The President Obama is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize thread¹ received a comment from Joe Markowitz. Mr Markowitz’s website is named Hope and Change, and, unsurprisingly, Mr Markowitz was a former “community blogger” on Barack Obama’s campaign website. The photo of Mr Markowitz comes from his law office site. I didn’t realize that Mr Markowitz was a reader, but CSPT is listed in the “Links from across the spectrum” section of his blogroll.
Mr Markowitz wrote:
To get elected President, Barack Obama spent two years persuading Americans that they should try a new kind of politics based on a recognition of common interests, rather than the divisive and hateful politics we have been used to for many years. And a solid majority of voting Americans chose that message over the promise of more of the same. That in itself probably represented to the committee a solid achievement that justified awarding the Peace Prize to Obama. Now the United States, instead of being viewed as the world’s greatest threat to peace, is viewed as the greatest champion of peace. The US has gone from seventh to the most admired country in the world in less than a year.
Almost every presidential election in which someone from the previously opposing party is elected could be described that way, and, in fact, the partisans of the new president certainly do use similar words to describe their candidate’s victory.
Since getting elected, Obama has renounced torture,
Has anything in our interrogation policies actually changed yet?
shown new respect for international law,
What actual changes has the President made here?
drawn down troops from Iraq,
He promised to withdraw them all; has he come anywhere close to that?
reached out to the Muslim community in Egypt and Iraq,
He did make a pleasant sounding speech; did it actually change anything? Are the Muslims now our friends?
re-invigorated the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians,
He has? The Israelis just elected Benjamin Netanyahu as their Prime Minister, and Mr Netanyahu is more of an opponent of the “peace process” than most Israeli politicians, simply not believing that the Palestinians are really interested in peace. What has President Obama actually gotten done here?
and made strong efforts to reduce nuclear proliferation.
He made a suggestion, period. There have been no real discussions on this, nor could any have been expected; these kinds of negotiations typically take years. But nothing has actually gotten done in this area. President Obama hasn’t failed yet, but he hasn’t succeeded, either.
Obviously, the Nobel Committee wants to encourage these efforts and lend its stature to Obama’s continuing efforts on behalf of peace. So anyone who is genuinely interested in the cause of peace should be thrilled at this award. People who have a vested interest in promoting conflict, on the other hand, have been somewhat less than thrilled at this news.
A triumph of symbolism over substance, or perhaps of Hope over actual Change.
Jimmy Carter was regarded as a much less hawkish president than Ronald Reagan, but which one actually got more done as far as nuclear disarmament is concerned? Jimmy Carter signed the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II), which allowed the USSR to continue to build intercontinental-ranged nuclear delivery systems, and even allowed the USSR a numerical advantage. President Reagan opposed SALT II, and got the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks started; START — which wasn’t completed until the elder President Bush was in office — forced actual reductions in existing arsenals. President Reagan was criticized as a war-monger because he pushed the deployment of IRBMs in Europe, as a counter to the Soviet SS-20s, but that deployment — which never would have won him the Nobel Peace Prize — forced the removal of the SS-20s along with the US Pershing II IRBMs. If results matter, matter more than platitudes, President Reagan and the elder President Bush were far more effective than President Carter.
Of course, the very peaceful President Carter didn’t want to do anything that might seem aggressive, so naturally the USSR was expanding its influence and control in new places: Angola, Nicaragua and Afghanistan. President Reagan, warmonger that he was, resisted those moves, and the Communists were removed from power in Angola, Grenada, Nicaragua and Afghanistan. If results matter, President Reagan and the elder President Bush were far more effective than President Carter.
President Carter’s innate pacifism led to increasing tyranny in several countries, and our humiliation by the Iranians. President Reagan’s aggressive defense of the United States and American ideals led to liberation from Communism in several countries and helped pave the way — I give him partial, but certainly not full credit here — for the fall of the Soviet Union itself, and the institution of democracy in most parts of what was the USSR, as well as in the captive nations of the old Warsaw Pact.
Fast forward to 2002-2003, and the younger President Bush freed fifty million people from tyranny, from oppression by Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party and from the Taliban in Afghanistan. If democracy has not been perfectly implemented in Afghanistan yet, none existed in either country before President Bush took office.
