Barack Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize

Submitted by Betsy Muse on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 6:52am

He hasn't completed the first year of his four-year term in office and Barack Hussein Obama has become the fourth U.S. President to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Al Gore is the only Vice President to have earned that honor. The last president to win was also the last president to win North Carolina in the general election in 1976, Jimmy Carter. Carter, however, did not earn the Nobel honor until 2002, long after he left office. Theodore Roosevelt won in 1906, Woodrow Wilson won in 1919, Jimmy Carter won in 2002 and Al Gore won in 2007.

Maybe some of those folks who spent time throwing confetti when Chicago wasn't chosen to host the Olympics are rethinking that whole gloating thing.

Congratulations, Mr. President.

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Sad....

Submitted by Betsy Muse on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 7:00am.

Wikipedia's only picture on their "list of nobel laureates" page is George Bush standing with nobel laureates. Hopefully, that picture will change today.



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Vote Democratic, the ass you save may be your own.

Not likely

Submitted by James on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 8:52am.

Maybe some of those folks who spent time throwing confetti when Chicago wasn't chosen to host the Olympics are rethinking that whole gloating thing.

This just confirms that peace is for socialist commies.

Do good. Be nice. Have fun.

I wish

Submitted by Dr. Quigley on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 9:52am.

I wish Obama really was a socialist.

I also wish he was actually for peace, and not for continuing to occupy Afghanistan, killing Pakistani civilians, continuing to occupy Iraq, threating Iran, supporting Israeli apartheid, funding undemocratic regimes around the world, building more American bases in South America...

First Krugman and now this. Nobel Prize has become a joke.

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"The natural wage of labor is its product." -- Benjamin R. Tucker
A liberal is someone who thinks the system is broken and needs to be fixed, whereas a radical understands it’s working the way it’s supposed to.

Actually, the real joke is

Submitted by scharrison on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 10:41am.

the origin of the prize itself. In Alfred Nobel's own words:

“Perhaps my factories will put an end to war sooner than your congresses: on the day that two army corps can mutually annihilate each other in a second, all civilised nations will surely recoil with horror and disband their troops.”

Good point.

Submitted by Dr. Quigley on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 11:38am.

n/t

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"The natural wage of labor is its product." -- Benjamin R. Tucker
A liberal is someone who thinks the system is broken and needs to be fixed, whereas a radical understands it’s working the way it’s supposed to.

Might we consider instead

Submitted by boball on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 12:43pm.

The Ignobel prizes? This years winners are sure to gladden weeping hearts and uplift downtrodden spirits.

-b

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There cannot fail to be more kinds of things, as nature grows further disclosed. - Sir Francis Bacon

A joke?

Submitted by James on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 10:58am.

Maybe the Nobel Peace Prize should simply be a thing of the past given the lovely state of our world these days.

Your cynicism is in rare form this morning.

Do good. Be nice. Have fun.

Maybe

Submitted by Dr. Quigley on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 11:41am.

I'm sure there are many worthy candidates of the Peace Prize even in today's world - much more worthy than the leader of the world's largest empire (whoever he or she may be, in all honesty).

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"The natural wage of labor is its product." -- Benjamin R. Tucker
A liberal is someone who thinks the system is broken and needs to be fixed, whereas a radical understands it’s working the way it’s supposed to.

Code Pink March More 40,000 troops for Peace in Afghanistan?

Submitted by Mad Town Hall Republican 2 (not verified) on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 12:10pm.

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/10/08/code-yellow/

http://news.antiwar.com/2009/10/08/gen-mcchrystal-40000-more-troops-the-...

Peace Prize

Submitted by heuer on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 9:32pm.

Congratulations Mr. President.

Now earn it!

There is time enough, but none to spare.

John Heuer

Who Did Obama Beat to Win His Nobel Prize?

Submitted by Mad Town Hall Republican 2 (not verified) on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 11:43pm.

Who Did Obama Beat to Win His Nobel Prize?

Sima Samar, women’s rights activist in Afghanistan: “With dogged persistence and at great personal risk, she kept her schools and clinics open in Afghanistan even during the most repressive days of the Taliban regime, whose laws prohibited the education of girls past the age of eight. When the Taliban fell, Samar returned to Kabul and accepted the post of Minister for Women’s Affairs.”

Ingrid Betancourt: French-Colombian ex-hostage held for six years.

Dr. Denis Mukwege: Doctor, founder and head of Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo. He has dedicated his life to helping Congolese women and girls who are victims of gang rape and brutal sexual violence.

Handicap International and Cluster Munition Coalition: “These organizations are recognized for their consistently serious efforts to clean up cluster bombs, also known as land mines. Innocent civilians are regularly killed worldwide because the unseen bombs explode when stepped upon.”

Hu Jia, a human rights activist and an outspoken critic of the Chinese government, who was sentenced last year to a three-and-a-half-year prison term for ‘inciting subversion of state power.’

Wei Jingsheng, who spent 17 years in Chinese prisons for urging reforms of China’s communist system. He now lives in the United States

**Originally posted by Mary Katherine Ham at The Weekly Standard.com propaganda factory.

Connie? Why am I still having to do this?

How do you know who was

Submitted by Mad Anne on Sun, 10/11/2009 - 10:38am.

How do you know who was nominated?

Prizes

Submitted by Lovex7 on Sat, 10/10/2009 - 10:24am.

So let me get this straight....losing the Olympics was a good thing and winning the Nobel Peace Prize was a bad thing. Hmmm. Can somebody explain this to me?

