News Conference By President Obama (Obama invents new language!)

Palaiz [sic! - Palace is spelled Palais in French] de la Musique et Des Congres
Strasbourg, France
4:32 P.M. (Local)

Q Sonja Sagmeister from a little country, Austria, from Austrian Television. Mr. President, you said you came here to learn and to listen. So a quite personal question -- what did you learn from your personal talk with the European leaders? And did this change in a certain way your views on Europe and its politics?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: It's an interesting question. I had already formed relationships with many of them. Some of them I had met when I traveled through Europe before my election. Some of them I had met because they came to Washington after the election. This is the first time I've been in a forum with so many of them at the same time.

I'm extraordinarily impressed by the quality of leadership. I am constantly reminded that although there are cultural differences that are important and that we have to be sensitive to, what we have in common between Europe and the United States so vastly exceeds any differences that we have; that we should not forget why we are allies, and we should be careful about some of the easy stereotypes that take place on both sides of the borders.

It was also interesting to see that political interaction in Europe is not that different from the United States Senate. There's a lot of -- I don't know what the term is in Austrian -- wheeling and dealing -- and, you know, people are pursuing their interests, and everybody has their own particular issues and their own particular politics.

Possible troll on the other thread, and I want to make sure to get SOURCED information on this thread before he perhaps finds this thread and tries to pull the “WikiAnswers” BS here...

From Encyclopedia Britannica Student Edition:

Official name Republik Österreich (Republic of Austria)
Form of government federal state with two legislative houses (Federal Council [62]; National Council [183])
Chief of state President
Head of government Chancellor
Capital Vienna
Official language German
Official religion none
Monetary unit euro (€)
Population estimate (2008) 8,338,000
Total area (sq mi) 32,383
Total area (sq km) 83,871

THE OFFICIAL LANGUAGE OF AUSTRIA ISN’T AUSTRIAN... It is GERMAN.

[It’s sort of like Spanish — In Mexico if you speak Castillian Spanish (the form spoken in Spain, and taught in most schools), Mexicans will be able to understand you, but many of the words are a bit different when you learn MEXICAN Spanish. But, it’s ALL called “Spanish”.]

****************
From the CIA World FactBook (Credit to FReeper filbert)
Languages: German (official nationwide) 88.6%, Turkish 2.3%, Serbian 2.2%, Croatian (official in Burgenland) 1.6%, other (includes Slovene, official in Carinthia, and Hungarian, official in Burgenland) 5.3% (2001 census)

or, if you trust the CIA as much as anybody else should (which is to say, not at all) how about the

Austrian Embassy to the U.S.A.:

Official Languages: German, locally also Slovene, Hungarian, and Croatian

Since you are from Sweden it might interest you that Democrats despise foreign policy from Bill Clinton to Congress to Baraak 0bana. It is a throw away for them or something they do to look good for voters and ethnic groups here. Like Hillary debasing herself in front of the Mexicans

They are much better versed in domestic policy because that means how do they tax the producers to buy votes from the non-producers. Rahn Emanuelle is slash and burn competitor when it comes to domestic policy such as taking the US Census into the White House. He could give a sh!t about national security, about Islamic Jihad, about US relations with the world

Same as Clinton said —”It’s the economy stupid!”

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