Random Thoughts

Comedy gold

My nominee for the best write up on Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize:  Frank J. Fleming at Pajamas Media with “The ‘I’m-Not-Bush’ Prize and its Uselessness.”

It’s like they have a Nobel Prize for Unicorns to hand out, and since there really isn’t anyone who makes much sense for it, they just hand it out to whoever fits their political agenda. And, being part of the international community — which is stupid — the committee’s choices have started to be just mind-numbingly ludicrous until they reached the low point on Friday morning.

Obama was nominated for the Peace Prize twelve days into his presidency — before he even began to aspire to become as useless as he’s been so far — and somehow this Nobel committee came to the conclusion that he did something worthy of an award. Their justification for giving him the prize, in its entirety?

“Hee not Booosh! Scroo u Booosh!”

…An awesome response would be for Obama to bomb Iran’s nuclear facility the day after receiving the prize, but that’s something a man would do. That’s something Reagan would do. Obama’s too much of a sissy for awesomeness like that, and that’s why the international community loves him. So, in my opinion, should Obama have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize? Of course he should have; it’s a useless-moron prize. Obama is the most prominent useless idiot out there right now; I can’t name a better candidate.

Even SNL can’t resist mocking the situation.

And as far as cartoon fodder goes, it’s priceless. Check out TMFo at Christmas Ghost.

This entire administration would be pure comedy gold, if only our country’s future wasn’t at stake.

And we remain the losers

I really don’t care who wins the Nobel Peace Prize. I mean, Al Gore has one, as did Yassar Arafat. Clearly, they’ll give the thing to just about anyone. Still, it does make me feel rather nauseous to think that a man can be given a Nobel Peace Prize merely for talking about what he wants to do, who took office only two weeks before the Prize nomination deadline. Amazing. But then again, the man in question got to the presidency on nothing more substantive than that by which he gained the Nobel Prize, so in a weird, rather eerie way, it all fits.

It doesn’t make life in these United States one whit better for anyone beside the President either. We don’t need a Nobel Prize winner, we need a person who is actually doing things.

At this moment, many Americans are longing for a President who is more bully, less pulpit. The President who leased his immense inaugural good will to the hungry appropriators writing the stimulus bill, who has not stopped negotiating health-care reform except to say what is nonnegotiable, whose solicitude for the wheelers and dealers who drove the financial system into a ditch leaves the rest of us wondering who has our back, has always shown great promise, said the right things, affirmed every time he opens his mouth that he understands the fears we face and the hopes we hold. But he presides over a capital whose day-to-day functioning has become part travesty, part tragedy; wasteful, blind, vain, petty, where even the best-intentioned reformers measure their progress with teaspoons. There comes a time when a President needs to take a real risk - and putting his prestige on the line to win the Olympics for his hometown does not remotely count.

Ah well, Obama doesn’t need to do anything to get applause. He merely needs to exist.

And then I think about nominee Greg Mortenson, and my heart aches.

Compare this to Greg Mortenson, nominated for the prize by some members of Congress, whom the bookies gave 20-to-1 odds of winning. Son of a missionary, a former Army medic and mountaineer, he has made it his mission to build schools for girls in places where opium dealers and tribal warlords kill people for trying. His Central Asia Institute has built more than 130 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan - a mission which has, along the way, inspired millions of people to view the protection and education of girls as a key to peace and prosperity and progress.

Thing is, Greg Mortenson doesn’t need a Nobel Peace Prize. His ego, unlike that of the current US President, does not demand public notice. Winning–or not winning–a clearly meaningless award will not change him at all. He will go on dedicating the days of his life to true service of others, working “in the trenches,” unknown by most of mankind even while making a very real, lasting change in the lives of others.

Mahatma Gandhi never won the Nobel Prize either. I’d say Mortenson is in excellent company.

Locutusprime at Brutally Honest explains the true worth of this dubious prize:

The Nobel Peace prize is nothing that is won. It is simply given. And it is nothing more than the door prize awarded by the collective thinking of anti American Marxist and communist around the world. It has absolutely less than nothing to do with the origins of its original inception or concept. The prize is nothing more than a booby prize awarded by the anti west, anti capitalism, anti democracy cabal of Marxist communist dissidents and their dregs in academia.

