The Nobel Committee thinks that President Obama is advancing the cause of peace. Today it announced that he had been awarded the Peace Prize. The NYT reports: “In a stunning surprise, the Nobel Committee announced Friday that it had awarded its annual peace prize to President Obama “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” less than nine months after he took office. “He has created a new international climate,” the committee said in its announcement. You can say that again.
The New York Times describes the gargantuan withdrawal from Iraq but the Telegraph reports that the Cavalry won’t be riding to the rescue in Afghanistan. The NYT writes about a pullout so vast it staggers in the imagination.
JOINT BASE BALAD, Iraq — There is no more visible sign that America is putting the Iraq war behind it than the colossal operation to get its stuff out: 20,000 soldiers, nearly a sixth of the force here, assigned to a logistical effort aimed at dismantling some 300 bases and shipping out 1.5 million pieces of equipment, from tanks to coffee makers. …
AdvertisementBy itself, such a withdrawal would be daunting, but it is further complicated by attacks from an insurgency that remains active; the sensitivities of the Iraqi government about a visible American presence; disagreements with the Iraqis about what will be left for them; and consideration for what equipment is urgently needed in Afghanistan.
The drawdown in Iraq won’t mean a transfer in numbers to Afghanistan. The Daily Telegraph, citing sources which spoke to the AP, says that President Obama is “is prepared to accept a role for the Taliban in Afghanistan’s political future in a major shift of policy towards the Islamic radicals who are attacking US and British troops, it has been reported. ” It says President Obama will only give the Afghan campaign enough resources to keep al-Qaeda at arms length.
As he assesses a request from his top commander in Afghanistan to dispatch another 40,000 troops to fight the Taliban, he is also “inclined” to send only as many as needed to keep al-Qaeda at bay.
The assessment was given to the Associated Press by a senior official involved in Mr Obama’s discussions with his top national security and military advisors about Afghanistan strategy….
But it seems increasingly unlikely that he will grant the request from Gen Stanley McChrystal, the commander he appointed only this summer, for an extra 40,000 US troops to join the 68,000 who will already be in Afghanistan by the end of the year.
If the US decides to change course in Afghanistan, there’s little doubt the Allies will follow suit. Reuters writes that “a . senior U.S. defence official acknowledged the U.S. debate had left European governments in a wait-and-see position as they decide whether to vote for additional resources for Afghanistan.” But that same Reuters reports described the no-reinforcement policy as one of McChrystal’s ideas.
General Stanley McChrystal also gave President Barack Obama an option of sending more than 40,000 troops, the sources said, which could be politically risky given deep doubts among Obama’s fellow Democrats about the eight-year-old war.
One of the sources, both of whom spoke on condition that they not be identified because of the sensitivity of talking about recommendations to the president, said McChrystal also gave a third high-risk option of sending no more troops.
With the lid down on McChrystal’s public statements it will be a while before his views on the subject are known. More details are probably going to be forthcoming in the next few days, but if the Telegraph’s sources are right, then the President’s “war of necessity” has been redefined downward. Just how far down is described by the Washington Post, which reports that the President has concluded the Taliban cannot be beaten and hopes to convince them to become a lesser threat like the Hezbollah. The WaPo writes:
As it reviews its Afghanistan policy for the second time this year, the Obama administration has concluded that the Taliban cannot be eliminated as a political or military movement, regardless of how many combat forces are sent into battle. … The goal, senior administration officials said Thursday, is to weaken the Taliban to the degree that it cannot challenge the Afghan government or reestablish the haven it provided for al-Qaeda before the 2001 U.S. invasion. Those objectives appear largely consistent with McChrystal’s strategy, which he says “cannot be focused on seizing terrain or destroying insurgent forces” but should center on persuading the population to support the government. …
Some inside the White House have cited Hezbollah, the armed Lebanese political movement, as an example of what the Taliban could become. Hezbollah is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, but the group has political support within Lebanon and participates, sometimes through intimidation, in the political process. …
Obama identified al-Qaeda as the chief target of his Afghanistan policy in March, when he announced that he would dispatch an additional 21,000 U.S. troops to the region, and his advisers have emphasized during the policy review that the administration views al-Qaeda and the Taliban as philosophically distinct organizations. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday that “there is clearly a difference between” the Taliban and “an entity that, through a global, transnational jihadist network, would seek to strike the U.S. homeland.”
It may in the long run be a distinction without a difference. First of all, the distinction depends on an assessment of Hezbollah’s intentions, not its capabilities. And Hezbollah’s intentions can change whenever it decides to. Hezbollah’s capabilities are potentially far greater than al-Qaeda’s. And it is not simply an “armed Lebanese political movement”. It’s an Iranian and Syrian proxy. Nor is it completely confined to Lebanon. MSNBC and other study groups report that Hezbollah is trying to gain a foothold in the Western Hemisphere. Just a few days ago the Wall Street Journal described the ties between an Honduran radical closely identified with former President Zelaya and the Hezbollah:
Meet one of Honduras’s most vocal advocates for the return of deposed president Manuel Zelaya to office. He’s not your average radio jock. He started in Honduran politics as a radical activist and was one of the founders of the hard-left People’s Revolutionary Union, which had links to Honduran terrorists in 1980s. A few years ago he was convicted and served time in prison for raping his own daughter.
Today Mr. Romero Ellner is pure zelayista, hungry for power and not ashamed to say so. This explains why he has joined Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Mr. Zelaya in targeting Jews. Mr. Chávez has allied himself with Iran to further his ability to rule unchecked in the hemisphere. He hosts Hezbollah terrorists and seeks Iranian help to become a nuclear power. He and his acolytes cement their ties to Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by echoing his anti-Semitic rants.
Letting the Taliban gain capability on the basis of a promise not to attack the United States is like giving your enemy back his gun in exchange for an undertaking not to shoot you. It’s great if it works, but why would anyone think so? Well maybe someone does. More importantly, the remark attributed to the White House raises the question of how the President regards Iranian support for attacks on Iraq, Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel which actually resulted in a recent war, and whether Iranian proxies will in the future be off-limits once Teheran has acquired nuclear weapons. For a variety of reasons, resigning one’s self to watching the Taliban grow in strength and wistfully longing for them to be like the Hezbollah may be a bad metaphor. It certainly may be bad policy.
On that dixit we exeunted.
“If you do not know where you are going, any road will take you there.”
Big Sur and the oranges of Hieronymus Bosch — Henry Miller
Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
And this fool gets a Nobel Peace Prize for being such an “enlightened” fellow.
What a joke.
This unseemly haste (and the Nobel Peace Prize) confirm, for those of us that feared the effects of such a Democrat President, that we were right to consider heading for the hills if Obie was elected. Once your defences are wound down, foreign policy made laissez-faire or completely wrong-headed, and food processing outsourced to China, you have cause to worry about the future of your society. It might be Montana for some of you, and Tasmania for some of us. Even Richard’s hair (in the photo above) has gone grey at this news.
Even Richard’s hair (in the photo above) has gone grey at this news.
Ah, but it’s all there. No combovers, no toupees. And when the news is depressing, as it has been of late, I console myself with those immortal words of comfort:
I was sure I accidentally clicked on the Onion, instead of the New York Times!
UnFreaking Believable.
Arabfat, Peanut, and Hussein, esq.
Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize
President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” the Nobel Committee said in Oslo.
Let’s see. BHO was in office less than two weeks before the nominations for the Peace Prize closed.
I am willing to bet he was nominated before even being elected.
Yes, I am saying that there is a conspiracy afoot to force our surrender and that this whole Obama phenonomen was concocted for that purpose.
I know that conspiracy theories are a dime a dozen gross even before being properly discounted. But this time, I cannot debunk myself and that is the first time that has ever happened to me.
I’ll welcome anybody who can prove me wrong, because I hope that I am but fear that I am not.
Looks too much like a large-scale and multi-national replay of the Knights of the Golden Circle.
Come on gang, won’t somebody please show me that I am wrong?
Dave,
In previous thread, 70. wws describes how he got here quite accurately, I think.
The Chauncey Gardiner Presidency.
(with affirmative action turbocharge)
Look at it this way: if the Nobel Peace Prize award doesn’t put the President’s policies beyond reproach of mere mortals then what will? What can they give him for an encore? One of the indicators of the decline of a political class is the use of grandiose titles to dignify the merely ordinary. When pageantry, expensive exhibitions, sonorous awards and extravagant titles are all that are left to overawe the masses it is a sign of a way of life that is already passing. I can’t but recall Barbara Tuchman’s famous opening paragraphs of the Guns of August describing the last great gathering of royalty on the occasion of Edward VII’s funeral.
It was Roosvelt who represented the future. What does Obama betoken? I think historians may look back on this day and see as the day when the “civilian-coated gentlemen”, once happy to represent The People hastened, with unseemly alarcrity to rejoin the cavalcade of the modern aristocracy. I wonder whether history’s clock, as it was was at Edward’s funeral, is also nearing sunset.
Well for sure, president Obama wasn’t going to receive a Prize for any contributions to a hard science. That would indicate that verifiable work was actually done with data sets and redundancy indicating a positive result. So far there is nothing in his background nor work history to support that conclusion.
Yep, Wretch has it right. That “Peace” prize
means it shall be unlawful to question, let alone oppose, anything emananting from the Mouth That Roars.
The Knights of the Golden Circle used the same techniques to stampede folks into ill-advised secession etc.
Will all this actually work as the perps intend? No. But it will force their ardent believers to either try to forcibly silence the rest of us or quietly vanish into the mists. What to YOU think they will do?
As for me, I shall not submit.
Obama’s crowning as the king of peace brings on a rush of deja-vu. Thats it! Al Gore was crowned the king of the environment in 2007.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I was sure that President Rufus Firefly of Fredonia would win the award. Obama winning the Nobel shows how preposterous the international class of elitist clowns and buffoons are. It reminds me of claims of Herculean feats the propagandists used to assign to Mao and Saddam . What a stupid world. Unfortunately it’s also a dangerous one. Obama’s egotistical posturing isn’t likely to garner applause there but start a horrendous fire.
re: #7 wretchard.
This brings to mind the closing part of Ambrose Bierce’s definition of war.
“War loves to come like a thief in the night; professions of eternal amity provide the night.”
Wow. That’s almost as good as winning an oscar for saving the world.
Will they take it back when the nukes start dropping or just blame Israel?
Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize
I’m actually gleeful about this. Could they have done anything more likely to discredit themselves with thinking people? The Nobel committee has crept up to this for a long time (Carter, Arafat, Gore), but the unseemly haste on this one …
Hear that splash? The shark has been jumped.
good freakin’ gravy – this is the final straw. The world is run by the insane asylum. If there was a spaceship off this hunk of stone, I would be the first in line.
BHO has won the Nobel Peace Prize for being the first black President and for being Not Dubya.
Iwrote my own dirge, with an echo from Barcepundit on this farce.
Salt Lick, I wish I could agree with you, but this just puts the MSM back in the toilet, compulsively flushing and swirling. TIME magazine is doing their layout for “Man of the Year” right now.
Dave, above, thinks he was nominated before the election…which makes this a real affirmative action prize. Let’s face it: the man has led a charmed affirmative action life to date.
Most disturbing to me is the Committee’s manipulation of another country’s electorate by awarding the prize to a sitting president.
Disgusting.