Pacifism might sound ideal, but has, in practice, been surrender to tyranny; when you are unwilling to fight, unwilling to resist tyranny, then tyrants triumph, because they are not burdened by such scruples.
__________________________
¹ – Just a housekeeping note here: I’m going to close the comments to the original President Obama is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize thread, and ask readers to redirect their comments here, just to keep the subject from getting hard to follow.
Interesting the Nobel Piss Prize went to Gorby in 1990. I like PJ O’Rourke’s comments on the subject after the fall of the Berlin Wall: “Some folks say Gorbachev was a visionary. Yeah, he was a visionary, all right. Like Hirohito after Nagasaki.”
Eric:
PS From that same Wiki article: The Nobel Peace Prize is generally the most controversial of the Nobel Prizes; several of the selections have been heavily criticized.[7][8] Mohandas Gandhi never won the prize, despite having been nominated five times.
Eric, all Gandhi did was help free India. And he did it without a teleprompter.
Mr. Markowitz’s comment sounds like someone who has comfortably lowered the bar of expectation for POTUS.
There need not be any *real* accomplishment, just talking about it, hoping for it, and wishing upon a star for it, is enough.
This is not the America I once knew.
OtherDana:
Mr. Markowitz’s comment sounds like someone who has comfortably lowered the bar of expectation for POTUS.
There need not be any *real* accomplishment, just talking about it, hoping for it, and wishing upon a star for it, is enough.
This is not the America I once knew.
With the Left, it’s the intent that gets more attention, not the action. That’s why Carter and Gore got the thing over Gandhi and Reagan.
You folks still have not calmed down yet to reflect, as your knee-jerking continues.
Dana, you said so yourself yesterday, that you favor American hegemony, American militarism, and American unilateralism. Do you honestly think a continuation of the arrogance is sustainable?
So that statement sets the tone of your post, and you lived up to it by taking a simplistic cause and effect approach to what you refer to as ‘accomplishments’.
One example is your claim that Bush-43 liberated 50 million Iraqis from tyranny. You said nothing of the cost to do so in lives, limbs, dollars and quality of life. You would be more credible were you to cite the Iraqi reaction to our invasion and occupation of their country. You also avoid mentioning the self-serving aspects of our invasion. Even with all this said, you failed to note that we are coming out of this having not achieved some of Bush’s objectives: Control of Iraqi oil; a strong and permanent military presence in Iraq. So your comments are at best simplistic, at worst, deceptive.
Reagan faced an entirely different challenge than Obama now faces, so to compare the two is hardly useful or educational. And again, on touting Reagan’s accomplishments, you take the simplistic approach. You do not discuss the costs along with the benefits, and you presume that Reagan alone was responsible for the successes you list. You make no mention of the growing instability within the Soviet Union during Reagan’s time, the perestroika and glasnost phenomena, and the role of Gorbachev himself in the outcomes.
The Middle East has been a focal point of instability. What did Reagan do about that? We face a terrible economic downturn as we speak. What did Reaganomics and his laissez-faire approach to government regulation and oversight contribute to our current woes?
I think Joe Markowitz has it about right about Obama. The President has already changed the tone, and that is huge.
I can well understand how one who favors American hegemony, American unilateralism, and American militarism would not understand this accomplishment, but there are millions of others who do understand, so that this is what the Nobel Peace Prize expresses.
You folks lost the election because of your many failed policies. Now you want to undermine our current President to bring his initiatives and him to failure. There is a difference between touting your own policies and solutions to attempt to influence the President, Congress and other voters, and undermining the man President with all the trash talk that emanates from your side. The former is the patriotic thing for the party out of power to do, the latter is simply unpatriotic, placing the party and ideology above country.
So how about letting the Peace Prize award alone, instead working on promoting your solutions to Iraq, Afghanistan, Gitmo, the economy, health care, and education.
I’d like to see you folks get positive and contribute, instead of continuing with your negativism and trash talk.
Perry wrote:
Slight correction: roughly 25 million Iraqis and 25 million Afghanis.
