Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize – I Agree with Bill O’Reilly?

I hate to be one of millions of voices saying the same thing, but I simply must say something about this.

If you know me, or have read any of my thoughts over the last year, you know that I support President Barrack Obama. I voted for him. As it stands now, I would vote for him again. I don’t support everything he supports but I believe he is the right leader for our nation at this point.

But, like many others, I feel like the Nobel Peace Prize is premature. Along with many of us, the President himself feels that this award was a call to action. A call to follow up his words with deeds. I agree with all of that and I hope it works, but the award should have been given to someone because of his or her accomplishments.

I don’t believe, as some do, that he should have declined the award. The most interesting argument in this regard, though a bit of a stretch in my view, is by Rinku Sen. She writes:

There’s an additional element that affects the struggle for racial justice. Obama talks a lot about personal responsibility for black men. He doesn’t think you should whine and ask for things you’re not willing to earn. Is that just about asking, and never about accepting? Perhaps he will earn it, I’m not saying he won’t, but he hasn’t yet, as he himself acknowledged.
— Obama Should Have Turned It Down

As usual, I also don’t agree with Rush Limbaugh when he claims that this makes our President a laughing stock. He writes:

Folks, the Nobel Peace Prize, we owe ‘em. Our president has become a laughingstock. They are telling jokes about Barack Obama even in State-Controlled Media. ABC is assembling what they think are the funniest jokes that they’re finding anywhere, from blogs to State-Controlled Media sources and so forth and it’s hilarious. Everybody in the world is laughing except the Norwegians, everybody is laughing at our president. You know, I’m a former nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. I was nominated this year, the year that Gore got the Peace Prize, official nominee. I’m especially qualified to comment on this. I’m much closer to having won a Nobel Peace Prize than any of you people are because I’ve actually been nominated. (laughing) And, by the way, when I was nominated there wasn’t any laughter. No, there was no laughter. There was anger and rage from certain sectors of this country, but there was no laughter. Our president has won the Peace Prize, and he is a standing joke.
— Our President is a Laughingstock: Obama Awarded Nobel Peace Prize

I also don’t subscribe to the notion that Obama won because he is black. Rinku Sen writes:

I’m sure the Nobel committee is very, very smart, but it all made me wonder if they’re so eager to reward the first black president of the U.S. that they wanted to get it done now, just in case he turns out to be a warmonger robbing them of their chance to meet the coolest kid on the block. — Obama Should Have Turned It Down

and this wingnut writes:

I did not realize the Nobel Peace Prize had an affirmative action quota for it, but that is the only thing I can think of for this news. There is no way Barack Obama earned it in the nominations period.
— Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize: He’s Becoming Jimmy Carter Faster Than Jimmy Carter Did.

What surprised me most about all of this is that I agree with Bill O’Reilly’s comments. I’m pleasantly surprised by his comments on this. He writes:

“Talking Points” does not share the dissent — understands it, but does not share it — because having a U.S. president honored with a peace prize is good for the country. We should want the world to think we are a nation that gives peace a chance, because that’s what we are.

In the past, Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson won the prize. Jimmy Carter received it after he left office. Yasser Arafat also won the Nobel Peace Prize, if you can believe it. But so did Martin Luther King Jr. and Mother Teresa.

There are times when what’s good for America should trump partisan politics. President Obama was honored Friday, and deserved or not, the world is hearing “America” and “peace” in the same sentence. That’s good.

— Talking Points — Monday 10/12/2009

There are a lot of negative things one might say about this development but I have to agree that this is good for America.

October 12, 2009 | Filed Under Freedom | Comments 

NFL Players Player’s Talk About Barack Obama

My posts over the next week will be mostly Super Bowl related and I thought the following video would be an interesting transition from my previous posts.

What do NFL players think about our new president?

Some of them speak out in this video.

January 27, 2009 | Filed Under Freedom, Fun | Comments 

WhiteHouse.gov

By now, most people have probably seen the new White House website.

There are promising signs that this will be an administration that cares to communicate with the public in a much more open way. Most third party content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, the unreasonable restrictions in the robots.txt file have been eliminated (I’ve seen others credited with finding this first, but it looks to me like it was reported first here.), and the blog looks good so far.

Some have argued that the site doesn’t go far enough, and I’d agree in principle; but I think it is a great step in the right direction. The responsibility for the welfare of our society falls on each of us. We must have a government that wants to keep the us informed as well as hear and understand our needs and opinions.

Check out the new site.

January 26, 2009 | Filed Under Freedom | Comments 

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January 22, 2009 | Filed Under Links | Comments 

Obama’s First 100 Days

Since FDR, it is common for Americans to judge a president’s effectiveness based on his productivity over the first one-hundred days of his presidency. It’s interesting to note that the “100 days” of FDR were actually not the first one-hundred days of his presidency but the first one-hundred day session of Congress. Congress was convened on March 9, 1933 – five days after the inauguration, and they adjourned on June 16, 1933 – 100 days later. This period of time was the most productive in American legislative history.

I think most Americans understand that it is unfair to judge a President based on what he can accomplish in less than 7% of his term – and at the beginning of it – yet we all still seem fascinated by this arbitrary measure of productivity. There are websites where one can see the progress other presidents made and others that will track President Obama’s progress (here and here) and still others with lots of advice for our new President.

