I know that Ross and you would have applauded him for turning down the award. But imagine that he had given exactly the speech Ross wishes, and tell me what people that don't have Ross' integrity, and are very partisan, would have done with that. They wouldn't have been all over him 24x7 talking about the arrogance of turning down the Nobel Prize, or the damage of turning down the Prize, or whatelse?

As I've mentioned before, I have totally no sympathy for Obama supporters. He had absolutely nothing in the way of professional accomplishment, but everyone was just sooooo enamored of the idea of voting for a black man (who is actually biracial), that they willfully, gleefully blinded themselves to his obvious shortcomings.

He attended a church for twenty years where whites were routinely vilified by a professional race-baiter, who, despite his African-American heritage had a privileged upbringing. There is no way that the liberals who supported Obama would have ignored a similar history in a white candidate.

Obama also said he saw nothing wrong with his church and apparently had his epiphany regarding Wright's divisive rhetoric just as he happened to be running for president.

In the sagacious words of Enid Strict (Dana Carvey as the Church Lady), "How conveeeeeeenient."

I have no use for Glenn Beck, but he's right about one thing: Obama is a racist.

I can only hope that we, as a voting population, actually learn something from Obama's mismanagement. Something about how we let our apologetics stand in the way of common sense and evaluating candidates objectively. But, cynically, I really don't think we will.

tell me what people that don't have Ross' integrity, and are very partisan, would have done with that. They wouldn't have been all over him 24x7 talking about the arrogance of turning down the Nobel Prize, or the damage of turning down the Prize, or whatelse?

Wrong reason to do it, that detractors might say something. The award is undeserved and seems intended to coerce American policy. It's not in the best interest of our country that he accept. That's why you turn it town.

I'm getting a huge laugh out of this whole thing, especially considering that Obama has continued many of those very "failed policies" of Bush's. And further, it doesn't appear that said continuation was even the result of a realistic reappraisal of the situation; rather it's the result of totally non-serious planning. Obama's plan for Gitmo was to wave that magic wand that everyone knew that Bush had hid in the Oval Office desk, and Gitmo would magically disappear, and its inhabitants would magically become good upstanding citizens of the world. In other words, the very thing that Bush could have done, but he didn't because he was a big meanie.

"What? What do you mean, there isn't any magic wand? Have you looked under the rug?"

So now Gitmo is still there, sticking out like the sore thumb that it is because of Obama hammering on it so many times. Three of the Bush policies that Obama's supporters most stridently objected to have been continued by Obama, and it's exposed the fact that Obama's team never really had any ideas. Besides Gitmo, we're still in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Patriot Act stands untouched. Now, reasonable people can debate if these are good policies are not. But if you're proposing to end them, you'd better have some alternate idea of addressing the problems that they were devised to address. What in hell's bells did Obama's supporters think he was going to do about them? Oh, I know, they wanted to pretend that there were no problems, other than the ones caused by Bush. Once those eeeevil Rethugs and neocon Joooooos were out of office, the world would be rainbows and butterflies and infinite food growing wild on porkchop bushes and fritter trees.

Welcome to the real world, Obama supporters. What's your next move? Make it a good one, because we'd hate to have to come in behind you and, you know, clean up your mess. We might be a bit tactless if we have to do that.

I have no use for Glenn Beck, but he's right about one thing: Obama is a racist.

You've made this claim a lot. Outside of Obama's former church, is there anything he's done to make you assume that Obama hates white people?

'm getting a huge laugh out of this whole thing, especially considering that Obama has continued many of those very "failed policies" of Bush's.

You are correct. A lot of what he's doing so far has been an extension of the policies of Bush's second term. Anyone who is surprised by this was not paying attention to what he said during the campaign or did early in office. The retention of Gates as SecDef should have been sufficient to give notice that Obama had no intentions of radically changing our foreign policy strategy.

Besides Gitmo, we're still in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Patriot Act stands untouched.

You're partially right here. The Patriot act reauthorization included some changes to add additional judicial oversight (not as much as I'd like), but mostly is the same. We're on track to be mostly out of Iraq in 2012, I think. Some of Obama's supporters may have thought he would act more precipitously there, but they weren't paying attention to what he actually said.