The cost in dollars has been high; the cost in lives and limbs minor by the standards set in most wars, but still more than we’d like to see.
But there is no such thing as a cost-free war. Had the Iraq war been cost-free, it would never have occurred, meaning that 4,349 American soldiers who have been killed thus far would be alive today — and 25 million Iraqis would still be in slavery. We’d have spent hundreds of billions of dollars less — and 25 million Iraqis would still be in slavery. We all wish that Iraqi freedom had been less costly, but there is no such thing as no cost.
The Iraqis like being free, though many of them would have preferred it not happen by Western intervention. Trouble is, that wasn’t an option.
You assume that President Bush’s objective was control of Iraqi oil, but he never said that. As for a “strong and permanent military presence,” President Bush never said that, either, but if that was a goal of his, such was met throughout his term; it would be up to President Obama to scuttle that.
Perry wrote:
My solution to health care is: do nothing, leave things alone, it’s better the way that it is than anything the government would create.
There you go, done!
Hmmm, WordPress ate part of my own comment! My solution to education is: get the federal government out of it, and leave it to the states and localities, where the proper responsibility is in the first place. My solution to Guantanamo is to leave it open, to incarcerate the worst of the terrorist captives, and get the cameras and lawyers out of there. My solution to Iraq and Afghanistan is: use all the force necessary to locate and eliminate our foes.
There you go, done!
Perry who found a new hero sez:
I think Joe Markowitz has it about right about Obama. The President has already changed the tone, and that is huge.
The tone of what? The tone that you keep with that the Dems won, republicans shut-up? That tone? The tone that everything is a crisis whether it is or not? That tone? The tone of Carteresque appeasment? That tone?
Oh, I know the tone, it’s the tone of the printing press on money going into hyperdrive to pay for all of BO’s INTENTIONS.
Perry:
So how about letting the Peace Prize award alone, instead working on promoting your solutions to Iraq, Afghanistan, Gitmo, the economy, health care, and education.
If Bush got it, it would be blather for weeks from the left. And the World is laughing at Norway.
Iraq – Winding down
Afghanistan – BO wants to appease the Taliban – Big Mistake
Economy – STOP SPENDING!
Health Care – TORT Reform
Education – Get the Feds out, and give it back to the states.
There, done. Just do that!
Perry, did you actually read my article before commenting upon it? You wrote:
I wrote:
Emphasis added this time. I give a lot of credit to Lech Walesa and Solidarity, and to Pope John Paul II.
Some of that growing instability was caused by President Reagan and his policies, in the weakening of the USSR due to increased military costs while still losing ground. As for Comrade Gorbachev, somehow I don’t think that he intended what resulted; he bumbled his way toward the dissolution of his own country.
What Bush said and what he wished to accomplish may be two different things. Control of Iraqi Oil, OK, that is an assumption. But the permanent military presence is no assumption: A $600 million embassy/military HQ’s, and 15 bases scattered throughout Iraq, that’s reality.
Now here is a partial list of the “accomplishments” that were achieved during the Bush years, when American hegemony, American militarism, and American unilateralism were rampant.
“# A disastrous pre-emptive war in Iraq that destroyed America’s reputation, drained our treasure, cost the lives and limbs of tens of thousands of young Americans, resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi’s, displaced millions more, and strengthened Iran.
# Neglect for the economic, political and military needs of the struggle in Afghanistan – leaving us with no truly good options there eight years after 9/11.
# Demonization of the United Nations that went so far that they appointed a U.N. Ambassador more interested in destroying the institution than using it for diplomacy.
# Virtual neglect of the festering problem of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
# Abandoning the Clinton policy of engagement with North Korea that had prevented that country’s development of nuclear weapons. That worked so well that North Korea got those weapons on the Bush-Cheney watch.
# Abandoning the Geneva Conventions, due process of law and the shared values of the civilized world, and instead embracing torture, rendition, the debasement of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and detention without trial.
# For all of their tough talk about strengthening our military, they stretched it to the breaking point, so it became more difficult for America to take military action if it really were needed to maintain world peace.