Good Lord world peace, U.S. civil war! Deo Vindice
Wretchard–
Since no one has remarked upon it, let me say you look really kewl with the grey hair. Sophisticated dude.
BTW, today is the 5th anniversary of our blog. And you’re to blame. We HAD to start our own to keep from taking up all your bandwidth.
It’s been a long, convoluted trip since we colonized.
Makes it hard for the exalted ONE to commit more troops to Afghanistan. How can a “man of peace” wage war?
Darn. I picked the leader of Hamas in the office pool.
Some have suggested Obama needs more Cowbell and instead he gets a Nobel — which should enable far more Cowbell.
What’s that old saying? Starve a cold, feed an ego? Obama is now Prince of Europe and Emperor of Cloud Cuckoo Land. He should move to Denmark and do Hamlet. “What a piece of work is peace! And how Nobel of me to do it.”
I’m upset because I’ve been predicting he would be at war with Iran by next spring. Of course, that was based on the Law of Unintended Consequences so — maybe there will be a World Wide Conflagration by then. The Nobel has up the stakes. Three days of intense bombing will not longer do.
Besides, ain’t this Nobel a license to go to war? It was for Arafat.
Yeah, rub it in (“Ah, but its all there.”)
Excellent (and related) article by Krauthammer in the Weekly Standard “Decline is a Choice.”
Krauthammer betrays his progressive roots (fails to mention liberty as one of the benefits of our, thus far, individualistic system). But, the article is an excellent mini-tour through Obamaworld.
“It reflects a fundamental view that the only legitimate authority in the international system is that which emanates from ‘the community of nations’ as a whole.”
The New Liberalism is “…rooted in the conviction that America is so intrinsically flawed, so inherently and congenitally sinful that it cannot be trusted with, and does not merit, the possession of overarching world power.”
“…recovering moral space means renouncing ill-gotten or ill-conceived strategic space.”
“In a word, it is a foreign policy designed to produce American decline – to make America essentially one nation among many. And for that purpose, its domestic policies are perfectly complementary.”
Definitely a formula for peace! /s
Long read but worth it.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/056lfnpr.asp?pg=2
Dynamite!
A big blowup is more, not less, likely with Zero in office.
What a farceroo.
These Nobel craparoos have as much credibility as ACORN.
What can one say.
Christ Almighty.
Well, there is a definite synchronous thought process going on here.
The Nobel Committee gives the Peace Prize to:
Jimmy Carter, who enabled the rise of the Iranian Islamic Republic
Yasser Arafat, who gave vital cover to the Iraqi and Iranians as they prepared for war and generally made terrorism respectable.
And now, Baroque Obama, who is ensuring that the Iranians and other terrorists remain unfettered in their abilities and encouraged in their attitudes.
Yes, indeed, it all makes perfect sense now!
heh, the entire nation is sold out of ammo.
Dymphna,
I remember wondering why people at swimming in the ocean sometimes ran indoors when a rain started. Were they afraid of getting wet? It probably has something to do with our affinity for a “normal setting”. It rains, we run indoors, even when there’s no point. But if it happened every day the definition of “normal” would probably change.
If you walk along a mountain trail long enough with the freezing rain coming down eventually you change your expectations. That little wooden shelter at the end of the stage looks mighty inviting, and the prospect of instant oatmeal cooked over a stove suddenly seems appealing. There comes a point when you realize that your situation has possibilities. Freedom is really the act of understanding the possibilities.
I knew some guys who used a cockroach whose wings they’d disabled to crawl along a ledge pulling a string behind him. Once they had the string over to the next cell window, they could loop messages across on a kind of string belt. Freedom! In the current situation, I think freedom starts by accepting that we’re not in control. But there are possibilities. Somehow history, or if you will, God, is mixing things around. We can’t help it. The cards are being dealt. The only thing to do is play them. And in that situation, there’s no way back. There’s only forward. Having to go forward is always sad in the way leaving an old home is sad. I knew a lady once who told me that she didn’t want to go anyplace new because she didn’t want the novel to drive out the sacred memory of the old. She could do that. She was the kind. But properly considered, we have no alternative but live our lives on a trajectory toward the future. “All we have to do is to decide what to do with the time that we are given us.” What Gandalf said.
And remember what Frodo said too. “I will bear the Ring, though I do not know the way.”
I’m with Kevin at #17. If I had a bigger shop, I’d build a rocketship and leave.
This is a sure sign that Obama has failed and will continue to fail.
Expect a big war. Soon.
Exeunt, three stage up.
So are you allowed to win a Nobel Peace Prize twice? If you are, I’m going to be the first to place my bet that the Committe of Imbeciles that decides these things will give it to him again next year. I mean what else do you do for an encore?
Hell, maybe he can win all the other Nobel prizes.
Chemistry: “Have you seen him and Michele together? What chemistry!”
Physics: “Did you see those pecs?”
Medicine: “He’s saving the five hundred million uninsured and preventing a million deaths a week!”
Literature: “For the best memoir not written by the author.”
Economics: “The first President in history to destroy an economy twice.”
And let’s not let our opinions go, umm, unexpressed.
Annika Pontikis, Nobel Public Relations Manager:
info@nobel.se
21. Dymphna:
Wretchard made me start a blog too. 11 Sept 2004.
Wretchard– #28
I’ve always felt that while seeing the big picture was an advantage, living in the little picture was a lot more comfortable. Or at least it is until the Nazgul come looking for you.
It’s snowing in Chicago.
Climate: “For stopping global warming in its tracks.”
As you ramble on through life, brother
Whatever be your goal,
Keep your eye upon the doughnut
And not upon the hole.
and as you think the doughy circle
(staying clear the empty spaces)
wonder if Sarkozy Merkel
feel the Nobel in their faces.
***RWE/26; nice catch on them loose ends –also how bout Ivan racing the clock manages to get Afghanistan invaded while they had Jimmy Carter (Hero of the Olympian pout), the draw RR who boots ‘em back so hard they had to wait for another Cartewr
Luddy,
The FHA thread is closed, so I’ll see if I can leave this here:
FHA Loans the Choice of Housing Comrades.
Lenders are ramping up their FHA backed loans since banks are hoarding money like packrats.
On Thursday Edward Pinto, a financial services consultant and also a former chief credit officer of Fannie Mae (1987 – 1989) gave testimony to the U.S. House of Representative Housing and Community Opportunity Subcommittee.
So Mr. Pinto must know something about credit risk.
The first chart presented is absolutely astounding:
—
You can download the full report with attachments here.
It is worth a read.
Too bad the plutocrats will continue to sleep with their lobbyist and FHA is merely another problem for another day.
FHA is the loan of choice for fellow comrades.
hmm, isn’t it a bit early to decern Obama a Nobel price ?
So, this will smooth his eviction of the IOC contest.
It looks like it’s was all but a big plan, some global governation have interest that he is still regarded as the symbol of this new world organisation.
ça va pêter un de ces jours !
We must be clear it was the Norwegians, not the Swedes, that awarded this prize.
wow, it really thought it was bin Laden’s year to take it; he must be crushed.
Indeed, it is too early to discern a price. How much was paid for this and what is the final cost too be?
this is the second time i’ve felt empathy for Obama. this will be PR nightmare for him.If he accepts the award he will end up looking like a fool.he’d be much better off if he found a way to politely decline.the difficulty is that ego thing.
Wretchard,
We are moving closer to Conjecture 2. This announcement has the effect of telling the Islamofacists that we, the West, value appesement and Dhimmitude over Rights of Man. We have sold our birthright, not for beans, but for fools gold on a fools errand. May God have mercy on us, because history will not.
I’d bet my farm the usurper won’t turn this down. There’s his better half he has to consider too. Michelle likes prices.
Idiot Euro-colonialist dirtbags…giving a “peace prize” to a guy working feverishly to return the ME to a genocidal fever swamp state…to status quo ante 9/11/01. To think of it, though, the Euro-colonialist weapons business into the ME was probably better ante, which, likely promoted the Euro-colonialist peace….
Obama winning the Nobel Prize for Peace – The day his Presidency “Jumped the Shark”.
Jumping the shark is a colloquialism coined by Jon Hein and used by TV critics and fans to denote the point in a television program’s history where the plot veers off into absurd story lines or out-of-the-ordinary characterizations. This usually corresponds to the point where a show with falling ratings apparently becomes more desperate to draw in viewers. In the process of undergoing these changes, the TV or movie series loses its original appeal. Shows that have “jumped the shark” are typically deemed to have passed their peak.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark
Unfortunately for Obama the stake is higher.Obama has not done a thing yet. He just blabbed about it. The Nobel committee is setting him up for a big failure. Are these (Nobel) racists?
Is it too late for the prize in medicine to go to Max Baucus?
Unquestionably Obama has done as much for mideast peace as Arafat, as much for relations with Iran as Jimmy Carter, as much to try to deconstruct the U.S. as Gorbachev did to dismantle the USSR, and nearly as much for science policy as Al Gore, poster boy for the greatest scientific fraud since Piltdown Man. They all won, why shouldn’t he?
“Idiot Euro-colonialist dirtbags…”
these are Norwegians ! that had no colony in ME or Africa. Though they are the most permissive for bashing Israel nowadays.
Barak is King of the World, and Tony Blair is about to be elected Holy Roman Emperor.
I suspect a Shogun is waiting somewhere in the wings.
You’d think a fellow that can win the Nobel Peace Prize would at least sit down for a chat with the Dalai Lama, the ocean of wisdom, but no, that would tick the Chinese occupier off.
Q: “Mr. Gibbs, can you tell us which of the President’s accomplishments over the last year is credited with being central to the nomination for the Nobel Prize?”
A: “Hard to say, there haven’t been that many really. For an untested, incompetent, no-executive experience, minor league, ultra-liberal junior senator with no other qualifications for the Presidency than a gladhand and a glib tongue, I guess it was either the fact he wasn’t George Bush or his returning the bust of Winston Churchill or perhaps it was his art collection.”
Well, there’s at least one advantage about this laughable (and scary) Nobel Prize.
Clinton forced Israel into accepting Oslo and many other things because he wanted that prize quite badly.
Obama obviously wanted it too (the prize). Now that he got it, he is free not to do anything to get it. That is to say: in the long run, the Europeans and especially those sad Scandinavians have just lost much of the leverage they had with him. Anyway, it would have been cleverer to give him the prize just before the next presidential election. (And if we consider that the last American president to get the prize was Carter, well, you can guess the rest.)
On the other hand, just thinking about what may come next, I’d like to know if the Catholic Church has ever canonized anyone who was still alive.
It’s Bush’s fault.
What one must understand about all this is that the Peace Prize, properly considered if you look at all who have won it since inception, should really be called the Pacifism Prize. It’s the Peace of “Peace in our Time.” It’s not about creating a Peace of the Sword. The Pax Romana would never have qualified. It’s all about surrender, and the drawing down of forces.
Arafat won the prize because he convinced Israel to reduce its arms. Obama sure deserves his award, for he is quite pacifistic.
Doesn’t this feel so Alice-in-Wonderlandish to you?
“At last the Dodo said, ‘everybody has won, and all must have prizes.’”
-Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, Ch 3, “A Caucus Race and a Long Tale”
this is gonna be a fun thread.
