Meet Me in St. Louis

On Saturday, Obama held massive rally in St. Louis in which 100,000 people showed up under Gateway Arch to hear him speak. The size of the crowd, second only to the crowd of 200,000 that he pulled in at Berlin's Tiergarten, seemed to surprise even the "celebrity," though it didn't take him off message. "It comes down to values – in America, do we simply value wealth, or do we value the work that creates it? I'm not giving tax cuts to folks who don't work. I'm giving tax cuts to folks who do work. That's right, Missouri – John McCain is so out of touch with the struggles you are facing that he must be the first politician in history to call a tax cut for working people 'welfare.'"

Ahhh, Berlin.... Every so often I have to muse on how cool it would be to be able to send Obama as our representtive to the G7 summit meetings. Steve Ketteman writes in today's SF Chronicle: "a President Obama would clearly be able to dive into the duties of the presidency next Jan. 20 with the knowledge that leaders in other countries see him as a welcome change in American politics. And that they see him as a fresh and different sort of partner in forging new directions, not just in U.S.-European relations but in common approaches to solving pressing common problems."