# And for those who love America, one of their worst sins was that Bush and Cheney turned our country into one that polls showed – rightly or wrongly – many people in the world believed was the “greatest threat to world peace.”
h/t Robert Creamer
You might want to reconsider your ideology, Dana, because it does not seem to be working, it certainly is not helping our country, and it is not making us safer. These reasons reflect why Obama was elected; he has already changed this image to one of hope that America will lead with passion and resolve.
This change could fall flat if he is not able to deliver. You folks are doing your best to prevent him from delivering on this potential. What good will come out of that, I ask?
What Howard Zinn wrote:
You folks still have not calmed down yet to reflect, as your knee-jerking continues.
Perry, please stop mischaracterizing me: I just checked, and my knee was not jerking in the least, and frankly there was no lack of calm rather a giggle when reading Markowitz’s silliness.
Perry concluded:
Were you silent during the eight great years of the Bush Administration, or did you do what you could to frustrate his policies and goals?
But you were right on target with one thing: “This change could fall flat if he is not able to deliver.” I, for one, do not believe that the policies he has proposed can deliver, and, in fact, believe that they will contribute to actual harm for our country and its citizens. But, if the President does make good on his promises, and makes America both wealthier and safer, he’ll be lauded as a great president; if he does not, he’ll be jeered as a failure.
Yorkshire, if you don’t know the change in tone, then you have not been paying attention. Perhaps you ought to catch the Lehrer News Hour instead of being glued to FoxNews and Rush. You are being brainwashed; obviously you are better than that.
Your solutions should be debated, but I have to tell you: Iraq is winding down; you gave no solution on Afghanistan; “stop spending” will come, but we don’t get more jobs without government spending, as in the 30′s; tort reform, which I support, is not nearly enough to reform health care and bend the cost curve, and, more Repubs are coming on board for reform; only local control of education brings us back to unequal opportunity for too many disadvantaged kids.
There’s lots more to these issues than you imply with your ‘solutions”.
Perry:
Yorkshire, if you don’t know the change in tone, then you have not been paying attention
Then BO better rein in Pelosi and Reid. They’ve changed the tone alright – For The Worse.
If around the world? Sure he did – Sarkozy of France is laughing at him. And the world loves the tone that the US is going for the Carter period of appesement.
Yeah, Perry, I’ve been listening and what I hear makes me sick. And it’s a sickness that Obamacare won’t fix, but make worse. You should change your rose color glasses for a clear pair to see the real world, not what’s reflected in a teleprompter.
Howard Zinn shows us what pacifist logic entails. Dr Zinn wrote (see above):
What would have happened if the United States had not entered World War II? Germany had won the war on the Eastern Front, with the first Russian Revolution leading to the abdication of Tsar Nikolai II, and the Bolshevik Revolution toppling the Provisional Government; the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk cemented Russia’s defeat. That would have remained in place.
The entry of the United States into World War led the Germans to undertake a Spring Offensive for which they were ill-prepared, hoping to be able to win before American troops got strongly in place. This turned out to be a disaster for Germany, and led to their eventual surrender. Had the United States not entered the war, it is quite possible that it would have continued for another couple of years.
This is what the pacifists forget: sometimes the alternative to fighting is worse. For how much longer would the war have lasted had the US remained neutral?
Of course, had Germany been able to either win or conclude a more respectable armistice, perhaps Adolf Hitler would have remained a bum; no one can know.
Dana asks: “Were you silent during the eight great years of the Bush Administration, or did you do what you could to frustrate his policies and goals?”
No, I was not silent. But I also was not trying to undercut Bush, just redirect him to what I thought were better policies. I realized that we had Americans in harms way in Iraq. For the WMD, I wanted him to allow the Hans Blix people back in for inpections and searches. Rather than sanctions, which only impact the ordinary citizens and the poor, I favored the oil for food program, which unfortunately turned out to be corrupted. I opposed US military intervention, because I did not feel that Bush made the case for it, based on my reading of the British press. Instead, I thought we should focus on working with al-Sistani, a moderating force in Iraq who had the respect of the Sunni’s as well as his own Shi’a. I also thought we should empower the UN to intervene diplomatically, in full support of Kofi Anan’s efforts. If in the end the country was to have a civil war, it was not our place to step in, just as it was not the place of the French or the Brits or the Mexicans to step into ours.
