Barack Obama’s campaign started off by insisting that their Berlin speech wasn’t political.  Then, after Obama snubbed the troops at Landstuhl and Ramstein, they said it wouldn’t be appropriate to visit while campaigning.  At the same time, Obama told a throng of Germans that he wasn’t there as a candidate at all.

Head spinning yet?  Well, the ride ain’t over ’til the carny gets your money, pal:

Shortly after 6 pm Central time — just a few hours after Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, gave his speech in Berlin, which his campaign insisted was not political — his campaign manager, David Plouffe, sent out a fundraising solicitation using the speech to raise campaign cash.

“As you may have heard, Barack has been in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia this week,” reads the email, with a big red “DONATE” sign. “Today, he spoke in Berlin, Germany. In a city where a wall once divided the free from the oppressed, he talked about tearing down the walls that divide all peoples so we can address our common problems — the threats of terrorism and nuclear weapons, global warming and genocide, AIDS and poverty. Watch Barack’s historic speech and share it with your friends.”

Because, you know, Obama was wasn’t was wasn’t was holding a campaign rally in Germany after all.

Exactly when can we get off of this ride?

Update: Newsbusters catches CNN’s Christiane Amanpour expressing surprise over a lack of euphoria among the audience in Berlin:

WOLF BLITZER: Did you get a sense, Christiane, that he actually delivered with his presentation, with his speech, his appearance in Berlin? Did people walk away seemingly satisfied or disappointed?

AMANPOUR: Well, I don’t think they were disappointed, and I’m not sure that they were thoroughly satisfied. I did ask some people as they were leaving what they thought. Everybody said good, good. But I was surprised that there wasn’t this sort of euphoria afterwards, given how many people had come to listen and how much it had been anticipated.

Amanpour later said that Europeans want a “redeemer”. Well, the campaign’s looking to “redeem” a lot of checks based on this speech, but other than that, Obama turns out to be just another politician talking mostly platitudes, and exploiting them for the cash.