I confirmed that the deadline for nominations in a Nobel year is Feb 1 per their web site. Not even two weeks into his presidential term, our president did extraordinary deeds.
doug/37; yeh –ibeen watching that –Ginny mae too. yesterday the load mod watchdogs issued a brutal report on the program –out of 500,000 initiations, a grand total of 2000 have closed. remember a few threads back, the point about the “loss-share” provision –the lender is incented to foreclose as the loan loss all but 100% goes onto program costs –taxpayer covers th diff between original loan and the proceeds of foreclosure. taxpayers in effect buy discounted cash outs for the new owners of the loans, or simply, taxpayers are giving cash to the guys who negotiated the loss-share deal when the bought the bellied up banks’ assets. Like Soros, tho there are others. Soros really is a pisser as he was in on these banks’ getting busted out by accomplices on the inside buying all the junk that ACORN could type up and send over.
Remember this name: Matt Tannin. if the whole world doesn’t know it by the end of the month, then the fix is in even deeper than we imagined. This shit’s gettin’ BIZARRE, man! Fricken BIZARRE.
Obama the Messiah has now been crowned Prince of Peace!!
I have been wondering for some time now if Obama’s election was an act of God as his rise to the presidency was so improbable? What kind of odds would Vegas have given you 2 years ago on Obama being elected and winning the Nobel Prize in his first year?
Sorry, Bob:
Fjordman said…
“God! If there is any day of the year where I am absolutely ashamed of my nationality it’s when they award the Nobel Peace Prize.
What a pathetic, ridiculous Socialist nation.
Can’t they give the Peace Prize to Sweden along with the rest of them?
It’s practically the only country that’s worse than Norway.
The Swedes would have given the Prize to Osama, not Obama.”
Bob & MC y’all better get off the norwegie stuff or i will roll out der svede und frog jokes and drop them sur la huvudets!
I’m surprised they didn’t give it to Chamberlain and Hitler.
Some Americans will actually be swayed by the Nobel. Others will be generally offended by the crude efforts to manipulate our internal politics.
This may give people some sympathy for how the people of Honduras feel as they face efforts by the same foreign elites aligned to thugs and dictators to ram an unconstitutional regime down their throats.
nelson,
The Good Thief.
luddy i bet you $10 that – for maximum bonus international magnanimity points – he declines it.
well played, Nobel Leninists, well played.
Giving Obama the Nobel is like giving Clinton Viagra. An overdose to a narcissist.
Clinton and Carter had to work years for their Nobels and had to share them.
Richard,
Delightful to think again of Miller’s Big Sur and the Oranges… which I haven’t looked at since the seventies, though I have been back to Big Sur itself many times since then. Truly one of the loveliest places on the planet.
Jamie Irons
Dymphna (#21):
Congratulations on your fifth blogiversary!
Tempus fugit!
Jamie Irons
Some days I despair- some days I just laugh at the madness. Some days I am afraid for my grand children. Today on this day, as have others, my fears feed my anger and my dismay.
Everyday I pray for my two grandsons who are in the fight. One Navy, One Air Force. May God protect and guide them.
What manner of circumstances or politics would make anyone from anywhere, give any prize to Obama? I might see giving him an award for being a good reader of speeches, or even being a great candidate for anything, including of course a community organizer.
I live in a real world of making payments on all of our bills, buying clothes, school stuff, supporting the PTA, keeping gas in our one car and one pickup, giving my grand daughters not only what they need but some of what they want. Keeping them healthy, getting them shots, having enough left over for things like the local fair and carnival, trips to the local Observator, and going to McDonalds for Happy Meals.
I could really give a shit about what liberals (or actually anybody) think are important. I know what is important to my little world in the little bubble that I have made to protect what is mine. Which is my children and my grand children.
I won’t go into what I have done over the last ten years to make sure we are protected. Just know that I have done all the prior planning that is needed for when the SHTF.
If there is anybody with half a brain that does not see what is coming down- What forces beyond most peoples comprehension, are hard at work to accomplish. What the future holds if we as Americans don’t understand and stand fast against- they are either liberals or so stupid I don’t want them to be standing with those that are willing to die to protect our Republic.
I could go on, but life calls and my daily responsibilities drive me, as they should you. Take care of those you love and love those that love you.
Prepare yourselves and your family.
Papa Ray
Central Texas
The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed – where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once. 2009 Judge Alex Kozinski
from twitter via Huffpo:
In a stunning turn of events, President Barack Obama has swept baseball’s postseason honors in both leagues, a feat never before accomplished and long considered impossible.
64, Buddy, he, the Vickings are loosing their blue eyes, and can’t even win aviron races anymore. May-be it’s their attraction for the opposite, sumthin like a remnent nostalgy for the first human tribes, that were tanned, but lose it when arriving to the boreal parts of Europe, or they want to regenerate their ADN
uh, is your ancestry Norwegian ?
Here’s a thought raised by others in an earlier thread:
Baraq has been praised and feted since the gitgo. Never had a hard day. Doug @ 6 above referred back to wws on his ease at Harvard. Hard days are one of the ways we get strength to withstand future hard days. McCain had a lot of hard days. So did Bush41. and to a lesser extent so did Bush43 (business failure, drinking issues). Clinton not so much, (‘cept his momma was a walking hard day)
Most all of the more or less successful presidents we have had came into office with some experience of difficulty in their lives and have developed some form of tools for coping with them. Obama is, I think most observers have agreed, is profoundly (likely pathologically) a narcissist. Part of that pathology, as I understand it, requires a twisted world view that supports their self regard. The Nobel just adds to the deification. This cannot be good.
Sometime down the road, Obama will meet a circumstance that will pierce his worldview. What happens to the personality when the driving internal meme gets busted?
Jamie- Help!
As Wretchard describes above, he is reshaping the war in AfStan to be something with AlQaida but not the Taliban. There has been a lot of commentary that they were distinct operations. Maybe so, maybe not. I think AlQaida was a gang that got lucky with a feckless Clinton and pushed their luck. I think left to their own devices they could get lucky again. Letting the Taliban alone or into the Kabul Govt will have the effect of leaving AlQaida to their own devices.
Its like hunting bear in a swamp and trying to ignore the gators.
A fraudulent award for a fraudulent president.
How .. symbolic.
While contemplating the awarding of Hussein’s newest bauble it amazes me that the opinions of a committee of Norwegians would have such impact. My Great Grandpa Anderson would be proud.
It also occured to me that Hussein’s qualifications for military command are not unique in our history. There have been others who came to high command with no qualifications as well. Such as Nathan Bedford Forest. Of course the similarities pretty much end there. Though not so much as one might think. Each man fought against the United States of America (though Forest, being a brave man, was completely candid in his treason whereas Hussein, a craven at heart, proclaims his “love” of the nation while working overtime to destroy it). Each man was/is obsessed by race though here too Forest was candid in his beliefs whereas Hussein dissembles while implementing policies guaranteed to divide the races even further. Their differences are pretty clear too: Forest faced the guns and led from in front. Hussein has never heard a shot fired in anger (maybe never a shot, period) and leads by sound bite and surrogate. Forest was not a nice man and didn’t pretend to be – if you offended against him you risked being shot. Hussein is a charlatan and glad-hander who is your best friend if you buy his product but will work to destroy you behind your back by rumor, gossip and slander if you don’t get with the program.
“Giving Obama the Nobel is like giving Clinton Viagra. An overdose to a narcissist.”
Herb/74 – Hard days are what make men and women. My favorite interview questions is – “”What’s your biggest failure?”. If I get a milk-toast or never failed response, they are off the list. If they smile and go into detail, they are at the top.
The worst part about Big Bro ‘Bama getting the Peace prize is that it will confirm the legend in his own mind and the minds of the Left. They will be emboldened just as retreat in Iraq and Afghanistan is emboldening AQ and the Taliban. Now that he is being crowned Prince of Peace can King of the World be far behind? No one, not even Michelle, will be able to get him back into a normal pair of britches. This is the Mandate of Heaven indeed. Who dares stand against him?
But Americans have a thread of mistrust for royalty in our makeup. Wager: as the Left scrambles to bow down to his internationally approved wonderfulness Americans who never sang the Internationale will be put off. The Left will trumpet this accolade in every corner of the land but it will not sit well with the People.
Re: FHA – as one who labors in the real estate field I can tell you that very few conventional loans are being made these days. And with the proposed expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act you can look to the bubble to re-inflate briefly before the high speed turbine pumps send it rushing down the drain. http://wp.me/piCpQ-4I
I understand that Obama is now considered the likely winner of both the Heisman Trophy and the Hobey Baker award. No one in the history of man has accomplished this feat. Obama will attend the Heisman ceremony on the same weekend that he will pick up his plaque for winning the American League batting title and the Cy Young award. He will wear his green blazer from Augusta and will provide refreshments at the Heisman ceremony by turning the water in the pitchers into wine.
Meanwhile, a white house spokesman has denied rumors that Obama will run in the Kentucky Derby although he is considered a legitimate threat to win the triple crown.
Roy Jones Jr. in an interview in Ring magazine has indicated that talks are underway for a title fight with Obana next spring at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.
Oscar …
Tony …
Country Music Hall of Fame …
——————————————————————————–
independencehallliberty.blogspot.com/2009/03/barack-obamas-nobel-peace-prize.html
(see prescient Mad Magazine cover at the bottom of the page)
The deadlines for nominations was February 1, 2009…two weeks after he entered office.
I can only guess how many achievements Kim Il-Sung had before he died. Mao Tse-Tung, the Great Helmsman, was one heck of a swimmer and everyone was the better for carrying the Little Red Book. If you can’t prevail on the present political crises, playing the personality card is an option…at least in socialist countries.
Will he win the Country Music Awards for teaching the children to sing his praises? MYP for throwing the first pitch of the season? Will he be the bride at every wedding?
mel gibson is working on a bio script –obama to direct and play himself as obama as well as also mel as producer as well the crowd. working title, “The Pasha’n”
It reminds me of a saying the Anchoress posted a while back:
“When small men begin to cast great shadows, you know the sun is about to set.”
Either that or you’re in scandalnavia, where the sun is always setting (or has set).
83 Buddy,
or a remake of the “last Tycoon”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Tycoon_(film)
@75. herb:
Quote: “Its like hunting bear in a swamp and trying to ignore the gators.”
Yep, it’s hard to drain the swamp when you’re up to your ass in alligators.
MC, or “The Great Gasby” –?
Lifeofthemind,
The Good Thief, if he was indeed made a saint, was canonized by the boss himself (or his Son, I never know), not by the Church.
Like others, I will note that today, on the same day the Nobel Peace prize was announced for Obama, the United States bombed the moon (can’t include link to article or it gets marked as spam, odd).
Maybe, unbeknown to all of us, there was an alien invasion from outer space on the moon, that was planing on conquering the earth (I think this was an Alien race of Icicle people which is why the cover story is Nasa looking for Ice on the moon).
And Obama won the peace prize for stopping the earth-moon war today with a preemptive strike, thus saving 6 billion earthlings from enslavement by the Alien Icicle people?
I guess it still a state secret, so we’ll find out if this was the case at the award ceremony.
Oh dear!
I left someone out in my No.26 post!
Al Gore, Noble Peace Prize Winner – the man who cut a deal with Russia to let them supply nuclear technology to Iran. He fits in the pack, too.
My profuse apologies….
Bear#59: I understand that Obama was NOMINATED for the Noble Peace Prize TWO WEEKS BEFORE he was inaugerated.
P.S.: I predict that Obama will win the Daytona 500. Why? Has a black man ever won it? No! Well it’s about damn time!