Where you are wrong is that Obama did not campaign on getting out of Afghanistan, but on giving more resources there to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Many of Obama's supporters on the left projected things onto him that weren't there. Especially with respect to foreign policy. We didn't elect Russ Feingold.

neocon Joooooos

This trope is bullshit. It's not anti-semitic to oppose neoconservatism.

Patrick, Dave: SUPERB & Accurate analysis of the meaningless nothingness that has been the Obama presidency.

As for the previous commenter's last missive, I think a strong dosage of denial medication is at work. Peel back criticism of American Republican policy and you will almost always see thinly veiled hatred for the Jews. This exists amongst Muslim political groups, labour unions, and Left leaning organizations outside of the US. It happens so often to not be mere coincidence.

"The award is undeserved and seems intended to coerce American policy"

You can drop the "seems". Here's the official press release from Oslo:

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/press.html

Key quote: "His diplomacy is based in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

How could they make it any more explicit than that?

Peel back criticism of American Republican policy and you will almost always see thinly veiled hatred for the Jews.

How's this work given that Jews in the U.S. overwhelmingly vote Democratic (somewhere above 75%)?

This exists amongst Muslim political groups, labour unions, and Left leaning organizations outside of the US

Perhaps it does, outside the U.S., and perhaps among the fringe here. But most criticism of Republican policies otherwise doesn't seem to be motivated by anti-Semitism, unless you think people like Russ Feingold are anti-Semitic.

Whatever, regarding Obama's church, isn't that enough? Let me ask you, honestly, would you infer any differently from a white candidate with a background of attending a white supremacist's church for twenty years?

I asked myself this question, and I had to admit to myself, I would not. If a white man were attending a church where the white pastor routinely vilified black people, there would be no question in my mind about it. I would assume that the pastor and anyone who willfully lapped up his bile for twenty years was a racist. If I were in a church and I heard anything like Wright's rhetoric about black people, I would get up and leave, and not sit through the service.

And I would also have grave doubts about any breakthoughs that happened to occur about the racist nature of the Pastor's rhetoric while this hypothetical white candidate was running for president.

But to answer your question, yes, there is something else. Obama made an ass of himself by weighing on the Gates/Crowley incident, he automatically assumed that the Cambridge police department "acted stupidly," and that Gates wasn't at fault by being a belligerent jackass.

Even African-Americans on the Cambridge police department were disgusted with Obama. And one female officer said she wouldn't be voting for Obama again.

Then to make an even greater ass of himself, Obama invited the two of them for a beer at the White House, to turn the incident into a "teachable moment." The arrogance! Obama was the one who had something to learn from the incident. He has as much qualification to teach race relations as he has to perform brain surgery.

Whatever, regarding Obama's church, isn't that enough?

No, the church isn't enough to me. I assume that Obama's attendance of that particular church was a cynical move to gain acceptance within the corridors of black social and political power in Chicago; as a half-white outsider, I'm guessing he needed to beef up his black cred to mobilize their resources for his community organizing and early political campaigns. Cynical ambition is not a laudable motive, but it seems likelier to me than racist motivation.

I assume that someone who hated white people wouldn't choose a cadre of advisors for his campaigns and cabinet that were drawn almost entirely from the white political establishment. His closest advisors are Jewish, a group widely blamed in parts of the black community for many of their ills.

Obama made an ass of himself by weighing on the Gates/Crowley incident, he automatically assumed that the Cambridge police department "acted stupidly," and that Gates wasn't at fault by being a belligerent jackass.

Yeah, he should have given one of those "Need to find out all the facts, can't say anything definitive now" politician answers there. No doubt about it. But if one of my college professor friends got arrested after breaking into his own house, I'd assume the cops fucked up, too.

Obama invited the two of them for a beer at the White House, to turn the incident into a "teachable moment."

Yeah, that theater was pretty rancid. "Teachable moments" pretty much never are.

All of this still doesn't add up to racism for me. Ego and political expedience seem sufficient to explain it; these also seem to be high among the things that drive Obama's behavior in most circumstances.