My objective was never to undercut Bush, but to support our troops who were sent over there by the President, and to call for redirection of his policies. In those days, my main expression vehicles were the WGMD blog, contacts with or representatives, and letters to the editor. I also participated in a vigil every Sunday in downtown Lewes.
On the possibility of Obama’s failure, it seems that many on your side have already concluded that he is a failure, thus doing all you can to assure that his failure continues. How else can you explain the vituperations of the likes of Limbaugh, Beck and Malkin, without a word of caution or dissent from other Repub party leaders. There is only one explanation: You folks are wishing for his failure, and are working to assure it, in my view.
Perry:
On the possibility of Obama’s failure, it seems that many on your side have already concluded that he is a failure, thus doing all you can to assure that his failure continues. How else can you explain the vituperations of the likes of Limbaugh, Beck and Malkin, without a word of caution or dissent from other Repub party leaders. There is only one explanation: You folks are wishing for his failure, and are working to assure it, in my view.
Perry, I have major fears about BO. First, I have no indication from him that he even understands what America is all about. While you may say his growing up in an international setting gives him that view, but at the same time in the formative years when we learned in school then what America is, it’s founding. it’s history, he was absent and listening in Indonesia.
He growing years in hawaii were being influenced by an avowed Communist. He went to college and by his own admission, he sought out the Radical students and professors. For his radical education, he was sought out by the ACORN types to be a community organizer.
He refuses to disclose his subjects in school or grades, andwhole parts of his life is a mystery. Very few people recollect his time in Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard. There are questions on who backed him through school.
He said to Joe the Plumber he wants to redistribute the wealth. At a campaign stop 5 days before the election he said he was close to Fundamentally Changing The Course of America.
All this to me was code for Socialism. And if you are looking for that direction, look at the Banks, Pay Master to set wages, GM, and the other areas of private industry with Government Control. And no matter how it’s said, no matter how it’s packaged, he’s determined to have Government Control of Health Care. Do I as a person want a President to be a failure, No. Do I as a person want Socialistic programs to fail, YES. Listen up, we want the Socialistic takeover of this country to fail miserably.
There is a big difference, Dana, between a war of necessity and a war of choice. WWII was clearly a war of necessity based on the need to defend our allies who had been attacked. It was a war in which pacifists and conscientious objectors could and did participate as medics and other support roles.
My position on war, as stated before on here, is that going to war must be a last resort when an imminent threat exists that cannot be ameliorated by other peaceful alternatives, or when we or our allies are directly attacked.
I can support our being in Afghanistan to go after al-Qaeda, with the permission of the government. But should we be fighting the Taliban? At the request of a legitimate government, we can train and help equip their army and police, but to go in there to fight the Taliban ourselves, no, that is the responsibility of the Afghan government, and counterproductive as well, as we can see by their response to our killing their citizens due to collateral damage.
Yorkshire, I’ll respond to your post later, but I have to go out to run some errands, and get ready to go out tonight, so it may not be until tomorrow before I can get back on here.
Perry minces words:
I realize that my articles will not cause President Obama to resign, so yeah, I, too, am simply trying to redirect President Obama to what I think are better policies.
The Oil-for-Food program would have been meaningless without the sanctions; it was supposed to be a way to reduce the impact of the sanctions on ordinary citizens. To favor the Oil-for-Food program was to, in effect, support the sanctions. (You couldn’t know that the program was corrupt.)
Then you favored, straight up, the retention of power by Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath Party. Attempting to “work with” the Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani would have meant, in an Iraq controlled by the Ba’athists, his having to flee the country or be killed; you know that much.
Just what does “empower(ing) the UN to intervene diplomatically” mean? President Hussein and his sons and his henchmen had the blood of more than a million souls on their hands, and had absolutely no intention of relinquishing power or easing the reins.
Nothing you have suggested would have led to a peaceful transition to democracy; it could have led only to continued tyranny, or a bloody civil war.