Businessweek has advice on how to be productive in the first one-hundred days and the Washington Post warns that Obama should not make the same mistakes Clinton made.

As official Washington turns its attention from the transition to Obama’s plans for the first 100 days, Clinton’s difficult experience in his own first 100 days can again serve as a cautionary tale for Obama.

Clinton sought to move on a number of major policy fronts — an economic stimulus package, an overhaul of the health care system led by Hillary Clinton — that were eventually abandoned, and was buffeted by unforeseen controversies (gays in the military/”don’t ask, don’t tell”) and unpredictable events (the Branch Davidian stand-off in Waco, Texas).

“I think there was a great deal of exuberance by the president in terms of what he’d be able to accomplish immediately, and, no, he couldn’t match it all,” said Democratic pollster Peter Hart of Bill Clinton in the spring of 1993.
Obama’s First 100

So, what should Barack Obama do in his first one-hundred days?

Scientific American says

Energy security is the greatest challenge and the greatest opportunity of our time. But lack of action has put the U.S. at risk. America needs a bold plan that ignites our collective imagination, sparks innovation, and creates economic and national security. The starting point? A call to action from our new president in the first 100 days of his administration.
Obama’s First 100 Days

and it is clear that many others care about peace and the environment.

I think most people believe that the biggest challenge we face at this point is the economy. Commenters on the WP piece seem to agree that the economy is most pressing (followed by Isreal, and energy). Gerald F. Seib, Executive Washington Editor at the Wall Street Journal says that the top five items on the to-do list are economy, economy, economy, economy, and economy. This guy says the top issue is the economy (followed by Guantanamo, the Middle East, energy, and healthcare) and one of his commenters points out the following:

Barring any event of the magnitude of 9/11 or something approaching it, the bread and butter issue of American politics is, as it’s always been, the price of bread and butter.
link

and others agree

Though presidential historians say it’s an arbitrary Рand in some ways unfair Рmeasurement, they say Obama’s early actions will set the tone for his administration and establish his priorities and leadership style.

“It’s an unreasonable expectation that we put on all our presidents, just because it worked that way in 1933 for FDR. They shouldn’t be held to that” said Stephen Hess, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who worked for several presidents.

Obama’s advisers and outside observers say it is clear that fixing the economy and creating jobs will dominate his agenda in the early days, just as it did Roosevelt’s.
Shades of FDR

Alan Murray, Deputy Managing Editor at the Wall Street Journal, says that even though President Obama faces “a significant number of foreign policy problems” (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Middle East) of which any one could hijack the President’s agenda, the economy is the biggest issue “bar none” and that the stimulus plan he pushes through Congress will “probably be the defining product of his presidency.” In a video preview of the next one-hundred days, he says that Obama will be considered successful if he can recover the economy and tackle just one more of the important issues on his agenda. Another commentator in the same video reminds us, though, that every day spent on the “short term agenda” is a day not spent on healthcare, climate change, or taxes.

President Obama’s campaign website has a list of issues that also puts the economy at the top, though the list is actually in alphabetical order. :)

The President himself had this to say:

“The first hundred days is going to be important, but it‚Äôs probably going to be more like the first thousand days that makes a difference” he told a Colorado radio station in an interview shortly before Election Day. “Most of the big challenges that we face, whether it’s making college more affordable, or fixing our health care system so it works for everybody, or making sure that we’ve got a serious energy strategy, or winding down the war in Iraq, all those things are probably going to take longer than three months to complete.”
Shades of FDR

Actually, I am not sure I’d agree that the economy should be the point of focus over the next one-hundred days. I must admit that I feel a certain sense of unease at the present state of our economy but I am in a different position than most – I have very little debt and 80% of my income comes from recession resistant sources. I’d like to think that my opinion would be the same even if that were not the case. Our economy has thrived for years on over-consumption and that has led us to this point. In order to solve our environmental problems and improve our stature in the world, we need to cut back on our consumption. I think a sluggish economy is a necessary evil and I am not sure we need to jump in and save it.

That being said, I believe that something must be done to help those who desperately need to survive during these hard economic times. My biggest concern, and the number one reason I voted for President Obama, is social injustice in the world. There are many in our own country who cannot afford to put food on the table and that ought not to be so in a place like this.

So, I guess in a sense it all comes back to economic concerns again.

What do you think?

January 21, 2009 | Filed Under Freedom | Comments 

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January 21, 2009 | Filed Under Links | Comments 

The Time for Change Has Come

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve waited a long time for this day.

There is no need to focus on all the things I didn’t like about our previous president – others have done that well. It’s time to focus on the positive things that can happen now.

I have no illusions that all we be well in America now, nor do I believe President Obama will do things as well as he should. In fact, I fully expect him to make decisions with which I do not agree. Nonetheless, I expect the next four years to bring about significant changes to our way of life in this country.

There are many who wish him harm, pray that he fails, or look to the future with paranoia and fear; but I’d argue that even those who disagree with his policy should hope for the best. Like our President said yesterday and at other times, “there is no such thing as false hope.” We should all hope and pray for our great country and our new leader.

We should also not forget the significance of his election to power as an African American. We can not all be free until we are all free. The fact that these two men can stand on the platform together is a testament to how far we’ve come.

January 20, 2009 | Filed Under Freedom | Comments 

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January 11, 2009 | Filed Under Links | Comments