Whatever writes: "Where you are wrong is that Obama did not campaign on getting out of Afghanistan, but on giving more resources there to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban."

You are correct. I combined two things that should not have been combined. Obama didn't equate Iraq and Afghanistan in his campaign -- in fact, he drew a sharp line between the two.

As to the neocon-Joos bit: True, it isn't anti-Semitic to oppose neoconservatism. But during Bush's second term in particular, there was a certain faction on the Left where "neocon" was often understood to be a code word for "Jew". The people who used it this way will say that they are not anti-Semitic but merely anti-Zionist. Even if you take this statement at face value (which I'm not sure I do), I contend that under the present circumstances, in which Jewry worldwide is facing an existential threat, it is not possible to be anti-Zionist but pro-Semite.

Whatever - there have always been useful idiots among Jews to help the antisemites.

Amy says: "Sorry, but merely not being George W. Bush is not enough."

Every time I hear this conversation, this is the best that the defenders of the Nobel prize keep lobbing - isn't it enough that he represents the change from failed policies and aggressive tactics that Bush entailed? Don't you see that to Europeans, he represents a regime change? A chance to be more like them? And isn't that enough to give a prize for?

No, it isn't.

I'm not a big fan of the Nobel prizes; I find that in my lifetime, most of them are given out based on political motivation more than actual accomplishment.

I'm still unsure about Obama's presidency. It's only been a little over a year, and the only other president I've seen in action had to deal with 9/11 in his first year. So I'm not sure what kind of bar I can use for O. But while I remain on the fence about him as a whole, I have to say that the critics of this prize are entirely correct: He hasn't yet DONE anything to merit an award of this magnitude. There's been a lot of talking. But NOTHING has happened.

A Nobel prize should be given for hard work, not for talking about hard work. It should be for progress made, not progress thought about. It should be for the past, not the future.

I'll leave you with an example. Every year, my alt weekly does a "Person of the Year" bit, where they select the local person who they think will make the most impact during the upcoming year. In the three years I've been reading that paper, I've had to read two cover stories on why a past Person of the Year didn't accomplish anything at all. With this last guy, the paper didn't even try to defend him, but instead basically let him spend four pages digging his own grave.

Expectations do not equal results.

A question asked on another blog...can't remember which: If the barbarians were at the gates, who would you rather have as your leader,
Barack Obama or Vladmir Putin ?

Whatever, I respect your conviction about Obama's racism, and appreciate the maturity with which you were able to express your disagreement. As I said, I asked myself if I could accept a white person as a non-racist if he were in a similar position, and the answer was "No. He would most definitely be a racist."

If he tried to tell me he wasn't a racist, I would scoff.

So, I'm merely trying to be as fair as I can when applying my standards.

But during Bush's second term in particular, there was a certain faction on the Left where "neocon" was often understood to be a code word for "Jew". The people who used it this way will say that they are not anti-Semitic but merely anti-Zionist.

Yes, this is correct. Lots of the left who don't know the facts very well conflate neoconservatism with Zionism. There's a lot of overlap among the most public proponents of both in the U.S., which makes it easy for the lazy or ill-informed to do so.

The peevish sniveling against Obama does highlight one reality: Unlike Bush, he has not yet made any major mistakes.
We are in no new and endless ground wars thanks Obama, and maybe we will actually be able to extricate ourselves from the quagmires we are in. Our financial system did not collapse on Obama's watch. The economy, deathly ill when Obama assumed office, might be turning the corner.
Obama inherited a rotten hand, and he has played it out well enough. I know of no recent US president who took over when we were stuck in two wars, the financial system was dying, and the economy contracting at nearly a double-digit rate.
If the worst one can say about Obama is he did not deserve the Peace Prixe, or that he sometims bashes Bush--well, as I said, that's just peevish sniveling.
Answer to Nick: Obama. Putin is punk tyrant, who has murdered newspaper reporters and others. That did not take a lot of guts--just a shallow intellect, captivated by martial arts or other juvenile pursuits.