P.P.S. And if Tiger Woods had not stolen the honor from him, he would have won the Masters.
P.P.P.S Has anyone done a correlation check between the membership (and financial interests) of the Nobel Price Committee and the Olympic Committee? I’m just saying… they are both in Copenhagen, right?
So how’s that Nobel public relations working out for ya? Whoops!
Current Newsvine poll, on MSNBC yet, asks the question, “Is President Obama deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize?”
Currently at 247,516 votes we have:
62.7% NO
23% YES (it seems the core moonbat vote is always around 20%)
13% “maybe someday but not yet”
0.6% “not sure” (then why the hell did you click on the poll?)
So a whopping 75% basically said he didn’t deserve it, on a site that most likely trends Liberal. Awesome!
So Obama ‘won’ the peace prize.
IF US were attacked under his watch or due to his negligence of his duty, he is not to start any kind of retribution?
How can a peace prize winner ‘start a war’?
From the AP:
President Barack Obama said Friday he was honored and humbled to win the Nobel Peace Prize and would accept it as a “call to action” to work with other nations to solve the problems of the 21st century.
I love that “humbled.” Ya-ha. Probably first thing he said when he heard about the award was “what took so long?” So much for his declining it. It’s the “call to action” that distresses me.
A beaming Obama told reporters in the White House Rose Garden that he wasn’t sure he had done enough to earn the award, or deserved to be in the company of the others who had won it before him.
Where’s H.L. Mencken when you need him?
“The Americans hope that by next spring, they will be operating from what General Wentz described as a hub-and-spoke system, with 6 supersize bases and 13 smaller ones. Fewer bases means traveling greater distances, at greater risk.”
You think? Now they say that.
As I said over three years ago:
“The U.S. Military has no plans to completely leave Iraq.
It will be, if ever, decades before we leave and then it will be like Germany, they will beg us to stay.
Right now the U.S. is building Megabases in several places in Iraq, complete with huge airports and storage facilities.
Think Viet Nam, times ten, or if your too young to know about that, think small American cities with big airports.”
I will also predict that twenty years from now American Military and American business will still be in Afghanistan not only helping them have a better life but also making money.
Mark my words.
Papa Ray
Central Texas
@91. peterike:
Quote: “23% YES (it seems the core moonbat vote is always around 20%)”
Moonbats always bark at midnight.
Some inside the White House have cited Hezbollah, the armed Lebanese political movement, as an example of what the Taliban could become.
Well, Biden has such a perfect grasp of history, the potential irony here should not escape him. Having asserted in the debate with Palen, that we “kicked hezbollah out of Lebanon” only to allow them back in might more accurately apply to the Taliban should we choose to make some grand bargain or accommodation with them.
No doubt he believes we can distinguish Taliban and al Qaeda fighters from a distance, and so target the latter while letting the former go scott free.
Maybe we could divide Afghanistan up into parts for good measure.
Good grief.
“Isn’t it in Copenhagen?”
“Oslo.”
“Well, I slow too. Just take your time.”
Does’t this all remind you just a little of the cult and adulation of Dear Leader.
The Dear Leader that got two holes in one, the first day he played golf or something.
Swam for miles in the Yangtze.
Swats flys.
#64 luddy barson
Sadly, this is a Norwegian thing. Nobel’s will specified that the Peace Prize be awarded by a committee selected by the Norwegian Parliament instead of Sweden, because he believed that they would be more unbiased and less political.
If it is any consolation, we are not responsible when the “old country” goes stupid. Just as I love being of Chinese ancestry, and hate what the current government is and does to China’s culture and people; we all have to deal with the fact that most of the countries our ancestors came from hate liberty and hate the United States. We are the example for the hopeful day when “Baradûr” falls.
Just for the record, in the period from January 20 to February which is all the time he had from inauguration to the nomination deadline; his executive actions were as follows:
Waived his own ban of lobbyists being appointed to the administration so he could appoint his lobbyists to Federal positions,
Suspended the trials of terrorists at Guantanamo by the Guantanamo Military Commission,
Signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act; which makes any American company liable for any past differential in pay between men and women, forever,
Lifted the ban on Federal funds being used for abortions overseas.
I assume it is the abortion funding and pro-terrorist ruling that so entranced the Nobel Committee, because if it was not it had to be all about race and Socialism.
Subotai Bahadur
Strange isn’t it how the Left accuses the Right of trafficking in nostalgia when their definition of “Peace” depends (only) on the absence of war between Westphalian states? No doubt the same eminences who described Saddam’s Iraq and the Taliban’s Afghanistan as being “at peace” before Bush and the warmongering neocons showed up will be thrilled by news.
Since when should the people of the United States of America let a Swedish committee sit in judgment on our politics?
Isn’t there a cash prize of $1 million awarded to the Nobel winner?
How can an acting president accept money from the Nobel Foundation (or any public or private organization/individual)? Don’t they have to, at least, give the appearance of being above bribery or conflicts of interest anymore?
I see this as a blatant attempt from the Nobel committee to influence Obama’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq.
He was nominated less than two weeks after taking office out of a sense of political correctness.
But he received the award for scrapping the F-22, so that we won’t have air superiority in our next major war…
Subotai, perhaps the basis was the smooth execution in, over the last 18 months, moving about 15% of total two-plus centuries worth of accumulated household net worth from one side of the ledger to the other, without the usual war something like that normally requires. So, “peace” prize –right?
Funny, the word ‘prize’ also can use the root ‘pry’ to make “to prize loose” as with a crowbar. Maybe this was a “piece prize” as he prized loose a present hard-won piece and presented a hard one to a future peace. (*groan*)
“the AP, says that President Obama is “is prepared to accept a role for the Taliban in Afghanistan’s political future in a major shift of policy towards the Islamic radicals who are attacking US and British troops, it has been reported. ” It says President Obama will only give the Afghan campaign enough resources to keep al-Qaeda at arms length.”
———————————————————
It says, “I Barack Hussain Obama has lost the war in afstan.”
#56 Brock
“peace in our times”
I’m not saying I’m psychic, quite, but yesterday I did blog on CHurchill’s speech responding to Munich. Everyone should re-read it for a refresher on the human capcity for delusion in the face of hard existential realities.
It’s not a conspiracy so much as a mass psychosis, blowing in the wind; we are all psychic now.
The great upshot of this is that someone somewhere has an opportunity to play Churchill, updated for our less centralized times, in a way that just usually isn’t possible. That way of thinking, that language, can only be taken seriously in times like this.
Sitting President Accepts Big Money Gift
Jeesh, what a party pooper!
———————-
Well it’s a pleasure to see that Anne C @103 noticed also. I did a search for gifts and graft before posting this, so I missed her comment. It’s a sad state of affairs that it took this long for someone to raise the issue. All hail King Brak I.
I thought I’d win the Nobel prize
For harmony and peace
But failed in the committee’s eyes
And told that I must cease
My love for good old USA
And admiration for
The difficult and wondrous way
She keeps the world from war
By being the world’s nine one one
And giving money to
Just every land under the sun
No matter what they do
I said no other land on earth
Hath greater mercy shown
To people trodden down from birth
Nor greater freedom sown
Committee members laughed and sneered
Said I was so naïve
That patriots had disappeared
Without a by your leave
They said the world was different now
Surrender is the thing
And they would show us Yankees how
To bow ‘fore Saudi king
And tug the forelock in respect
For Islam’s better ways
They said and that’s why we expect
To see much better days
Now that The One will clean the slate
And lead us to the shore
Of serfdom and the dhimmi state
That’s what this prize is for
Bob, #52- I just about spewed coffee over the keyboard-that was funny!
This has the potential for big blowback- the award is so patently undeserved it will, and is already, inspiring ridicule, even in the MSM.
Thanks for this blog, one of the jewels of the web!
Posted at The Corner on NRO, a note from a reader.
1. Under Article I, section 9 of the Constitution, “no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust [in the United States government] shall, without the consent of Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
2. Under this provision, it seems that President Obama would need the consent of Congress to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. That prize is awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which consists of five members elected by the Norwegian parliament and is thus an agent of a “foreign State.”
3. Congress’s existing blanket consent, set forth in the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act, does not seem broad enough to apply to the cash component of the prize, though it probably would apply to the gold medal that is awarded.
Oh goodie. Another chance to wipe his ass with the Constitution!
Well, the Constitution says:
I believe in order to take the prize, he needs the consent of the Congress. But I could be wrong, it is Obama.
Peterike you beat me to it
P.S.: I predict that Obama will win the Daytona 500.
Don’t forget the Preakness and the Derby! America’s Next Top Model too. Don’t think he has much chance on American Idol though, that Simon guy is pretty harsh on people who only think they have talent.
Me, I’m in Old Salt’s camp. This is so obviously a farce that it helps because it makes it all the more clear that the cultural elite are disconnected and irrelevant. Like Roger Simon said about Woody Allen defending Roman Polanski, it wouldn’t even work in the Onion.
@81 Engineer & JMH @113
All is not lost – the Stanley Cup is probably beyond his reach – too much hard work just getting to the finals
He also wins the next Oscar for best acting by a female lead for his Nobel acceptance speech. His portrayal of a humble man was beyond comparison.
“these are Norwegians ! that had no colony in ME or Africa.”
1. Your point is?
2. Doesn’t matter.
3. No problem with the selling of the explosives to their fellow monarchical colonialists, eh?
4. You haven’t been around long enough to endure one of rants against monarchy culture.
5. Allow me to adjust: Idiot crypto-monarchic Euro-colonialist dirtbags!!! (with apologies to dirt)
Ashen #115
Don’t insult women like that!
I hope Sarah isn’t offended.
You could be mistaken for an elk or reindeer….
@W: Are you saying there has been no recession of your hairline?
RWA #26
> Jimmy Carter, who enabled the rise of the Iranian Islamic Republic
>
> Yasser Arafat, who gave vital cover to the Iraqi and Iranians as they prepared
> for war and generally made terrorism respectable.
Don’t forget Muhammad el Baradei, who enabled the Iranian Islamic Republic nuclear program…
Trying to give the prize committee as much benefit of the doubt as possible, I think it’s fair to say the nomination came within weeks of Obama’s nomination but the committee probably did not vote until a week or so ago, so lots more than just three minor presidential decisions were weighed in the decision to make the award.
That said, it is still silly to believe Obama won on the basis of actual actions rather than hope and promise. This is the same basis that has been used to advance this man ever since his birth, whether it was his acceptance to select schools or as editor of the Harvard Law Review or anything else he had to compete for. Maybe, just maybe he should win the Nobel prize for his ability to end up in the winner’s column no matter what the contest or the competition arrayed against him. He has truly led a charmed life. Of course one could wonder how much of his good fortune came as a result of the threat of racism hanging over anyone who would question his good fortune. Still, it’s an amazing — absolutely amazing — run of good fortune. F
So how long before someone in Congress proposes a Constitutional amendment so that Obama can take yet another trip to his adoring European constituency and accept the prize? Or better yet, sneak some rider onto unrelated legislation that will enable him to bypass the Constitution altogether? You know, just this once….what are the odds?
Another thing – as shocking and unexpected as this is to us, is it as much a surprise to Obama and his people? Is it unreasonable to suppose they’ve had lobbyists working the committee on his behalf all along?
