Our President is a Nobel Laureate

[FarmerChick]

LOL! I quess I was trying to see what her point was....

My piont was????

not sure what we are referring to at this point.


Just in case, my point is...we will all use those terms that "mean something to us" but seem weird to others.

Like the "dark side" reference by BD. That is a guy reference for star wars. Yea, the "others" are on the dark side...LOL-LOL

I might say "X" and othes say "WTheck"
LOL

 

[Ldychef2k]

There are many "common terms" that are inappropriate and derisive.

I'm sorry what names are you referring to?

I must be missing something...was it wing nut? Is that a name?

Wing nut is a very common term used to describe far right conservatives. Not really a name.

 

[FarmerChick]

Again--in my view a judgement call.

personal call.

 

[Big Daddy]

There are many "common terms" that are inappropriate and derisive.

I must be missing something...was it wing nut? Is that a name?

Wing nut is a very common term used to describe far right conservatives. Not really a name.

I'm sorry if you're offended. Please don't listen to a progressive radio station.

 

[k0xxx]

As far as political discussions go, this is a great group. We have very diverse opinions, but nobody gets hostile. We may poke at each other a bit (all in fun), but as far as I have seen, nobody has gotten mean or carried away.

I am a Wingnut (a proud one, I might add), Big Daddy is a leftwing extremist, most of the group is somewhere in between, but we all love our country and we all have opinions to share.

 

[2dream]

I have not read all the post here but have read most of them and skimmed over the others.

I don't know what I am a conservative liberal? LOL is there such a thing? Does that make me a left/right wing nut?

I am not an Obama fan at all but..... he is our President. I don't have to like him. Heck, I have not liked one yet. I see no reason to start now. They have all had problems of some type. Actually I don't think I have ever met a politician I liked.

I do have a problem with Obama winning the Nobel prize. And my only reason is..... It is suppose to be for accomplishments not anticipated accomplishments. And lets face it. At the time of the nomination he had not accomplished much of anything.
No I don't think he bought it. And what he does with the prize money is his decision. I don't care.

I don't blame him for winning I blame the committee for giving the prize to him. After all he did not nominate himself (at least I don't think he did) and he was not on the committee that decided to give it to him. Whats he suppose to do. Give it back. How insulting would that be to the rest of the world.

I just think that out of all the nominations of all the people out there who had struggled and fought through great personal sacrafice, that the choice of someone who had actually made great strides to relieve suffering in this world, that there had to be better choice.

And before anyone jumps on me. When I say "better choice" I mean someone who had worked for years and already accomplished great things.

After all I thought that is what the prize was for. Of course I did not think Al Gore deserved one either.

 

[SKR8PN]

By PEGGY NOONAN

How Barack Obama could help redeem the Norwegian Nobel Committee's grievous mistake.

It is absurd and it is embarrassing. It would even be infuriating if it were not such a declaration of emptiness.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has embarrassed itself and cheapened a great award that had real meaning.

It was a good thing, the Nobel Peace Prize. Every year the giving of More.. it was a matter of note throughout the world, almost a matter of state. It was serious. It mattered that it was given to a woman like Mother Teresa in 1979. She had lived for 30 years with the poorest of the poor; she and her Missionaries of Charity dressed their wounds, healed their illnesses, and literally carried them from the streets to mats and beds in a home where they would at least have in death the thing they had not had in life, someone to care for them. She didn't just care for them, she did the hard thing: She loved them. Her life was heroic, epic, and when she was given the Nobel Peace Prize, it was as if the world were saying, "You are the best we have. You are living a life that should be emulated."

Nelson Mandela was unjustly imprisoned for 27 years, and he came out without bitterness. There's a hero for you. He preserved his faith and that of his countrymen that together they could make their nation better, more decent and humane. He lived a life of moral and political struggle, broke the old chains that had bound South Africa. At the end he was a literal inspiration to the world.

Some Peace Prizes have been more roughly political, or had a political edge, and were of course debatable. Woodrow Wilson, self-infatuated after World War I, had little patience with those who foresaw that the Peace of Versailles would lead to more war, and did not understand or know the political realities and deeper nature of his own countrymen. And so his League of Nations flopped in America, the one place where it absolutely had to succeed. But--well, he helped end "the war to end all wars," issued his Fourteen Points, did try to make the world better. Ferocious Teddy Roosevelt, that progressive and bloody-minded man, worked hard to forge a truce and a peace between the czar's Russia and Japan.

More deeply into the political life of the 20th century, there were Jimmy Carter and Al Gore, and their Peace Prizes were what they were. But each man had a body of work; each had devoted considerable time and effort to a great issue. It was always absurd that Ronald Reagan, whose political project led to the end of the gulag and the fall of the Berlin Wall, and who gambled his personal standing in the world for a system that would protect the common man from annihilation in a nuclear missile attack, could not win it. But nobody wept over it, and for one reason: because everyone, every sentient adult who cared to know about such things, knew that the Nobel Peace Prize is, when awarded to a political figure, a great and prestigious award given by liberals to liberals. NCNA--no conservatives need apply. This is the way of the world, and so what? Life isn't for prizes.

