Obama Berlin speech

It's a good theme about tearing down walls but he mentioned Belfast. Belfast still has walls.

Cleverly builds on Reagan rhetoric but also echoes of Lincoln --

the walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand

Overall impression: from TV, speech seemed a bit flat -- bad acoustics? But the big applause reactions were telling: Iraq, nuclear weapons, and torture/rule of law.

There's a complaint from Byron York --

It's a small passage from Obama's Berlin speech, but this formulation, common in some circles, grates on some ears, like mine:

"The terrorists of September 11th plotted in Hamburg and trained in Kandahar and Karachi before killing thousands from all over the globe on American soil."

Yes, the victims were from all over the globe — places like Brooklyn, and the Bronx, and Manhattan, and Queens, and Staten Island, and New Jersey — all over. And most were Americans, weren't they? Wasn't that the point of the attack?

George Bush's 5th anniversary speech --

Nineteen men attacked us with a barbarity unequaled in our history. They murdered people of all colors, creeds, and nationalities -- and made war upon the entire free world.

[see also Political Animal and Crooked Timber]