And you can see him preparing to accept at…. There He Is…. Mister A-MER-I-CA!: Nobel Committee Now Officially Not Worth the Dynamite It Would Take to Blow Them Away
I have listened to the “Peace” Prize all morning; but I had not heard of our cut & run in Iraq at all: that is the real story to be told; the prize story is the distracting cover for the surrender.
I feel as if I am at one of those freaky carnivals, with a really weird carny vendor dude yelling “step right up, shoot the moon, win a prize!” while taking money from us by the fist full.
Not anymore in topic, but I just found a video where Alain Finkelkraut makes his point on Polanski case in medias and blogs, he is digging into basic facts, unusual, but interesting
http://bit.ly/4fPUL0
“Somehow history, or if you will, God, is mixing things around. We can’t help it. The cards are being dealt. The only thing to do is play them. And in that situation, there’s no way back. There’s only forward.”
Agree. The domino’s have been set in motion to fall and nothing can stop that movement now. I fully expect to see a few deux ex machina’s in the coming months and years, as God plunks down on the side of Good whenever possible (like when Patton prayed for good weather before the Battle of the Bulge). Of course, there’s always “God helps those who help themselves”, so we must also be inching closer and closer to an internal physical crisis which will force a percentage of us to stand up to those domino’s falling in our direction.
I wonder if Obama knew about his ridiculous award before it was announced and figured that if one set of Vikings were going to anoint him for peace, another set of them would be willing to give him the Olympics.
I can’t believe how appalled I am feeling right now. Especially if I’m starting to depend upon the intercession of a divine intermediary, like the Iraqi’s were doing facing the onslaught of the American troops.
Re: 30. M. Simon:
This is a sure sign that Obama has failed and will continue to fail.
Expect a big war. Soon.
Only according to your (and mine) definition of failure. Carter still thinks of himself as a great statesman, and so does Obama. I agree on your prediction though.
The prizes for physics and economics still mean something and perhaps so too the lit prize. The peace prize ceased having its traditional meaning the moment Arafat received it.
I saw a report that Whitehouse staffers, at first, thought they were being set up for a punking.
Perhaps, even in the minds of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, Obama did not “win” the prize for past performance; rather, he was given the prize in an attempt to influence geopolitics, and even the American Congress and American electorate, in the future.
Best wishes,
Jim
Bookworm Room had this early on as “A preemptive prize”
Bookworm Room: An Evolving Reaction with Updates Galore
I’ve decided that this is a preemptive prize, because the Committee looked ahead to the insane nuclear winter and global Muslim/non-Muslim war Obama’s fecklessness is bringing into being and they knew: he makes a desert, and calls it peace. Since the Committee can confidently expect that, once Obama does what he does best, there will be no more prizes, now was the time for a preemptive award.
JM @ 130: he was given the prize in an attempt to influence geopolitics.
To be fair, that IS inherent in the name of the prize.
That’s why I raised the issue of the clear attempt to influence American policy. Money given to the American top dog (are we to believe it was not given to affect his policy decisions?) is what makes an issue of it. The money should not have been offered directly — that is if anyone in world politics still gave a damn about appearances.
APPEARANCE of corruption was once enough to drive a leader from office. What a joke! When the media is in the government’s control, expect two minutes hate to be directed at those who spot the conflict of interest.
I’ve been informed that Obama will pass the gift off to charity. It was still given to him directly so he can choose the charity. Gee, I wonder what charity he’ll pay off? Rev Wright? Planned Parenthood. ACLU?
Maybe they need to rename the Nobel Peace Prize to the Special Nobel Peace Prize, just like there is the Olympics and the Special Olympics. Arafat, Carter, and Obama—it all makes sense now.
And please, spare me your disdain–if the ObamaMessiah can make reprehensible remarks about the Special Olympics, and get away with it, then so can I.
I’ve been informed that Obama will pass the gift off to charity. It was still given to him directly so he can choose the charity. Gee, I wonder what charity he’ll pay off? Rev Wright? Planned Parenthood. ACLU?
ACORN most likely–probably through the back door.
Would it be just, or merely helpful, if all the nobility were inside the beltway when the inevitable moment arrives, and that ‘special cargo’–the one that was funded so generously by Iran, made with such care in North Korea, shipped so stealthily to Venezuela, and smuggled so skillfully across the southern border–is detonated?
He can’t pass the money on to charity without first accepting it. And if he accepts it he’s in violation of the Constitution. MSM be damned – Congress needs to stand up about this. (How’s that for a miracle?)
Seriously, though, if no one in Congress even raises the issue, we’ve truly passed the point of no return.
@127 NahnCee
“I wonder if Obama knew about his ridiculous award before it was announced and figured that if one set of Vikings were going to anoint him for peace, another set of them would be willing to give him the Olympics.”
There’s not a doubt in my mind he knew about it, even lobbied for it. And it could be that he’s a better player than we’ve given him credit for. Maybe it was a trade-off, and from his point of view it would be a no-brainer
How come we were stunned? Why didn’t we anticipate this many months ago? Definitely including myself. I was open-mouth shocked when I read it this morning. And shock definitely shows surprise.
But why didn’t we see this coming a mile away? It was SO predictable. We even know that Nobels are announced in the Fall, so this time at least, we could have also predicted “when.”
Maybe it’s that we have been in a state of near-numbness, month after month, week after week, as one outrage has followed another, piling up higher and higher. Shock fatigue? Outrage exhaustion? Maybe that accounts for our being surprised by this, for our not already expecting and predicting it.
Maybe our big questions right now should be “What next?” “When?” “Who?” “How?” “Where?” “How bad?” “What should we do then?” “Before then?”
Somehow, we gotta get ahead of this curve. And stay there. More prayer, please.
This is the penultimate attempt of the postmodern NPR left (and whomever their counterpart is in EU land) to maintain the narrative by any and every means.
To the white Obama voter, his Nobel is really “their” Nobel, too.
They may find, much to their dismay, that if they go about proclaiming that they are PERSONALLY responsible for his Nobel because they voted for him, they will also be held PERSONALLY responsible, by dint of their vote, for his failures and atrocities.
Sleep light, little people. Rest assured that many of us WILL hold you PERSONALLY responsible, with all that entails.
Every exalted prize deserves a good name. The Academy has its Oscars, etc, I hereby propose that the Nobel Peace Prize be renamed – The NiPPy Award.
Too close to “nappy award” — which means it would be racist.
Re #9 Wadeusaf:
Obama should win the chemistry prize because he and Michelle have such great chemistry.
And he should win the prize for literature because he wrote (had ghost written?) two actual books.
And he should win the prize for physics via astronomy because he is such a star.
And most certainly he should win the prize for medicine since he is pushing a new health plan.
We should all be celebrating this victory for America — all except Bill Clinton who is probably muttering incoherently at this very moment.
This is the joke of the year. Talk about devaluing a Nobel Peace Prize! Next they’ll be handing them out to the vapid Hollywood celebra-chicks.
As for Obama’s policies, they will produce war, not peace. His strategies are time-tested and have failed to produce peace every time.
Look for articles about how hard it is for the military services to retain key personnel, as the exodus begins.
83. luddy barsen:
I thought I heard that the script of the film would be ghosted by Bill Ayers.
Obama, is not a stupid man. He knows well that doing the minimum in Afghanistan will result in a Taliban/AQ control of the entire nation, the better to launch attacks against the US (with Pakistani nukes).
THIS IS WHAT HE WANTS. In the first place. He is of course culturally a Muslim and in deep sympathy with any who cause mass casualty attacks on the US, two weeks after 9/11 he wrote an editorial basically echoing Jeremiah Wright’s view that the US “deserved 9/11″ and calling for a global US apology.
But more importantly, Obama NEEDS the US to get nuked so he can use the crisis to force a permanent surrender. He dreams of being Marshall Petain, of Vichy America, or America’s Vizier. This has been his plan from the beginning.
The Nobel is a joke. Obama has done nothing. It’s an Affirmative Action choice by a bunch of aging SWPL group, mostly women, who find any Black guy who does not speak like Bobby Rush or Marion Berry to be the Messiah (a fairly racist assumption of itself that denies Blacks their humanity to be ordinary and flawed like the rest of us). Pathetic really and makes the Nobels a joke.
Monarchy, to make Wretchard’s point further, was usually characterized by men of better dress and comportment, but with only subtle clues as to the monarch. This was particularly true of those in the field, who took care to look like their generals, or those requiring the approval of the people. Machiavelli makes that point at length in the Discourses, a prince must be of the people, but separate, but not too separate. Too familiar or too much pomp and circumstance are both disastrous errors.
Whitehouse.gov has Obama’s “remarks” on the prize
The title is “Building a World that Gives Life to the Promise of Our Founding Documents”
http://tinyurl.com/yh3t4l5
There’s also a video and a some photographs described as “A few notable moments from this year’s diplomacy” (He watches as Abbas and Netanyahu shake hands! He walks down the hall at the Kremlin!)
“…I know that 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. 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…”
#145. marymcl
So, it looks like he’s going to accept the award.
Some months back I read a claim that Obama, in private, is supposed to have said that ‘he expects his name to be chiseled in stone someday.’ I took that with a grain of salt, but now I have to assume it realy was spoken by him. How much of this incredible hubris are we expected to endure over the next three-plus years?
People are still expecting the “big one” to hit like a deux ex machina and provoke a resurgence of national will. That is magical thinking and it concedes the initiative to the enemy. If you have let your foe into your OODA loop then that is your problem.
I do not expect another attack unless the frog attempts to jump out of the water. Right now the Democrats hope that the frog is so traumatized already that it will sit still until the flesh falls off its bones. The biggest worry that BHO, Pelosi and Napolitano have is the returning veterans. They have to reasons to be unhappy.
1) Their sacrifices in a war they were winning are being thrown away, as were their father’s 40 years ago.
2) The Democrats have been engaged in a wide ranging and successful, for evidence see Senator Al Franken, conspiracy to throw away the votes of members of the armed forces.
My expectation, fusing this topic with that of the prior thread, is that we will soon see a string of “crazed veterans” themed movies, TV plots and utting edge theatrical works.
146. Don Rodrigo:
Actually, back in his college days, when he was scamming and peddling dope, he said that one day he would be knonw as a “stoned chiseller”.
Oh, Rurik, it would be great if you could cite where that potent quote came from.
#114 marymcl
Don’t be so sure – the Great Locomotive of American History is more than capable of winning the Stanley Cup. His ability is boundless. His accomplishments the subject of legend and epic poems. Where is Virgil when he is needed? Obama virumque cano
Blogging on a Blackberry means not having to worry about edit functions.
Mr. President I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to amend and extend my remarks for The Recordm
@150 Engineer
No, no, no!!! Not the Stanley Cup! OK, he’s swept the first round. But that’s all and there’s three more to go. Besides, I’m a Sabres fan – we never say die -
“How can a “man of peace” wage war?”
Never seemed to stop Arafat.
finally Whirled Peas is at hand
In completely unrelated news the Department of Commerce cleared the purchase of Publisher’s Clearing House by an overseas conglomerate controlled by Bertelsmann, Lukoil and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. In their first press release the new owners announced that to their “surprise and delight” the winner of both this year’s and next year’s Grand Prize was Barack Obama.
When visiting China he discovers a small key in a fortune cookie that happens to fit a small box, containing the access code to a Swiss bank account, that was accidentally left in his room. While having the appetizers at a State Banquet in Malaysia he will be astounded to discover a perfect pearl in every oyster.