"We are in no new and endless ground wars thanks Obama, and maybe we will actually be able to extricate ourselves from the quagmires we are in. "

Uhh, come again? You been reading the recent news in Afghanistan lately, i-hole?

"Putin is punk tyrant, who has murdered newspaper reporters and others. That did not take a lot of guts--just a shallow intellect, captivated by martial arts or other juvenile pursuits."

That goes without saying, but you didn't answer the man's question... If the barbarians were at the gates, who would you rather be your leader?

Feeble: Answer is still Obama. Murdering journalists in Russia does make a man tough. Only brutal and thuggish. Putin did sit and shake hands with Bush in Beijing/Olympics though. Bush always liked him. Bush was such a little weenie.

And on Afpak: Yes, I am concerned Obama will not get the hell out ASAP. It was, however, a mess he inherited. Serious people disagree on the right course of action. George Will says bail. Nixon bailed on Vietnam, and that was probably the right thing tto do then--and now. But the right-wing will raise a stink bigger than eleppant farts....

So, i-hole, you think diplomacy works with barbarians? You'd rather have a limp dick than a ruthless dick?

PS. When are you going back to Thailand?

Feeble:
Like I said, about elephant farts...use your nose. What do you smell? It ain't your upper lip--it's your whole way of thinking.

From you, i-hole, I'll take that as a compliment.

I am also not the party choosing "butt" and "hole" in my moniker(s). I also can keep it to one. Pretty revealing about *your* thought process, no?

Maybe I am "Butt-holier-than-thou."

I do like the line about "elephant farts." Nice description of Republican commentary of late.

I think I will use that one some more.

Uhhh, ...weird.

Hey Amy...been some time since I popped by. Thought I would come see how things are and saw this posting about the President's receiving the Nobel Peace Prize...

Bloody hell. Got me hot under the collar again. Throw out my two cents:

My late mom's godfather was a two time Nobel recipient (Linus Pauling for Chemistry and then for Peace). When I was really little, he was just the old man with the beret and the goofy hair. As I grew up, he became one of my heroes - not because of the two Nobel prizes he won or all the other such awards. He became my hero because I came to realize that he constantly sought answers because he wanted to make the world a truly better place through science. His whole life (almost to the day he died), he sought to do these things. It did not matter the field (chemistry, biochemistry, etc), he gave his life to attempting to understand how things worked and to make things better.

Anybody who knows the legacy that Alfred Nobel specifically elucidated knows that *at a bare minimum*, the recipients of the different awards should get such for their work of the prior year. In practice, most have received these awards after a lifetime of struggle and achievement.

To this guy who had a child-like hero worship of a goofy old man who happened to be a two time Nobel Laureate, the fact that Obama received the award because he 1) was not George W Bush, and/or 2) has more melanin than prior Presidents and/or 3)some other meaningless lefty crap is a thorough repudiation of the of the specific bequest of Alfred Nobel and dishonors the accomplishments of all the other Nobel Laureates that justifiably received their awards...

- End of Rant -

ATL, are you the guy who used to blog Cali politics?

Also, how old are you? Do you remember when LP got involved in vitamin C thing?

I used to work for the state Assembly and still do some political and legislative consulting work , so over the years have blogged on such, but not as a primary focus.

Age: 41. Yes on the Vit C. I know some folks are skeptical, but I can tell you (from a layman's perspective) that there seems to be a lot to utilization of ascorbic acid (especially as a part of a "proper diet"). My mom went in and out of remission with the Big C when I was a kid. Between the radiation and the chemo, her immune system was shot and back then the medical establishment was not that into the importance of the nutritional aspect of medicine. Her put her on a dietary regimen that I am convinced had a quite beneficial impact. For my part, I can say that I have been taking megadoses of C since he convinced me to do so when I was around 20. I can honestly tell you that I went from always suffering from one bug or another to almost never being sick.

I know some folks look at it as junk science, and perhaps there is some placebo effect, however I am favorable based upon what I have seen in my own life. Besides, I would be favorably disposed to trust the guy who discovered what causes sickle cell anemia, the nature of the chemical bond, invented most of the equipment/processes that are standard for anesthesiologists, etc...