Woke up this morning to a documentary on Mandela - what a man. 27 years in jail and simply no bitterness, all smiles and love. A true rock star - Bono continually looks tiny around him, not to belittle him for all the work he's done. So what was Mandela's triumph? Truth, Reconciliation and Dignity - finding out what happened for the sake of finding out, but bringing the enemies together, maintaining their dignity, finding a way forward. It would have been easy to take a different road - Africa for Africans, Europeans out. Mugabe did, as have others. But not Mandela. As bad as some of South Africa's problems are, the ones that get worldwide press, it could have been much much worse. Because Mandela kept the country together, kept whites talking to blacks, made the transition, knew how to keep Afrikaaners in the game while tackling the tough changes, maintaining a unity government with De Klerk and others still on-board.

27 years for one man, how many years for the nation. And we act like we have it tough.