/sarkity sark sark
marymcl,
Regarding a prior thread; my four footed friend will do anything for me, except obey an order.
Herb #74 wrote: “Sometime down the road, Obama will meet a circumstance that will pierce his worldview. What happens to the personality when the driving internal meme gets busted?”
Sometimes they take the opportunity to ditch their false beliefs. Usually they resort to conspiracy theories to explain away inconvenient facts (eg 911).
lotM/155, simply give him no orders except to do what he is about to do anyway. Then you too can be a Grand Illusionist
Now that he’s a “Nobel peace prize winner,” I guess he’ll be less inclined to launch a military attack on Iran.
Speaking of ditching false beliefs, I found this in the WSJ which speaks directly to some of my earlier (and as it turns out, incorrect) speculations about What He Knew and When – it has some other interesting bits of information though -
“The selection process has become increasingly cumbersome as the aura around the prize has grown. There are now between 150 and 200 nominations every year: This year saw a record 205.
Examples of nominees who didn’t win the peace prize include Josef Stalin, the Soviet dictator, and Adolf Hitler, whose name was put forward in 1939.
When all the nominations are in, the committee draws up a short list of between five and 20 candidates which are then considered by the Nobel Institute’s director and research director and a group of Norwegian university professors. Their reports on the candidates are then discussed by the five-member prize committee.
Members, all of whom are former or serving deputies of the Storting, the Norwegian parliament, seek to reach a unanimous decision — normally by mid-September — but this has sometimes proved impossible and the choice is then made by a simple majority vote.
Some have criticized the selection procedure as untransparent. The committee never announces the names of nominees and information about candidacies is only made public 50 years after the decision. “It is all done in secret, you don’t know what is happening and whoever sits on that panel is very susceptible to the tides of the moment,” said Philip Towle, an academic from the department of politics and international studies at the University of Cambridge.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125509603349176083.html
Interesting that all the committee members are career politicians from another country who are making no bones about the fact they hope to influence US foreign policy with this award. Isn’t that what the Constitutional prohibition about accepting foreign titles, presents etc. is supposed to prevent?
luddy barsen,
That is the Bart Simpson approach to dog training.
“Go ahead eat that thing, sniff that butt, now wander over there.”
When training a dog or a child you begin with Anticipatory Direction so you can praise them for associating their desires with your instruction. Sometimes you evaluate them based on how you want them to perform rather them their actual achievement. That is what I call Aspirational Praise. When the performance fails to measure up to your goals a dissonance is produced that should result in a correction. The push of anticipation usually works better than the pull of aspiration but both need to be carefully controlled and backed by both praise and correction. In the case of Obama we have someone who has benefited for over a third of a century from an almost purely Aspirational approach on the part of everyone who controlled the rewards that he sought. In addition he has been remarkably effective at using the racism card to eliminate the essential component of correction from any situation in which he failed to perform up to the desired standard.
Country folk I understand have a saying, “The dog won’t hunt.”
Charles Krauthammer, bless his heart, has me a bit freaked…
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/056lfnpr.asp
hi guys, various technical and real world contingencies have kept me mostly off the interwebs for a day or so.
Regarding the subject at hand, does Obama really think it will forestall jihad, to give into it? And could he even be right, if we simply pay Afghanistan and the Taliban say $10,000,000,000 jizya, instead of spending five or ten times that to kill them? And even if that will work – should we do it?
I think some more “realistic” ROE would wrap this thing up with the existing forces in six months tops. But the howling that it would involve around the world – can they retract the Nobel Peace Prize after the fact?
One poster mentioned Churchill. He has many critics, but at least Churchill paid his dues, actually graduated from Sandhurst(The British West Point), experienced war as a junior officer, stood for Parliament – won and lost several elections, became a minister in several british governments, appointed a battalion commander and spent 6 months on the Western Front – on the front lines – during WW1, AND made one of the pivotal decisions in history – the refusal to contemplate peace with Hitler. Let alone his written work.
Compare that to “The One”. The world has gone mad.
TPT @ 161: Not quite sure that CK has it all worked out. Me, I could do with a little isolationism as long as we keep the military strong. Problem is that’s a pretty hard pair of horses to harness together.
“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” the committee said.
So O got his award not for accomplishment, but for bringing “hope” to the world’s people. Since I’ve spent the last year with less hope for the future than ever before, I can only conclude that the hope Obama is dispensing so freely is being stolen from me. I’m funding not just his cash spending spree, but his emotional one as well. So who says there’s no such thing as vampires?
@160 LotM
“In the case of Obama we have someone who has benefited for over a third of a century from an almost purely Aspirational approach on the part of everyone who controlled the rewards that he sought.”
It won’t go on forever. He’s only human, and mightier men than he have fallen and failed to rise again. It’s simply a matter of time. As Professor Hanson recently pointed out, Nemesis will have her due. And I daresay Obama’s debt to the old bat is going to be huge.
But that’s his problem. Our problem is to contain or forestall the damage he does in the meantime. The Nobel prize makes that harder in the sense that it will distract many swing voters and centrists from paying attention to what he and his lefty pals are really getting up to.
BTW regarding the performance art thing, I say we turn your canine friend loose in that hallway and see what happens. What could go wrong?
Man Of Peace
by Bob Dylan
Look out your window, baby, there’s a scene you’d like to catch,
The band is playing “Dixie,” a man got his hand outstretched.
Could be the Fuhrer
Could be the local priest.
You know sometimes
Satan comes as a man of peace.
He got a sweet gift of gab, he got a harmonious tongue,
He knows every song of love that ever has been sung.
Good intentions can be evil,
Both hands can be full of grease.
You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.
Well, first he’s in the background, then he’s in the front,
Both eyes are looking like they’re on a rabbit hunt.
Nobody can see through him,
No, not even the Chief of Police.
You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.
Well, he catch you when you’re hoping for a glimpse of the sun,
Catch you when your troubles feel like they weigh a ton.
He could be standing next to you,
The person that you’d notice least.
I hear that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.
Well, he can be fascinating, he can be dull,
He can ride down Niagara Falls in the barrels of your skull.
I can smell something cooking,
I can tell there’s going to be a feast.
You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.
He’s a great humanitarian, he’s a great philanthropist,
He knows just where to touch you, honey, and how you like to be kissed.
He’ll put both his arms around you,
You can feel the tender touch of the beast.
You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.
Well, the howling wolf will howl tonight, the king snake will crawl,
Trees that’ve stood for a thousand years suddenly will fall.
Wanna get married? Do it now,
Tomorrow all activity will cease.
You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.
Somewhere Mama’s weeping for her blue-eyed boy,
She’s holding them little white shoes and that little broken toy
And he’s following a star,
The same one them three men followed from the East.
I hear that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.
Copyright ©1983 Special Rider Music
Link
Josh @ 164: “Me, I could do with a little isolationism as long as we keep the military strong. Problem is that’s a pretty hard pair of horses to harness together.”
I could live with that, provided as you noted we kept a strong military. Hard to believe Lord Zero will pursue such a course.
160 Life
anyone who has trained dogs for agily, knows that Anticipatory is the key, and the difficulty is to adapt your body gesture to what you want that your dog understand, and a few milimeters of derailment can oost you a lot, the dog goes to the wrong obstacle
agility sorry typo
Marie Claude,
I was busy spinning a fantasy about a Euro-committee called A.G.I.L.Y. and you pulled the rug out.
marymcl,
The problem is that when he falls now he falls on us. His checks bounce and we get the bill.
He does not strike me as a man that would have made it through OCS in any branch of the service. It is not clear that he could have passed a background check or even gotten into staff officer orientation as a lawyer.
LotM @ 171 One thing that may yet work in our favor and marymcl hits on it – Obama must be feeling like he’s riding an unstoppable wave – just think of how high the dude has climbed in such a short time – I tend to believe the speculation that we have a narcissist on our hands – now he’s won the Nobel Prize, surely a Leftie’s proof of Providence’s Imprimatur…
I believe that the man will lose all ability to resist overreaching, and that in doing so, may hasten his downfall to the point that he is unable to implement anything that can further harm us even before a hoped-for dramatic reversal in 2010…
Am I whistling past the graveyard here???
Batman and Nahncee,
I think that it should be renamed the Nipsey award, in remembrance of Nipsey Russel who I am positive would sing president Obama’s praises just as he gave the federal legislature its due in his unique four line to do.
“The opposite of pro is con
That fact is clearly seen
If progress means move forward
Then what does Congress mean?”
Then we could all put forth four line verse in honor of the inauspicious nonevent.
Lets hope the president is allowed by Congress to donate that money to the some real peace keepers, like the wounded warriors of 10th Mountain and 82nd Airborne and perhaps British 2 Rifles deserve a bit.
Here would be my poor rhyme, a la russel time,
A maverick politician,
Obama’s hoped for legacy
But Apology without contrition,
is like a tomcat’s tom-foolery.
TPT/172; remember LBJ appointing hisself a battlefield commander? Among the problems with that was that local operational intell & plans had to go up and down a longer (thus more vulnerable to leakage or worse) chain of command? Now imagine Obama’s new “rifle-shots at narrow AQ targets” doctrine. Should the White house decide to micromanage it –and it will –just imagine the security problem. Who would be surprised if AQ ended up nestled somewhere in the loop?
( related, take a look at this and then take a look here )
but it’s not like anyone would have any real reason to be worried, right?
naw, no reason at all.
Isolationism was a 19th Century ideal that depended on two conditions it’s advocates did not acknowledge.
1) Dominance of the the Sea by the Royal Navy.
2) Physical isolation from any potential enemy, other than Mexico.
Mexico has always been America’s Lebanon but never was a serious rival.
The Isolationism of the 1930s was already an anachronism. Fortunately the second condition still held and that permitted FDR the physical space and time needed to prepare a reluctant nation to enter WW-II.
The fact is that we cannot withdraw from this struggle. China will compete with us for resources in Asia, in Australia, in Africa and in Latin America. Russia will attempt to control energy supplies and use them to dominate essential sources of wealth and power that we cannot have used against us. While the world no longer defines power by access to coal and iron, as it did when Containment theory was first formulated after WW-II, the key regions of England, Germany, Japan, Russia and the USA still exist. The new sources of power may have moved a few or a few hundred miles, from the Ruhr valley or from Manchester or from the Ohio valley or from the Donets basin, and some new regions have arisen, in India, Israel and China but the United States cannot allow hostile forces to gain preponderant control of a set of key locations.
Charles Krauthammer connects again. “Nothing is written.”
Unfortunately, Dr K cannot get up and dance like Peter O’Toole.
CASSIUS
Who offered him the crown?
CASCA
Why, Antony.
BRUTUS
Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.
CASCA
I can as well be hanged as tell the manner of it:
it was mere foolery; I did not mark it. I saw Mark
Antony offer him a crown;–yet ’twas not a crown
neither, ’twas one of these coronets;–and, as I told
you, he put it by once: but, for all that, to my
thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he
offered it to him again; then he put it by again:
but, to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his
fingers off it. And then he offered it the third
time; he put it the third time by: and still as he
refused it, the rabblement hooted and clapped their
chapped hands and threw up their sweaty night-caps
and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because
Caesar refused the crown that it had almost choked
Caesar; for he swounded and fell down at it: and
for mine own part, I durst not laugh, for fear of
opening my lips and receiving the bad air.