Lovex7

Interesting perspective on it all Lovex7

Submitted by Foxtrot (not verified) on Sat, 10/10/2009 - 11:57am.

Many of us go to various blogs and other interactive sites on the internet and currently, the issue of whether or not Obama deserved to receive the Peace Prize is tantamount. You have an interesting perspective on that. Our republican friends seem to have enjoyed the fact that Obama and Michelle's efforts on behalf of Chicago failed and now are extremely frustrated that Obama has received the Nobel prize admittedly unexpectedly. What does that say about us, as a country, really?

If you take these two events, it shows that we are more divided now than we have ever been. Decades ago, it would have been considered a big loss that America (regardless of city) lost an Olympic bid. And, it would have been considered a great honor for our entire country that our president won a Nobel Peace Prize.

We have migrated into a country that is more divided not only philosophically but politically than ever in our history.

It begs the question: Where did we go wrong? How has this happened to the greatest country the world has ever seen?

I, personally, am about as bummed out as I've ever been.

History

Submitted by James on Sat, 10/10/2009 - 6:09pm.

I'm bummed too. Fed up to the gills.

Others are too. A hard-working Democratic volunteer friend of mine, a loyalist if ever there was one, told me on Wednesday that she's never been more discouraged by politics than she is right now. Not because of Republicans, she doesn't expect much from them. But because so many of the ruling Democrats let business have its way.

I'm most proud of the Progressive Democrats in the US House for staying strong (so far) and demanding health care transformation.

Afghanistan is the next big thing. Oh brother.

Obama must sometimes feel like a janitor, cleaning up so many messes.

Do good. Be nice. Have fun.

So much to do

Submitted by Foxtrot (not verified) on Sat, 10/10/2009 - 6:52pm.

I hear the disallusion in your post, James. I'm right in there with you. I do not know much about this "progressive" because I am just a democrat that sticks with the core principles that I have always known being that. Maybe I need to do some changing but it is difficult because to me being a democrat means that we should work to advance the plight of all individuals in America through our political system in every way we can. I am worried that our party has lost that goal. If "progressives" are more directed toward that philosophy, then maybe I need to research that element within our party. I just wish all of us could do what is right by America and Americans. All of this political maneuvering screws with my mind, to be honest.

prize winning campaign

Submitted by ktuscan on Sat, 10/10/2009 - 9:46pm.

John Nichols writes over at the Nation a piece "Obama's Campaign Merits a Peace Prize"

Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Submitted by XTalkerNC2 on Sun, 10/11/2009 - 9:37am.

President Obama may actually one day do something that deserves this honor, but the deadline for nominations for 2009 was February 1st. He had been in office 11 days! Has the Nobel selection board joined the Physic Friends Network? This award has further reduced the credibility of the Nobel organization.

It's my understanding that nominations

Submitted by James on Sun, 10/11/2009 - 9:43am.

are a dime a dozen, sort of like Republicans running for president. Seriously, they load up the deck of potential nominees like crazy, just in case. It's not the nomination that matters, it's the final choice.

Somehow I don't imagine the Nobel committee worries too much about what we think. They have more money than Fort Knox and they operate with their own agenda. God bless 'em for their peace agenda. I only hope Obama lives up to it in Afghanistan.

Do good. Be nice. Have fun.

Take a look at this quote

Submitted by loftT on Sun, 10/11/2009 - 9:47am.

I think you will have to agree that he deserves it and so do we.

And if all that wasn't enough, the outgoing Joker presided over the worst global financial collapse since the Great Depression.

So, yeah, at precisely 11:00pm ET on November 4, 2008, Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. And the 66 million people who voted for him won it, too. By the time he took the stage at midnight ET in the Grant Park Historic Hippie Battlefield in downtown Chicago, billions of people around the globe were already breathing a huge sigh of relief. It was as if, in that instant, one man did bring the promise of peace to the world -- and most were ready to go wherever he wanted to go to achieve that end. Never before had the election of one man made every other nation feel like they had won, too. When you've got billions of people ready, willing and able to join a cause like this, well, a prize in Oslo is the least that you deserve.

One other thought. The Peace Prize historically has been given to those who have worked to throw off the yoke of racial discrimination and segregation (Martin Luther King, Jr., Desmond Tutu). I think the Nobel committee, in awarding Obama the prize, was also rewarding the fact that something profound had happened in a nation that was founded on racial genocide, built on racist slavery, and held back for a hundred-plus years by vestiges of hateful bigotry (which can still be found on display at teabagger rallies and daily talk radio). The fact that this one man could cause this seismic historical event to occur -- and to do so with such grace and humility, never succumbing to the bait, but still not backing down (yes, he asked to be sworn in as "Barack Hussein Obama"!) -- is more than reason enough he should be in Oslo to meet the King on December 10. Maybe he could take us along with him. 'Cause I also suspect the Nobel committee was tipping its hat to all of us -- we, the American people, had conquered some of our racism and did the truly unexpected. After seeing searing images of our black fellow citizens left to drown in New Orleans -- and poor whites seeing their own treated no better than the black man they had been raised to hate -- we had all seen enough. It was time for change.


from DailyKos

Also, when was the last time the WHOLE WORLD celebrated any leader coming to power?

Progressives are the true conservatives.

The numbnuts continue to weigh in

Submitted by James on Mon, 10/12/2009 - 2:56pm.

On Obama's big prize.

Do good. Be nice. Have fun.