Ich bin ein Berliner

Sounds like Obama can roll with the changes indeed...

CNN article wrote: But use of the landmark apparently was vetoed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who a spokesman Wednesday said disapproved of plans to co-opt it as a "campaign backdrop."

Asked whether he looked to Reagan's and Kennedy's Berlin speeches for inspiration, Obama said, "They were presidents. I am a citizen."

...

Robin Oakley, CNN's European political editor, said Obama enjoyed widespread popularity in Europe.

"He is one of those politicians who reaches parts other politicians don't reach," Oakley said. "After the unpopularity of George W. Bush, the world is waiting to love America again, and many see in Obama, with his youth and his optimism, somebody who can bring that about."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/24/obama.speech/index.html

i liked his germany speech. even if i werent an obama supporter i would have to be honest and say he does write and give great speeches!

floridafun wrote:i liked his germany speech. even if i werent an obama supporter i would have to be honest and say he does write and give great speeches!

Not trying to stir anything, but do you really think he writes his own speeches. I thought they all have a team of speechwriters. Now I'm not saying they don't have a hand in it, but I doubt that the candidates are writing their own speeches.

Delivery is very important. Bush probably has a great team of speech writers, and most of the time when he opens his mouth he sounds like a dumbass.

Cincy Fan 44 wrote:

floridafun wrote:i liked his germany speech. even if i werent an obama supporter i would have to be honest and say he does write and give great speeches!

Not trying to stir anything, but do you really think he writes his own speeches. I thought they all have a team of speechwriters. Now I'm not saying they don't have a hand in it, but I doubt that the candidates are writing their own speeches.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/fashion/20speechwriter.html

actually i am sure i read somewhere he had written most of them, and of course if it was on the internet it had to be true LOL!! he does have a speechwriter. heres part of an article about it..thought you guys would enjoy the sporting-event part

When he first met Mr. Obama, Mr. Favreau was 23, a recent graduate of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., near where he grew up. Mr. Obama was rehearsing his 2004 convention speech backstage, when Mr. Favreau, then a member of John Kerry’s staff, interrupted him: the senator needed to rewrite a line from his speech to avoid an overlap.

“He kind of looked at me, kind of confused — like, ‘Who is this kid?’ ” Mr. Favreau recalled.

Mr. Obama became his boss the following year. Mr. Favreau had risen to a job as a speechwriter on the Kerry campaign, but by then was unemployed. He was, he said, “broke, taking advantage of all the happy-hour specials I could find in Washington.”

Robert Gibbs, Mr. Obama’s communications director, had known Mr. Favreau during the Kerry campaign, and recommended him as a writer.

Life was relatively quiet then, and Mr. Obama and Mr. Favreau had some time to hang out. When Mr. Obama’s White Sox swept Mr. Favreau’s beloved Red Sox three games to none in their American League 2005 division series, the senator walked over to his speechwriter’s desk with a little broom and started sweeping it off.

not to over-kill on this, but i also found this which is regarding obama and favreau writing process..

http://www.newsweek.com/id/84756/output/print

When Kerry lost in 2004, Favreau thought he was finished with politics. "After the Kerry campaign, after all the backbiting and nastiness, my idealism and enthusiasm for politics was crushed," he said. "I was grateful for the experience I got, but it was such a difficult
experience, along with losing, that I was done. It took Barack to rekindle that."

Obama's communications director, Robert Gibbs, called Favreau after Kerry's defeat and asked him to talk to the newly installed senator. "We're looking for a speechwriter," Gibbs told Favreau.

"Why?" asked Favreau.

"If there were 48 hours in a day, we wouldn't need a speechwriter," Gibbs said. "But he needs to work with someone."

Favreau met with Obama and Gibbs in the Senate cafeteria in the Dirksen office building on Capitol Hill on the senator's first day in his new job. Obama didn't want to know about Favreau's résumé, but he did want to know about his motivation.

"What got you into politics, what got you interested?" he asked.

Favreau told him about the social service project he started in Worcester, defending the legal rights of welfare recipients as the state tried to move people off the rolls and into work.

"What is your theory of speechwriting?" Obama asked.

"I have no theory," admitted Favreau. "But when I saw you at the convention, you basically told a story about your life from beginning to end, and it was a story that fit with the larger American narrative. People applauded not because you wrote an applause line but because you touched something in the party and the country that people had not touched before. Democrats haven't had that in a long time."

The pitch worked. Favreau and Obama rapidly found a relatively direct way to work with each other. "What I do is to sit with him for half an hour," Favreau explains. "He talks and I type everything he says. I reshape it, I write. He writes, he reshapes it. That's how we get a
finished product.

"It's a great way to write speeches. A lot of times, you write something, you hand it in, it gets hacked by advisers, it gets to the candidate and then it gets sent back to you. This is a much more intimate way to work."

Some speeches are much more the product of the candidate himself. Obama e-mailed Favreau his draft of his announcement speech in Springfield, Ill., at 4 a.m. on the morning of the campaign launch last February.

Now Favreau has his own team: Adam Frankel, a 26-year-old who worked with Ted Sorensen on his memoirs, and Ben Rhodes, a 30-year-old who worked with Lee Hamilton on the 9/11 commission's report.