CASSIUS
But, soft, I pray you: what, did Caesar swound?
CASCA
He fell down in the market-place, and foamed at
mouth, and was speechless.
BRUTUS
‘Tis very like: he hath the failing sickness.
CASSIUS
No, Caesar hath it not; but you and I,
And honest Casca, we have the falling sickness.
CASCA
I know not what you mean by that; but, I am sure,
Caesar fell down. If the tag-rag people did not
clap him and hiss him, according as he pleased and
displeased them, as they use to do the players in
the theatre, I am no true man.
BRUTUS
What said he when he came unto himself?
CASCA
Marry, before he fell down, when he perceived the
common herd was glad he refused the crown, he
plucked me ope his doublet and offered them his
throat to cut. An I had been a man of any
occupation, if I would not have taken him at a word,
I would I might go to hell among the rogues. And so
he fell. When he came to himself again, he said,
If he had done or said any thing amiss, he desired
their worships to think it was his infirmity. Three
or four wenches, where I stood, cried ‘Alas, good
soul!’ and forgave him with all their hearts: but
there’s no heed to be taken of them; if Caesar had
stabbed their mothers, they would have done no less.
lotM/175; might add that the mideast’s oil (KSA alone sits over 20% or 30% of the earth’s supply) is light, easy to refine –and has a “lifting cost” but a small fraction of the global average. IOW, a barrel of it creates much more wealth (industrial power, military industrial power) than a barrel from most other sources (Nigeria has some light & easy lift oil).
North America’s shale and tar sands oil, by contrast, costs so much more to produce that it is really a cognitive error to even think of the two barrels as related to one another in the economic sense.
the hypothetical from hell is that dominos fall really fast once the first one goes over. It’s entirely possible for a wrong president to to get pushed completely out of the mideast by a rampant and cold Caspian axis. Then after a year or so of eating boiled grass along the side of our empty freeways, Code Pink and the ‘no blood for oil’ folks will be screaming to go back into the mideast. only then it’ll have to be D-Day style, and D-day didn’t include facing shoals of nuclear missiles last time. Will next time tho.
Obama is known for things he has Won, not things he has Done.
Much thanks to Rush Limbaugh for his constant willingness to play Shrek to that little mulatto Lord Farquaad. The man truly is a national treasure.
Mr. Fernandez, I simply can’t help myself. And with apologies to Walt who is a much finer poet. . .
The Twelve Days of the Peace Prize
On the first day of the Peace Prize
The Committee sent to me
A Nobel without the prefix “Ig”
On the second day of the Peace Prize
The Committee sent to me
Two ignored wars
And a Nobel without the prefix “Ig”
On the third day of the Peace Prize
The Committee sent to me
Three tax evaders
Two ignored wars
And a Nobel without the prefix “Ig”
On the fourth day of the Peace Prize
The Committee sent to me
Four martyred Nedas
Three tax evaders
Two ignored wars
And a Nobel without the prefix “Ig”
On the fifth day of the Peace Prize
The Committee sent to me
Five abandoned Poles
Four martyred Nedas
Three tax evaders and
Two ignored wars
And a Nobel without the prefix “Ig”
On the sixth day of the Peace Prize
The Committee sent to me
Six Derrion Alberts
Five abandoned Poles
Four martyred Nedas
Three tax evaders and
Two ignored wars
And a Nobel without the prefix “Ig”
On the seventh day of the Peace Prize
The Committee sent to me
Seven Rangels scamming
Six Derrion Alberts
Five abandoned Poles
Four martyred Nedas
Three tax evaders and
Two ignored wars
And a Nobel without the prefix “Ig”
On the eighth day of the Peace Prize
The Committee sent to me
Eight Pelosis strutting
Seven Rangels scamming
Six Derrion Alberts
Five abandoned Poles
Four martyred Nedas
Three tax evaders and
Two ignored wars
And a Nobel without the prefix “Ig”
On the ninth day of the Peace Prize
The Committee sent to me
Nine Reids ascowling
Eight Pelosis strutting
Seven Rangels scamming
Six Derrion Alberts
Five abandoned Poles
Four martyred Nedas
Three tax evaders and
Two ignored wars
And a Nobel without the prefix “Ig”
On the tenth day of the Peace Prize
The Committee sent to me
Ten ACORNS falling
Nine Reids ascowling
Seven Rangels scamming
Six Derrion Alberts
Five abandoned Poles
Four martyred Nedas
Three tax evaders and
Two ignored wars
And a Nobel without the prefix “Ig”
On the eleventh day of the Peace Prize
The Committee sent to me
Eleven more banks failing
Ten ACORNS falling
Nine Reids ascowling
Eight Pelosis strutting
Seven Rangels scamming
Six Derrion Alberts
Five abandoned Poles
Four martyred Nedas
Three tax evaders and
Two ignored wars
And a Nobel without the prefix “Ig”
On the twelfth day of the Peace Prize
The Committee sent to me
Twelve per cent unemployment
Eleven more banks failing
Ten Acorns falling
Nine Reids ascowling
Eight Pelosis strutting
Seven Rangels scamming
Six Derrion Alberts
Five abandoned Poles
Four martyred Nedas
Three tax evaders and
Two ignored wars
And a Nobel without the prefix “Ig”
rickl, what Dylan album is that song off of? Very powerful imagery.
luddy barsen,
Agreed but the difference between Arab oil and German coal is important. The first was an asset that the inhabitants could use to build industrial and military power. It was important to the US to keep the Soviets from controlling the Ruhr because that location served as a nexis where energy sources, the basic industrial raw material (iron ore), physical, financial and intellectual capital and transportation routes come together. That is true of all five of the key locations I reviewed, Saudi oil is a contributory good and we certainly do not want it to fall under the control of an enemy but the Saudis themselves have proven unable to assemble more then two (energy and finance) assets from the six that I listed.
Biff Larkin,
Good choice, there’s one playwright with a future.
Brooks,
Well done.
Glenn Beck,
WTF? That seems unlike you.
to F post No. 120
People need to be clear on this point: Barrio was PRESIDENT of the Harvard Law Review. NOT editor.
At the Yale Daily News, for comparison, the Editor is the one who has to earn the position based on a record of superior work in writing and analysis of issues, opinions, and publications. And I believe the Editor of the Law Review is chosen by his peers – other law students. Or is the President ALSO the editor? Anyone have any information on this???
In STARK contrast…
The Law Review presidency – especially in the case of this annointed person – is much more of a political plum, and from what I’ve read, the administration of the Law School and the University seem to have important votes to cast in the process.
Anyone who has actual knowledge and some credentials as having served on the Harvard Law Review should be able to shed some light on this.
It is just one pebble in the general avalanche, of course.
But I am sick beyond description of hearing undocumentable bullpuckey piled above our toiling heads, about how the Dowager Empress Clinton was voted one of the One Hundred Smartest Lawyers in the United States, or that Harry Insane Burama tested out as the biggest stinking brain ever recorded in the history of the Universe. Not enough ascii characters in the registers to actually show his full IQ on screen without going to scientific notation.
Obviously, the public photos of our towering GENIUS Prezzie have all been Photoshopped to erase the wires connecting his enormous cranium to the supporting weather balloon tethered above.
…
Ahh, here we go:
A contemporaneous article from the New York Times described the election process as follows:
“Until the 1970′s the editors were picked on the basis of grades, and the president of the Law Review was the student with the highest academic rank. Among these were Elliot L. Richardson, the former Attorney General, and Irwin Griswold, a dean of the Harvard Law School and Solicitor General under Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon.
That system came under attack in the 1970′s and was replaced by a program in which about half the editors are chosen for their grades and the other half are chosen by fellow students after a special writing competition. The new system, disputed when it began, was meant to help insure that minority students became editors of The Law Review.”
That is from the article “First Black Elected to Head Harvard’s Law Review”
By FOX BUTTERFIELD, Special to The New York Times, dated Tuesday, February 6, 1990
Interesting date there. Let’s see, o graduated from the exclusive and prestigious and amazingly endowed Punahau School in 1979, attended Occidental from shortly after high school until transferring to Columbia University in 1981, receiving his B.A. in 1983.
A few years in Chicago making his community organizing bones, then a stint at Harvard Law from 1988 to 1991. Back to Chicago for a second period, this time earning much higher returns on his time. This is the period where he seems to have actually run some sort of organization with hundreds of employees (not clear whether they were full time or just names on a padded list.) And it was a lot of community activists, evidently paid with funds provided not by earnings but by “contributions” “grants” and other scams.
Sweet.
One of the places listed as having benefited from the genius leadership of o is the Lugenia Burns Hope Center.
By the Way, the Lugenia Burns Hope Center is another community activist organization specializing in “leadership training”, NOT a medical burn center providing hope for burn victims.
Well, I was SO WRONG about o. The Nobel Prize, yet. I suppose my own judgment can’t POSSIBLY compare to the combined wisdom of all those worthy members of the Norwegian Parliament who also awarded a Peace Prize to the MURDERING PERVERT YASSIR ARAFAT! AND THE MORON kisser of any Communist rear end that wanders close enough, JAMES EARL CARTER!!!!!
Yeah, genius.
LOTM
Obama is known for things he has Won, not things he has Done
And once the One does become known for what he has Done rather than what he has Won…
…he will be One and Done.
(terms that is)
It’s now
The Nobel Appease Prize
Mad Fiddler,
Remember the other great brain delivered up just a few years earlier by the the Harvard Law review, Eliot Spitzer? The difference is that Spitzer has a work ethic.
JMH,
I’m a poet and didn’t know it!
After all those years I suddenly discovered I had been speaking in prose all my life.
- after Moliere
Brooks/179
Terrific stuff!
Ten ACORNS falling
Nine Reids ascowling
Seven Rangels scamming
Brilliant!
As for being a better poet, I am not a poet, I’m a scribbler, a versifier. Real poets have important things to say; I merely comment in rhyme upon the passing scene.
Walt Erickson
180. trangbang68:
It’s from the album “Infidels”, from 1983. It’s not one of my favorite albums, but there are some good songs on it, like this one and “Jokerman”.
I’ve always liked “Man of Peace” but I don’t think of it all that often. It seems to have jelled somewhat for me now, like it suddenly came into focus. It has been going through my head all day today. Funny, that.
Oh, those Norwegians! Isn’t that Scandinavian sense of humor sublime!
Ned
rickl and trangbang68
On a slightly less sinister note, here’s one for the gang of five in Oslo:
I once had a girl
Or should I say, she once had me
She showed me her room
Isn’t it good Norwegian wood?
She asked my to stay and told me sit anywhere
So I looked around and I noticed there wasn’t a chair
I sat on a rug, biding my time
Drinking her wine
We talked until two, and then she said:
“It’s time for bed,”
She told me she worked in the morning and started to laugh
I told her I didn’t, and crawled off to sleep in the bath
And when I awoke, I was alone
This bird has flown
So I lit a fire
Isn’t it good Norwegian wood?
John Lennon supposedly wrote the song about one of his Letterman-type extramarital flings.
wretchard @ 28:
Time only flows one way, Richard. And no matter what any mortal does, it flows. We rail against the g-ds to no avail. No one knows the way, all any man can do is what seems right based upon the road we can see.
The Buddha sat beneath the banyan for years. To the casual observer nothing happened, he sat. But to one who knows, the entire world passed beneath that banyan, bringing it’s lessons and educating Siddhartha. To the unknowing, he just sat.
