Great News Stories of 2007

Amos Ajo

• The CNN TV network had to apologize to US presidential hopeful Barack Obama after it confused his surname with the first name of the world's best-known terrorism suspect. A sequence on the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden carried the caption "Where's Obama?"
• An Australian bank was embarrassed when it emerged that it had issued a credit card to a cat. The owner of Messiah, a ginger tom, had put in the spoof application to test the bank's security system.
• A 100-year-old woman in Germany moved out of her retirement home after six weeks saying she found the other residents not only boring but also "too old." She returned home to her cat.
• Switzerland's army inadvertently invaded the tiny neighboring state of Liechtenstein. A unit on maneuvers got lost at dead of night, officials said.
• The Norwegian government abolished a regulation that had allowed strip-clubs to claim exemption from sales tax on the grounds that their performances were an art form.
• A British man claimed the dubious distinction of making the first ever mobile phone call from the summit of Mount Everest. "It's cold" were his first words.
• Fishery officials in China restocked a river with 13 truckloads of live carp, only to realize that thousands of residents from a nearby city had immediately swarmed to the banks a short way downstream and caught most of them.
• Transport officials in Australia try to discourage men from driving too fast with a series of TV ads featuring attractive woman suggesting that speeding males were trying to compensate for inadequate virility.
• A town in South Korea which spent some $140 million to build its own airport was then forced to admit that no airlines actually wanted to fly there.
• The Chinese capital Beijing began a campaign to improve its signposting in English ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games. Among signs in need of correcting were ones for "Pubic Toilets," and "Deformed Men" -- the latter indicating facilities for the handicapped.
• A US man who ordered flowers for his mistress sued the florists after they sent a note to his home thanking him for his order -- thereby informing his wife of his infidelity.
• An African medicine man dived into a river in Tanzania after promising his fellow villagers that he would bring back revelations from ancestral spirits lurking underwater. He drowned.
• A child math prodigy who started university in Hong Kong at age nine, said he found the courses too easy, and rather boring.
• A Belgian prankster reacted to a prolonged political crisis in his native land by putting the entire country up for sale on the Internet auction site eBay. The company halted the bidding.
• Dutch anglers were up in arms against immigrant workers from Poland, who also enjoy fishing in the many local lakes. The problem being that the Poles actually eat the fish they catch, whereas the Dutch believe in simply putting them back in the water.
• A posh food store in New York was embarrassed after an employee, who was clearly not Jewish, stuck a "Delicious for Hanukkah" sign on hams. Jews, for whom Hanukkah is a religious holiday, do not eat pork.

Critical Endorsements for Sen. Obama

Amos Ajo

Sen. Barack Obama continues to pick up endorsements from newspapers and politicians across America, in advance of the 2008 presidential primaries and caucuses:

Iowa state Rep. Wayne Ford of Des Moines announced his support of Obama, giving him a 20-19 lead over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in endorsements from Iowa lawmakers. Obama has been endorsed by all four of Iowa's black legislators.

Former U.S. Rep. Berkley Bedell of Iowa endorsed Obama, saying: "I think he is the most electable in the general election among the top three, and I also believe that he has demonstrated that he can work across party lines and end this terrible bickering that has been going on between the Republicans and the Democrats." He said Obama can bring the two sides together "more so than any of the others."

The Sioux City Journal endorsed Obama, stating: "Barack Obama is the Democratic candidate who best understands this critical moment in our nation's history. He is equipped to bring a fractured people together and possesses the gifts to move us forward, united with a common mission, ready to answer that call. That is why we are endorsing the U.S. senator from Illinois in the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses."

The Chicago Tribune reported on Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.'s effort over the weekend to register Democratic voters in Sumter, S.C., in advance of the state's Jan. 19 primary. Jackson, who is backing Obama, said: “People on the South Side of Chicago are waiting to hear from the state of South Carolina. People in Harlem are waiting to hear from the state of South Carolina . . . They are waiting for you to write a new chapter.”

The Dallas Morning News endorsed Obama, stating: "Mr. Obama is our choice because of his consistently solid judgment, poise under pressure and ability to campaign effectively without resorting to the divisive politics of the past."

Obama's stump speech is like a Beethoven symphony

By DAVID S. BRODER


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MANCHESTER, N.H. — Barack Obama has become a one-trick pony. But what a trick it is!

The stump speech he has developed in the closing stages of the pre-Christmas campaign is a thing of beauty, a 40-minute oration delivered without notes that is powering his gains in the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3 and the first primary here in New Hampshire five days later.

Hillary Clinton has nothing to match it. John Edwards has periodic bursts of eloquence. But Obama has reached the point of being able to deliver the speech on demand, and to reach audiences with assured effect. It has become his security blanket.

The speech was introduced at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Des Moines more than a month ago, when Obama was still struggling for leverage against Clinton and Edwards in Iowa.

It drew rave reviews from that big audience and from Des Moines Register columnist David Yepsen, and Obama knew he had a winner.

He gave it again to the Democratic National Committee at its candidate forum in northern Virginia, and won accolades.

So he gave it four more times, when he toured with Oprah Winfrey through Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Manchester and Columbia, S.C., thrilling about 60,000 people at the four venues.

He has now delivered it in small towns all over Iowa, and here in New Hampshire, he did it six more times in two days last week.

It is a helluva speech. Like some Beethoven symphonies, it starts on a rather calm and even lighthearted note.

He hits an early applause line by reminding audiences that next year, "George Bush's name will not be on the ballot." Democrats cheer the prospective departure of the man they despise.

And then Obama jokes, "Neither will my cousin, Dick Cheney. What an embarrassment to discover he was part of the family."

He segues to a standard riff about the importance of the coming election, quickly converting it into a pointed attack on Hillary Clinton, although he does not name her.

Given the stakes, he says, it is not enough just to change parties or presidents in this election. "We have to change politics. The same old games won't do; triangulating and trimming won't do."

Then Obama pays his respect to Edwards-style populism, ragging on a Washington where health care and energy legislation have been stymied for years by corporate lobbyists — none of whom, he promises, will get the time of day from an Obama administration.

Then he touches the erogenous zones of various Democratic constituencies, promising labor to raise the minimum wage each and every year; promising teachers generous salaries; and promising college students new help in paying tuition.

And finally, comes the peroration, quoting Martin Luther King Jr. on the "fierce urgency of now," in explaining why he can't patiently wait his turn to run for president. It's a bit of a reach because he wants to draw another contrast with Hillary.

Unlike others, he says, he has not planned to run for years and he does not regard the presidency as his entitlement.

The closing anecdote is based on an incident at a rally in Greenwood, S.C., where, on a miserable morning, with a meager crowd, a single black woman in the audience first revived Obama's spirit by shouting out encouragement, and then got everyone chanting, responsively, "Fired up!" "Ready to go!"

As he tells the familiar story, Obama segues from a conversational tone to a shout, and explains that the chant has now become his trademark and slogan.

So, he tells his listeners, "I've got one thing to ask you. Are you FIRED UP? Are you READY TO GO? FIRED UP! READY TO GO!"

And then, as the shouting becomes almost too loud to bear, he adds the five words that capsulize his whole message and sends the voters scrambling back into their winter coats and streaming out the door: "Let's go change the world," Obama says. And it sounds as if he means it.

In every audience I have seen, there is a jolt of pure electric energy at those closing words.

Tears stain some cheeks — and some people look a little thunderstruck.

Broder, a Pulitzer Prize-winning political reporter, writes a nationally syndicated column from Washington, D.C. (davidbroder@washpost.com )