Well, I remember the 1991 Iraqi uprisings. The elder President Bush encouraged the revolts but did not assist them, thinking that the first Persian Gulf War had weakened President Hussein enough that he would surely fall. Thousands upon thousands were killed, and the government of Saddam Hussein endured. Do you really think that would have been preferable a second time to the invasion?
Perry wrote:
Remember: in 2001, the Taliban were the government. You agree that we ought to be able to attack al Qaeda, in that they attacked us, but al Qaeda were hiding in Afghanistan, and the Taliban were not about to give us permission to attack al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Serious philosophical question: is there anything that any legitimate government could do, within its own borders, which would legitimately bring about foreign, including American, military intervention in your eyes? If the answer is no, then you have just said that intraborder genocide is more acceptable than intervention, and if you say yes, then we are simply haggling over what is bad enough to justify intervention.
Dana:
Of course, the very peaceful President Carter didn’t want to do anything that might seem aggressive, so naturally the USSR was expanding its influence and control in new places: Angola, Nicaragua and Afghanistan.
Dana, you forgot that the very aggressive and determined Jimmy “Appeasement” Carter boycotted the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics as a response to the above. He asked Europe to go along with this, they didn’t. He really showed the Russians his resolve there. Only people hurt were the athletes.
This is a rather cynical view. Even if you opposed the Iraq War, why not at least give Bush the benefit of the doubt by assuming his intentions were honorable?
I’ll take you at your word. But I can’t help but wonder – did you ever speak up when the rabid Left expressed their hatred of Bush at every turn, and did their level best to destroy his presidency? You can talk about Rush all you want, but so far he hasn’t compared Obama to Hitler, which the Left often did.
I know you don’t like our objecting to Obama and his policies, but when it comes to trying to defeat a sitting president, what goes around comes around, don’t you think?
Eric:
Dana asks: “Were you silent during the eight great years of the Bush Administration, or did you do what you could to frustrate his policies and goals?”
No, I was not silent. But I also was not trying to undercut Bush, just redirect him to what I thought were better policies.
I’ll take you at your word. But I can’t help but wonder – did you ever speak up when the rabid Left expressed their hatred of Bush at every turn, and did their level best to destroy his presidency? You can talk about Rush all you want, but so far he hasn’t compared Obama to Hitler, which the Left often did.
I know you don’t like our objecting to Obama and his policies, but when it comes to trying to defeat a sitting president, what goes around comes around, don’t you think?
Perry is asking us to extend to BO in what the Left never extended to W. We have congratualted BO on several things, and called him on others. But in this administration, everytime the Reps extend a hand to the Dems, it comes back bitten off. Then the Dems complain the Reps. aren’t playing. Well, you can only get kicked so many times until you understand that the message will be two sided and hypocritical. Just take healthcare and the lies the Dems repeat and repeat.
Alright, catching up on things since I just got home from Saturday work.
Perry, Laura already gave you evidence of what regular Iraqis think. Did you miss it? Blubonnet told us all to read a book written by a self-described liberal woman who was a US Army translator in Iraq. I have been harping on her to read it ever since she told all of us to read it. I have also joined her in calling for everyone to read it. It’s entitled “Love My Rifle More Than You.” That book gives even more evidence of what the Iraqis think.
Perry, there has been plenty of evidence shown on CSPT and plenty of evidence people have pointed to. But your adamantly blind status and your continued demand for citations to “prove our credibility” (which you never acknowledge once given) just serves to prove you have no credibility. In your own words, until you prove your credibility, keep silent. (Or do you value YOUR First Amendment rights more than anyone else’s?)
I already gave Perry links to leftists calling for the assassination of Bush, hoping out loud for the deaths of the veep and a black SCOTUS Justice, showing signs Bush=Hitler, as per his “demand” so I could “gain credibility.” And of course, he refused to acknowledge any of it because he “has not seen any of the stuff” I listed. Perry has already lost all credibility in my view. He’s merely an Obama shill. Nothing more.
Reducing the power and influence of the UN was actually one of Bush’s better deeds. The UN was flawed from the start, since it included virtually every country on Earth, that meant a great number of them were tyrannies, dictatorships, thugocracies, etc. Far better had they only included democracies from the start, civilized countries instead of barbaric cesspools. Then you’d have an organization that could really do some good, and would represent the best of mankind.