The sad part about all these Tranzis, is they think that they affect the flow of time. But we know the truth, they just rail at the g-ds for nought. The g-ds will have their ways, no matter. You get it. Few do.
As VDH says, Nemesis is owed a debt by BHO. I only hope not too many die when the debt comes due.
LotM/185
“I’m a poet and didn’t know it
but my feet show it
they’re longfellows!”
(alternate ending)
“they’re moliere!”
PAC/189; today is john Lennon’s birthday
he’d've been 69
that’s hard to Imagine!
wonder if he’d still be writing.
“Instant Karma” reprised “Instant Oatmeal”
“Ticket to Ride” as “Ticket to Rude”
“Lucy in IV’s with Diapers”
–groan–
My gut reaction to this morning’s news was “The world has moved on.”
Our good host Wretchard the Cat has again put the question into chillingly apt context.
The Ur-Question is: How do we and our way of life survive the progressive onslaught personified by Obama?
Our late friend Fred nearly despaired. (I really want to think that he would be encouraged by the Tea Party phenomenon.) Habu and others are enamored of the “Red Dawn” romance. I have long argued, pace Wretchard’s battle by inches thesis, that we must “get in the face” of our opponents, school board meeting by school board meeting.
But this …
The greedy progressives are so quickly squandering their moral arguments that they will soon be completely bankrupt. (In my part of the world, we would say that they are eating the seed corn.) The Nobel Peace Prize used to actually mean something.
Wretchard has long challenged us to think hard about the dialectic of defeating progressivism while fighting islamism. Who will we be at the denouement?
We are Stephen King’s Roland.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, as they say, the news that Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize falls with a deafing thud in Mittel Amerika. People I know who voted for the man are now asking WTF?
Time and the river –what changes is the water –you cross that water once as it flows away down the river and gone from you forever. but the river never goes away –it will be there tomorrow and you can cross it again as long as you is still alive and still want to. The lady with the haunted eyes is a river, and just maybe she redeemed today the Nobel –Herta Müller, winning the prize for literature. Alas her writing of life growing up split between the GDR and Romania under Nicolea Ceausescu is not in English yet but you can read volumes in her face in the slide show.
luddy = buddy?
The tone is different, yet familiar …
191 he’d’ve been 69
that’s hard to Imagine!
wonder if he’d still be writing.
He’d be wearing one of those Woodstock 2009 T-shirts that reads, “Hey, baby, wanna drop some antacid?”
Konyok/196, long time no see! yep it’s the same me –belmont had some kind of software problem some weeks back –comments in a mess for days and days –it still won’t enter a comment under my name –i have to gizmo around to get a print.
Did you catch Saakashvili on the tube the other day? he sounded strong –better than he did last august for sure.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/hardtalk/8291593.stm
****
PAC/197, other side of tee shirt sez,
“Need Pot, will trade Weed! Hurry!”
Here Buddy, try this version of your name and see if it works.
So far, so good.
PF
FYI ä is _alt_ 132
taest -ein zwei drei
*
hey, it worked! but the first try, with real email addy, it blooped –this one got in with the email addy =/- “fakeemail@ blankety.com”
so it’s been the email addy all along! damn! now that i’ve been thru all the rigamorole downtown legally changing over to Luddy Barsen. shewtt!
konyok, are you still happy to have made the big jump, or are you feeling like you are back in the soup again?
Time and the river –what changes is the water –you cross that water once as it flows away down the river and gone from you forever. but the river never goes away –it will be there tomorrow and you can cross it again as long as you is still alive and still want to. The lady with the haunted eyes is a river, and just maybe she redeemed today the Nobel –Herta Müller, winning the prize for literature. Alas her writing of life growing up split between the GDR and Romania under Nicolea Ceausescu is not in English yet but you can read volumes in her face in the slide show.
This sounds a little Luddy Hemingwayesque, bourboned up a bit, and aged.
I have Ernie on the mind lately, as I have just recently realized that the world famous Hemingway Review is published in my hometown.
Hiya Buddy!
I was hoping that was you.
I took a powder after the election, the dark civil war fantasies exhausted me.
You seem a bit more chipper these days. Is it that the fear of what might happen is worse than adapting one’s self to the calamity?
I think Solzhenitsyn and Wretchard have some things to say about that …
This is a historic occasion that brings us together here. Barack Hussein Obama now has the Nobel imprimatur. Those of us who’ve been wise to the con wink at each other, many of the rubes are figuring it out and the true believers are more convinced than ever.
For a good example of the cognitive dissonance for erstwhile Obamists, check out Ron Rosanbaum: http://pajamasmedia.com/ronrosenbaum/ arguing that the committee chose The One because of us haters.
Still, this event changes our world and we must learn how to absorb it and use it to defend what we treasure.
Saakashvili speaks English well, and he has used the remnants of the Soviet apparatus skillfully to stay in power. (That we have not seen an Obama appearance with him is eloquent testimony to his precarious position.) Even more than most of us, Saakashvili is praying for a Republican restoration.) He is holding on for dear life.
Nevertheless, Georgian wine goes well with everything.
Buddy,
I’m not sure I understand the jump that you are referring to.
**
I can grok Herta, coming from a parallel Volksdeutsch lineage – Volga German to the 105th parallel …
You got to hand it to the handlers of the Hemingway estate, they are dribbling out the remaining writings in such a way as to milk every last nickel from the trove, as good trustees should do. He has now published more titles after he died than when he was alive.
Here’s a title taken from random from the Fall 2005 Hemingway Review–
“He Felt the Change So That It Hurt Him All Through”–Sodomy and Transvestic Hallucination in Late Hemingway
Here’s another
“How People Go To Hell”–Pessimism, Tragedy, and the Affinity to Schopenhauer in The Sun Also Rises
People get money, get grants and stuff, for writing such things. And travel around to conferences in Venice, Havana, Madrid, and….Idaho.
If you’re not sick of it yet, here’s one last–
“He Only Looked Sad the Same Way I Felt”–
The Textual Confessions of Hemingway’s Hunters
‘The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living’
Hi Konyok. Regarding some of our previous exchanges: Robert Kaplan has noted that China wants us to stay in Afghanistan because they want at those mineral resources in them thar hills.
Fine: Just as long as they pay stupendous royalties directly to our occupying outposts. The boys will of course share the wealth with *cooperative* locals via various and sundry projects. So we got us some potential we did not know about before. And I daresay resource-poor Japan might want to help out with the financing of those mines.
And of COURSE those mines would need to be powered by petroleum refined from opium poppies.
Of course we need a little “regime change” inside the beltway before we can remove obstacles to progress.
Herta is new to me, must look her up. But have you ever heard of another Romanian heroine named Catherine Caradja, the “Angel of Ploesti”? One incredible life story
and they should have called it the Caradja-Reagan Doctrine.
I learned about here from a friend who told me about how the Romanian Armed Forces made their last stand evacuating 1700 American POWs.
My bedtime now. Will check in tomorrow.
Swedish journalist claims Obama Nobel jackpot
While the decision to award US President Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize has been received by widespread surprise, one Swedish journalist is toasting the Norwegians after winning 50,000 kronor ($7,177) betting on the outcome.
“As soon as I saw the artists, a penny dropped,” Lindholm told the Resumé newspaper.
The line up, which includes a slew of Obama favourites, and is set to be hosted by close ally Will Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, was all that Lindholm needed to write up an article for the paper predicting the US president to emerge as the winner.
The enterprising hack decided to back up his hunch with hard cash and wagered 1,000 kronor on the Nobel committee plumping for Obama, despite the fact that when nominations closed for the prestigious prize the former Illinois senator had only been in office for a number of weeks.
Barack Obama’s status as a rank outsider, with names such as Bill Clinton, Afghanistan’s Ghazi din Muhammad and Colombian freedom fighter Piedad Córdoba tipped for the prize, was reflected in the odds of 50-1 given to Lindholm.
“50,000 kronor. A pretty good commission,” Lindholm said to the newspaper.
While Lindholm enjoys the fruits of his labour, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee chairperson Thorbjørn Jagland was left to explain the surprise choice.
Well, after the Americans gave the Presidency of the United States to a man who “hasn’t done anything yet” (per his own wife in an interview, 12-6-04), I guess the Norwegians felt they could give the Nobel Peace Prize to him along the same criteria.
America viam ducent. (sorry if the grammar is off – I never studied Latin)
America est toast
@202 konyok
Rosenbaum is losing his mind. Seriously. There are some pretty insufferable trolls haunting the threads of PJM (thankfully most of them stay clear of BC) but he’s starting to make them look like deep thinkers. For a while I thought he was going through some kind of left-to-right identity crisis and fighting it every step of the way. He ties himself into some impossible rhetorical knots. But lately his posts are getting weird and this last one is just demented. Sad to watch anyone go to pieces before your eyes.
Marie Claude,
Reading this thread I can’t help but notice that you read like a swash-buckling Thomas Jefferson these days.
So, I must apologize. I’m sorry for ripping into you a few threads back. I obviously misread you. Accepted?
PS: I’m noticing a new flood of emigres from Europe arriving in Arizona: my new neighbor in rural Northern Arizona is Belgian, and his lovely wife is Swedish. I surprised them as I hiked across their parcel with my dog yesterday…they were sunbathing au natural, and their unselfconscious nudity tagged them as European immediately (I used to spend the odd Summer on a see near Horne, Austria with my godparents, and the populace’s relaxed nudity made the sailing, swimming and conversation there both exotic and memorable). Both of my new neighbors just got their “green cards,” and they expressed real joy at becoming American citizens.
Sorry, again. I’ll read you twice from now on!
-Steve
bogie wheel,
The latin lesson.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVy4BrxpKGQ
Steve:
A deal they can’t resist:
Real Estate, and now the Dollar, Busted!
AZ budget makes California look flush.
To add insult to injury, the Feds are comin down on the only good Sheriff left.
For some reason, I think I’m in the mood to read a little Bertie Wooster tonight. Maybe “Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit.”
Shocking Op Ed from Friedman:
– The Peace (Keepers) Prize –
All that said, I hope Mr. Obama will take this instinct a step further when he travels to Oslo on Dec. 10 for the peace prize ceremony. Here is the speech I hope he will give:
“Let me begin by thanking the Nobel committee for awarding me this prize, the highest award to which any statesman can aspire. As I said on the day it was announced, ‘I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize.’ Therefore, upon reflection, I cannot accept this award on my behalf at all.
“But I will accept it on behalf of the most important peacekeepers in the world for the last century — the men and women of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.
“I will accept this award on behalf of the American soldiers who landed on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, to liberate Europe from the grip of Nazi fascism. I will accept this award on behalf of the American soldiers and sailors who fought on the high seas and forlorn islands in the Pacific to free East Asia from Japanese tyranny in the Second World War.
“I will accept this award on behalf of the American airmen who in June 1948 broke the Soviet blockade of Berlin with an airlift of food and fuel so that West Berliners could continue to live free. I will accept this award on behalf of the tens of thousands of American soldiers who protected Europe from Communist dictatorship throughout the 50 years of the cold war.
…he goes on
Doug, after his words began to sink in, one barely recovering Nobel committee member turned to another and asked:
“Who is this guy? Sarah Palin?”
Yours is a reverie many would love to indulge before the real world comes crashing down.
When merit and valor is sneered at and worse, you get less of it.