So, Barack Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize, and the first reaction of the GOP chairman, Michael Steele is to scoff and call it "unfortunate."
Now there is a show of class, isn't it? Not, "Way to go, man!" but "Not him!"
Third-rate romance, low-rent rendezvous, all the way.
I do believe that if the President got up one fine morning and walked on water, the R's would criticize him for putting boat salesmen out of work. They aren't trying for the good of the country, the R's, but to see Obama fail at any cost. They spend all their time building roadblocks.
The majority of Republicans in Congress have been spitting at the President since he took office, and every time he reaches out, they try to bite his hand. I'm of the mind that their whining "Bipartisan! Bipartisan!" is as hollow as Rush Limbaugh's attacks on drug fiends, and that Rocky and the D's should load up, roll over them like a tank, and turn them into legislative road-kill.
After eight years of watching Former Occupant and his mob do that, the R's have no right to bitch about it.
It's your turn in the barrel, guys.
How do you feel about him winning the award, though? Seems like he hasn't done enough yet to earn it.
ReplyDeleteDon't know.
ReplyDeleteThe Nobel has always been a kind of political trophy, don't care. It's the whole concept of people who will set in the wings when there are problems and someone is trying to come up with solutions, and the try to shoot everything down to show how important and smart they are. I get sick of that kind of crap. Don't give me problems, give me solutions or shut up.
Dave
Whatever qualifies anybody to win the Peace Prize -- Mother Teresa, sure. Arafat? Gorbachev? -- the man did win it. Our President and the very least one could do is offer congratulations and be gracious about it.
ReplyDeleteMore than a few R's have said in public that they want to see Obama fail. Maybe it's about racism, maybe not, but putting up roadblocks when the country is in a deep hole struggling to get out? Truly a case of, if you aren't a part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Yep, politics are gonna get played on both sides, always, but carping because the man won an award is bush-league, tacky, churlish -- and bad politics anyhow.
I think it is way deeper than small-minded assholes.
ReplyDelete"Conservatives" (whatever that is) have variously been calling for secession, a military coup, and everything short of a CIA- type hit a la Kennedy. The parallels are striking if you know how the right was accusing Kennedy of "Treason", even posting flyers in Dallas stating that.
They know that if Obama is reasonably successful, it signals the end of the Republican lock on power for some time to come. They are virtually inciting something very, very bad to happen, and if so we will have Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Bill O'Rielly and Michael Savage to blame. Let's hope somebody keeps a tight leash on the dogs.
Sorry -- but I've got a major problem with Pres. Obama being given the Nobel Peace Prize at this time.
ReplyDeleteHe hasn't done anything but get elected. We'll see in a few months whether he (and his staff) have done more than prop up the economy. Maybe he'll advance disarmament... maybe not. He hasn't done it yet.
One commentator I heard on this said that the nomination deadline was in February. If true... at the time of his nomination, he had barely been President a month. Leading again to the question "what had he done?"
I lean independently conservative politically, but my frustration with this isn't politically driven. To me, this simply cheapened the Nobel Prize, lowering it to the level of a high school prom king competition, where the cool new kid can win even though he's only been attending the school for a few months.
I stand by my posting -- if the Nobel committee wanted to give it to Obama for being not-Bush, that's fine by me. If they did it to encourage him to stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I'm good with that, too.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe there is anything the man could do that wouldn't draw flak from the far Right -- or the far Left, both of which are full of loons. Obama is more a centrist than anything.
We have become an impolite society, and the crap being slung at our President by the likes of Limbaugh and company is much worse than what was thrown at GWB during his reign. Death threats alone have tripled, idiots showing up with guns at town hall meetings?
Ugly stuff.
He won the award. How does being rude about that help anything?
Was it any better when the crap was flung by those to the left about George Bush?
ReplyDeleteIt's kind of amusing to see how the attacks have stayed much the same, but the sides and targets have changed...
I think under Bush we entered Afghanistan and Iraq (especially Iraq) with no real plan and an ill-defined end game. I think that the government then in many ways favored the rich. But, under President Obama, we're seeing a monstrous growth of the federal government in the social arena (instead of the security arena of Bush) -- and nobody seems to want to talk about who's going to pay for it. Some years ago, James Gilmore campaigned for governor of Virginia in part on a platform of eliminating the personal property tax on cars, a substantial portion of which went right through the state coffer back to the locality. Gilmore was promising that the localities wouldn't lose any money as the car tax was phased out over several years. (FYI -- it was supposed to be completely eliminated a few years ago... and I just wrote a check to pay mine for this year.) My question then was simple: Where is the state going to get the money to pay the localities? The question remains. And can be asked of several of President Obama's initiatives, too. (Though I guess maybe dividends from being a majority shareholder in GM could be used... if they can get GM out of the toilet...)
I'm not suggesting that disagreeing with the political justifies rudeness, or even a sour grapes attitude about the Nobel Prize. But I think it's perfectly reasonable and alright to question what President Obama has done to justify being given an award of such prestige. Perhaps they should award the Nobel for Literature to some college kid for the term paper he's writing today -- because he's got the promise to write great literature in a few years?
Talk to the Nobel committee about why they make the choices they make. I've heard a slew of reasons but in the end, they made the choice they made and it's a done deal.
ReplyDeleteObama didn't enter the contest, he was selected. Agree or disagree, and you have every right to question the process. But what I hear is a lot of R's who are pissed off that they aren't in charge any more grousing and bitching at everything for every reason because they got beat. It sounds like sore losers to me, and I haven't heard anything that makes it sound any different.
Here's one for you -- if we hadn't gone to war in Iraq, we could have paid for health care for everybody in the country using that money alone.
Instead, we are in two wars, the economy is in the toilet, and our international standing is only beginning to come back because Bush is finally gone.
What goes around comes around, and karma catches up to us all. It's the R's turn to be back-benchers and it would be nice if they would accept it with a little more grace.
I don't expect they will, but it would be nice.