Note the quotation from Howard Zinn concerning President Wilson:
The same thing could be said about the United Nations: what wars have been prevented, what wars ended early, what conflicts settled?
In a way, that’s like asking to prove a negative: what wars didn’t happen. Yet I can’t think of any situation in which the aggressor was deterred by the notion of the blue helmets and “peacekeeping” forces.
Hey thanks for the plug! I really appreciate it.
Quite a few ‘prizes’ are awarded on the basis of hype, political correctness, and even fraud. Such farces are interspersed with awards that recognize merit.
Our homegrown “Academy Awards” often provide a cue as to what color ribbon will be ‘in’ to define the “Issue of the Year”. These orgies of mutual back-slapping are losing their appeal. Sometimes a performance is too good to be ignored.
The Pulitzer Prize has a mixed record. Consider the one awarded to NYT correspondent Walter Duranty. He repackaged propaganda as news and forwarded to the home office. Then there was WaPo writer Janet Cooke. Her award was rescinded.
What about the Bancroft award given to the hack who penned “Arming America”?
The Nobel Peace Prize seems to be reserved for the worst of American presidents (and one would-be president).
Howard Zinn is an unrepentant Stalinist who seems unhappy that Obama has not lived down to his expectations.
Yorkshire: “Perry, I have major fears about BO.”
Now Yorkshire, let me list your allegations:
* Obama does not understand what America is about.
* He was influenced in Hawaii by an avowed Communist.
* In college he sought out radical students and professors.
* Re his college experiences, he has not disclosed his subjects or grades.
* Who backed him through college?
Where are these allegations coming from? Sounds like the right wing extremists to me, trying to raise doubts and cast aspersions on Obama’s character and integrity.
Regarding your fear of Obama’s promoting socialism, I don’t see that. I see his actions as taking temporary emergency steps to save jobs, to stimulate the economy, and to control Wall Street excesses.
I would put Obama as slightly left of center, as evidenced by the anger that has built up from the left wing of his own party.
Before judging Obama prematurely, let us see in several years where we are.
I think we can all agree that President Obama does face enormous challenges.
Regarding your fears, don’t forget that Obama and the Dems can be voted out of office, beginning in 2010, and policies that turn out badly can be reversed both legislatively and by a new President. This is what put the Dems and Obama into office; the same process can replace them and him! Let us rely on our democracy to set things straight where required by the people.
Perry:
Yorkshire: “Perry, I have major fears about BO.”
Now Yorkshire, let me list your allegations:
* 1. Obama does not understand what America is about.
* 2. He was influenced in Hawaii by an avowed Communist.
* 3. In college he sought out radical students and professors.
* 4. Re his college experiences, he has not disclosed his subjects or grades.
* 5. Who backed him through college?
Regarding your fear of Obama’s promoting socialism, I don’t see that. I see his actions as taking temporary emergency steps to save jobs, to stimulate the economy, and to control Wall Street excesses.
I would put Obama as slightly left of center, as evidenced by the anger that has built up from the left wing of his own party.
1. I explained why.
2. Frank from Dreams of my Father was Frank Marshall Davis an avowed Communist.
3. From Dreams of my Father he said in school he sought out the radical students and Marxist Professors.
4. Speaks for itself.
5. I’ve read there are questions – that’s it.
Perry, for a rabid adherent to Obama that you are, you should have known this, or you flat out ignored it. This was known before the election. BO said judge him by his associations. OK, Marxist professors??? Van Jones?? and a host of others. If you train to be an Engineer, Doctor, or whatever, you are that. BO by his own admission from his books is saying he trained to be a Leftist. What other conclusion can be drawn??? For someone who expouses Obama, you know squat!
Yorkshire, basically, you are playing the guilt by association game, which is meaningless and weak, in my view. I simply don’t see any so-called Communist ideology in him, none! Incidentally, I have not read Dreams of My Father, but I have read The Audacity of Hope, but have seen nothing anywhere on Frank Marshall Davis nor on Obama “seeking out radical students and Marxist Professors. So what if he did? That was then, this is now!
Speaking of communism, what do you think of this piece on “Corporate Communism”?
