A reader in Charlotte noticed this line in Obama’s speech there together:

“If we can rebuild Baghdad,” he said. “We can rebuild Charlotte and we can rebuild North Carolina.”

He asks, “As somebody who’s lived in Charlotte for about a decade, my reaction is, what on earth is he talking about? The city’s attracting people from all over the country and growing like crazy, we’ve got tons of cranes looming over the skyline building stuff to keep up with the influx, we’ve got a clean, safe downtown, a new rail line, a real estate market doing well relative to the rest of the country, not to mention a city that grew thanks in part to banking deregulation… what on earth does he want to rebuild? I can understand a line like that in Youngstown, Ohio, but Charlotte? I just don’t get it.”

(I’d just add… are we done in Baghdad? I guess in Obama’s mind, we are.)

Or is this just standard-issue isolationist foreign-aid bashing? “Let’s stop spending money on those people over there, and spend the money right here?”