Yet even within that context, the giving of the peace prize to President Obama is absurd. He doesn't have a body of work; he's a young man; he's been president less than nine months. He hopes to accomplish much, and so far--nine months!--has accomplished little. Is this a life of heroic self-denial, of the sacrifice of self for something greater, of huge and historic consequence, of sustained vision? No it's not. Is this a life marked by a vivid and calculable contribution to the peace of the world? No, it's not.

This is an award for not being George W. Bush. This is an award for not making the world nervous. This is an award for sharing the basic political sentiments and assumptions of the members of the committee. It is for what Barack Obama may do, not what he has done. He hasn't done anything.

In one mindless stroke, the committee has rendered the Nobel Peace Prize a laughingstock, perhaps for as long as a generation. And that is an act of true destruction, because it was actually good that the world had a prestigious award for peacemaking.

The members of the committee have also put the young American president in a terrible place. They make it look like all the talk of "The One," the heartthrob of the European elite, the darling of the international left, is true. They make him look prefabricated and inauthentic, an empty structure held up by essentially silly people. Which puts him at a disadvantage in his own country, because Americans don't really like it when flaky European politicians tell them how they ought to see him or the world.

And you have to wonder how the truly self-sacrificing professionals who are attempting to create a sound American policy on Afghanistan are going to experience this. Hmm, can a president who just won the left's great peace prize decide to increase American troop strength and presence in a foreign war? What impact will this have on larger geopolitical considerations?

Assuming the White House did nothing to encourage or lobby for the award, it is not Barack Obama's fault that he has been embarrassed by this honor. And it may possibly hold for him an unanticipated benefit. It may give him pause: Look what idiots my biggest international supporters are. I may have to rethink a few things.

How to redeem this? That is a hard question, but here is one idea. The president will deliver a big speech in Oslo Dec. 10: white tie and tails, a formal, bound statement. The world, as they say, will be watching. He should deflect the limelight. (Can he?) He should make his subject bigger than himself. (Is there a subject bigger than himself?) He has been accused of traveling through the world on an extended apology tour. That isn't fair, but the tag is there. How about an unapologetic address, a speech, with the world's elites leaning forward and listening, about the meaning of America? A speech that shows a grounded and sophisticated love for his country and its great traditions and history. Not a nationalistic speech, not a prideful one, but a loving one.

For instance: The Peace Prize judges won't see it this way, but America has gone to Europe twice in the past century to fight for peace. This is an old concept, and has to do with killing killers so they can't kill anymore. It cost America a lot to do this, and we kept no territory, as they say, beyond the graves where our soldiers lie. America then taxed itself and gave its wealth not only to its allies but to its former adversaries, to help them rebuild. We didn't actually have to do this. We did it to make the world better. We did it to foster peace. (They should give us a prize.)

America hasn't just helped the world, it literally lit the world with its inventions, which are the product of its freedoms. The lights under which the Peace Prize judges read, and rejected, the worthy nominations? Why, those lights were invented by an American. The emails the committee members sent to each other, sharing their banal insights on leadership? They came through the Internet. Who invented the Internet? It was a Norwegian bureaucrat with a long face and hair on his nose and little plastic geometric eyeglasses? Oh wait, it was Americans. The members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee are healthy because they have been inoculated against diseases such as polio. Who invented the polio vaccine, an enfeebled old leftist academic in Oslo? Nah, it was a man named Jonas Salk. He was an American.

Europe's elites experience Mr. Obama as a historical accident that needs and deserves their encouragement. Actually he was elected with 69.5 million votes, and you know, they were cast by Americans. Go figure.

Mr. Obama should get the spotlight off himself and put it on the great thing that yielded him up and made him possible. America is misunderstood these days, and he could perform a public service by helping people understand it better.

Love, after all, never harms the world, and as an added practical bonus such a speech would obscurely embarrass the committee, which won't be able to criticize the thoughts of its hero. That would be pleasurable for Americans, and therefore helpful to Mr. Obama.

This might to some degree redeem this wicked and ignorant award, this mischievous honor.

 

[Ldychef2k]

Extraordinary article.

 

[Grumpy Pumpkin]

SKR8PN - holy moly....what a fabulous essay that was. BRAVO!! I am not being sarcastic in any way when I say that you should be the one that writes Obamas award acceptance speech. All your info was so very well said!! BRAVO again!!

And I forget who said wing nut but....muah ha ha!! I know it wasn't directed at anyone in particular but i think it would be super funny to call someone that....and them get upset about it. If that is the worst thing that comes their way in this life, they are one lucky soul Lord knows, I have been called WAY worse in my 30 years by far meaner people.

Please feel free to direct the term wing nut my way....I know nothing of the far left or right but like the name either way!!

 

[FarmerChick]

Let me be clear, I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations," Obama said in a brief speech. "To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who have been honored by this prize.

"Throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement. It's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes," he said. "And that is why I will accept this award as a call to action a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century."

____________
this is what Obama said about his Nobel win.

That is enough. He should NOT have to redeem the findings of the Nobel committee. That is not his place to do so. He should not be asked to fix a "wrong" when he has not committed any wrong. It is not up to the person awarded to "fix a grevious misktake". That is ridiculous. if the Pres. did that to the committee it would have been seen in a very bad light.

Humbly accept the Nobel in the spirit it has been awarded. It is the best and most common sense approach the President can take in my opinion.

He did say the money is being donated to charity. of course, what else could he do.