“As Americans, I believe we reject communism because it historically has allowed a tiny group of people to consolidate complete control over national resources (including people), in the process stifling competition, freedom and choice. It leaves its citizens stagnating under the perpetual broken systems with no natural motivation to innovate, improve services or reduce costs.
Lack of choice, lazy, unresponsive customer service, a culture of exploitation and a small powerbase formed by cronyism and nepotism are the hallmarks of a communist system that steals from its citizenry and a major reason why America spent half a century fighting a Cold War with the U.S.S.R.
And yet today we find ourselves as a country in two distinctly different categories: those who are forced to compete tooth and nail each day to provide value to society in return for income for ourselves and our families and those who would instead use our lawmaking apparatus to help themselves to our tax money and/or to protect themselves from true competition.
If you allow weak, outdated players to take control of the government and change the rules so they are protected from the natural competition and reward systems that have created so many innovations in our country, you not only steal from the citizens on behalf of the least worthy but you also doom them by trapping the capital that would be used to generate new innovation and, most tangibly in our current situation, jobs.
We are losing the opportunity cost of all the great ideas that should be coming from the proper deployment of that 23.7 trillion in capital. Everything from innovation in medical delivery systems to accessible space travel, free energy to the driverless car; all of these things may never come to bear because those powerful individuals who have failed, been passed over by technological advancements, innovation and flat-out smarts, have commandeered our government to unfairly sustain their wealth and power.
Unfortunately, they use our wealth and laws not only to benefit their outdated, failed companies, but also spend a small pittance of their ill-gotten gains lobbying and favor-trading with politicians so the government will continue to protect them from competition and their well-deserved failure.
The massive spike in unemployment, the utter destruction of retirement wealth, the collapse in the value of our homes, the worst recession since the Great Depression have all resulted directly from the abdication of proper government.
Even with all that — the only changes that have been made, have been made to prop up and hide the massive flaws on behalf of those who perpetuated them. Still utterly nothing has been done to disclose the flaws in this system, improve it or rebuild it. Only true rules-based capitalism ensures constant adaptation and implementation of the latest and best practices for a given business, as those businesses that don’t adapt fail, and those who deploy the latest innovations to their customers benefit, prosper.
The concept of communism is rightly reviled in this country for the simple reason that it is blind to human nature, allowing a small group of individuals near-total control, while sticking everyone else with the same crappy systems — and the bill. America spent countless lives and half a century fighting against this system of government. So why are we standing for it now?”
h/t Dylan Ratigen
Did this piece make you sit up straight and blink?
Perry floating down the river in Egypt – Denial:
Yorkshire, basically, you are playing the guilt by association game, which is meaningless and weak, in my view. I simply don’t see any so-called Communist ideology in him, none! Incidentally, I have not read Dreams of My Father, but I have read The Audacity of Hope, but have seen nothing anywhere on Frank Marshall Davis nor on Obama “seeking out radical students and Marxist Professors. So what if he did? That was then, this is now!
Speaking of communism, what do you think of this piece on “Corporate Communism”?
Yeah, I blinked, it described the stranglehold government is putting on business with it’s laws and regulations.
Perry, I can’t help it if you are in Denial. If you want to live in the fantasy land that BO is just left of Center, I can’t help it. We show you, but it doesn’t fit your predetermined idealology. BO is far Left. I’m dealing with it, you’re not.
Uh, like the Left never did this to Bush?
Sounds like GM, Chrysler, and the Obama Admin to me …
But again, this was done to Bush. The Left constantly howled about Bush being linked to “Big Oil”, Darth Cheney, Haliburton, and so on. It was classic “Guilt by association”.
PS And don’t forget Rev Wright, Obama’s loony tunes of a pastor for over 20 years.
Perry:
Yorkshire, basically, you are playing the guilt by association game, which is meaningless and weak, in my view.
How is this: “3. From Dreams of my Father he said in school he sought out the radical students and Marxist Professors.” Guilt by association when BO specifically sought these people out? If you are looking for a Marxist Professor to teach you, you are going to learn the Socialist/Marxist view of the subject taught. They won’t be espousing conservatism there at all.