Together they had just three weeks to work on Obama's game-changing speech at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Iowa and even less time to work on Obama's victory speech last week. Weaving together lines from previous speeches—and even Obama's books—the team now knows the themes and language that reflect the candidate's voice.

"Even if we had finished third, we would go on to New Hampshire," says Favreau of the victory speech plan. "I had a winning and a keep-fighting speech, but in the end they weren't that different. The message out of Iowa was one of unity and reaching out across party lines. We knew we were going to do well with independents, young people and first-time voters. We knew the message was similar to what he said at the 2004 convention."

The result was a speech with a light touch on the most striking point about Obama's victory: the historic nature of a black candidate's win in the almost entirely white state of Iowa. "The first line was simply, 'They said this day would never come'," says Favreau. "Even when we do speeches to African-American crowds, it's hinted at and it's understood. It's not hammered over the head."

So how hard is it to write for someone who has written his own books and speeches to critical acclaim? "People say that, but it's actually a dream come true," says Favreau. "You always hope that the person can match the lofty moment that the writer dreams up. To have someone who can do that makes it a joy to work with him."

Sensing the hype, Favreau catches himself quickly. "I looked at the Edwards people in 2004 and thought they were such Kool-Aid drinkers. Now I'm one of them myself."

Ich bin ein Berliner

Does anyone know what the president was saying in this statement?? (hint, it is NOT what you think he was saying)

iberlingirl wrote:Ich bin ein Berliner

Does anyone know what the president was saying in this statement?? (hint, it is NOT what you think he was saying)

Ich bin ein Berliner = I am a Berliner

LTRT wrote:

iberlingirl wrote:Ich bin ein Berliner

Does anyone know what the president was saying in this statement?? (hint, it is NOT what you think he was saying)

Ich bin ein Berliner = I am a Berliner

Yes, that is the translation.
What is a Berliner?

iberlingirl wrote:

LTRT wrote:

iberlingirl wrote:Ich bin ein Berliner

Does anyone know what the president was saying in this statement?? (hint, it is NOT what you think he was saying)

Ich bin ein Berliner = I am a Berliner

Yes, that is the translation.
What is a Berliner?

A newspaper?

Berliner, or "midi", is a newspaper format with pages normally measuring about 470 mm × 315 mm (18½ in × 12.4 in). The berliner format is slightly taller and marginally wider than the tabloid/compact format; and is both narrower and shorter than the broadsheet format.

One would think that he was saying "I am from Berlin" (like I am a German, meaning one from Germany) BUT there is not such thing as a Berliner (a person being from Berlin) the only thing in Berlin that is called a Berliner is a........

Jelly Donut!!!! (learned that the first week I was in Berlin) just a bit a trivia I always remembered!

iberlingirl wrote:One would think that he was saying "I am from Berlin" (like I am a German, meaning one from Germany) BUT there is not such thing as a Berliner (a person being from Berlin) the only thing in Berlin that is called a Berliner is a........

Jelly Donut!!!! (learned that the first week I was in Berlin) just a bit a trivia I always remembered!

So you're saying that JFK was not really a jelly donut or that Barak Obama will be our next Jelly Donut?

No wonder I am so maniacal about him ... I love jelly donuts from KrispyCreme.

http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a/jfk_berliner.htm

Sorry Iber... gotta debunk... meaning that I have to get out of my bunk.

Am I the only person who finds humor is people getting excited that Germans are lining up to hear him speak?

To me this would be like sending Tom Henry to Wapakoneta for a speech and having Ft Waynians (made that up) getting excited about it and pointing to it as a sign he's a great candidate for FW Mayor.

meta4 wrote:http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a/jfk_berliner.htm

Sorry Iber... gotta debunk... meaning that I have to get out of my bunk.

Just don't debrief whilst debunking

cardinal5150 wrote:Am I the only person who finds humor is people getting excited that Germans are lining up to hear him speak?

To me this would be like sending Tom Henry to Wapakoneta for a speech and having Ft Waynians (made that up) getting excited about it and pointing to it as a sign he's a great candidate for FW Mayor.

I'm just impressed you mentioned Wapak!

Cincy Fan 44 wrote:

cardinal5150 wrote:Am I the only person who finds humor is people getting excited that Germans are lining up to hear him speak?

To me this would be like sending Tom Henry to Wapakoneta for a speech and having Ft Waynians (made that up) getting excited about it and pointing to it as a sign he's a great candidate for FW Mayor.

I'm just impressed you mentioned Wapak!

lol... I think it's a fun city name...

cardinal5150 wrote:

Cincy Fan 44 wrote:

cardinal5150 wrote:Am I the only person who finds humor is people getting excited that Germans are lining up to hear him speak?

To me this would be like sending Tom Henry to Wapakoneta for a speech and having Ft Waynians (made that up) getting excited about it and pointing to it as a sign he's a great candidate for FW Mayor.

I'm just impressed you mentioned Wapak!

lol... I think it's a fun city name...

I think French Lick is funnier.

meta4 wrote:http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a/jfk_berliner.htm

Sorry Iber... gotta debunk... meaning that I have to get out of my bunk.

Never have heard that that was an Urban Legend.
When I was stationed there, we had to go to German (language) classes for weeks, the German Instructor is the first one I heard say that and throughout the 3 yrs that I lived there, I would hear or overhear Germans say that about the jelly donut also. Oh well, always thought it was funny.