Confederate Yankee underscores the absurdity of it all:

Nobel committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland was pressed by the media to explain why Obama deserved the award, and could only offer this defense: “As to whether the prize was given too early in Mr. Obama’s presidency, he said: ‘We are not awarding the prize for what may happen in the future but for what he has done in the previous year. We would hope this will enhance what he is trying to do’.”
Barack Obama won a Nobel Peace Prizefor campaigning for President.

Wordsmith at Flopping Aces posits that Bush really ought to be credited/blamed for Obama’s Nobel.

Neo-neocon reminds us of the inherent bias of the Nobel commitee, and that 1990 Nobel winner Mikhail Gorbachev presided over the fall of the Soviet Union.

American Power considers the ramifications of Obama’s Nobel Prize upon Afghanistan and Iraq.

And The Anchoress thinks that Michelle ought to have shared in the award.

Edited to add…

A look at the nominees who were passed over. If anything underscores the worthlessness of a Nobel Peace Prize, a comparison of relative accomplishments ought to do it.

We are so screwed…

I have tried not to read too much into the obvious diplomatic ignorance of Obama & Co.

The shallow treatment of and ridiculous (and utterly useless) gift to the British Prime Minister? Obama’s thinking like a young guy and/or he’s got a 20 year old advising him on what’s appropriate.

The equally juvenile gift to the Queen of England? Obama’s thinking like a young guy and/or he’s got a 20 year old advising him on what’s appropriate.

Michelle Obama putting her arm around the Queen? Same 20 year old is advising her on what’s appropriate.

Obama bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia?

WHAT?!

Tell me the President of the United States did not bow to another head of state. Lie to me if you must.

I’m sure Israel loved that. Every single deceased president from George Washington to Ronald Reagan is now spinning in his grave.

Thomas Lifson of American Thinker points out how completely inappropriate Obama’s bow is, and how the MSM is determined to ignore it.

Obama is either a total diplomatic fool, or he really thinks the King of Saudi Arabia (a country known for its barbaric treatment of women, among other things) is more important and more worthy of honor than the President of the United States of America.

Given that Obama is the current POTUS, sadly he’s probably right.

And then there’s his proclamation that the US will lead the world in nuclear disarmament. Again, WHAT?!

Nuclear weapons are the most dangerous legacies of the Cold War,” Obama said in a speech in front of a huge crowd outside the medieval Prague Castle in the Czech Republic. “The U.S. will take concrete steps. … We will begin the work of reducing our arsenals and stockpiles.

He talked about doing this back in the autumn of 2007, long before he became a presidential front runner. Of all the asininity he’s proposed, this right now, in the face of North Korea’s nuclear tests, seems particularly wrongheaded. Unless he intends to demonstrate defensive weakness to the watching world.

Charles Krauthamer explains it succinctly: Obama thinks the United States is “arrogant.” He’s bent on apologizing to Europe for us all.

H/T Brutally Honest.

If this is “presidential leadership,” we are so screwed.

Only human…

Had a good dinnertime discussion with Youngest Son, who is at the age where the drama of US politics is interesting enough to make him ask lots of pointed questions.

His main question: “Why do people think our enemies will like us better just because our president’s changed?”

Nothing quite like trying to explain irrational hatred and equally irrational adoration to a 12 year old, but he’s smart, he gets it: “When people see he’s not God, maybe they’ll stop acting like he is.”

We can only hope, son. Tracey of Beyond the Pale has more to say about this:

Why is it that neither of these men, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, is allowed to be human?

Why are they viewed with such ridiculous hyperbole?

George W. Bush is subhuman, a devil, a demon, the man who’s ruined the world, whatever. He’s made mistakes as our president, but he’s positively reviled for his mistakes. That bastard! How dare he screw up?? And because of his mistakes, it seems to me, he’s now deemed subhuman. And it’s not fair.

Barack Obama, by contrast, is superhuman, an angel, a savior, the man who will redeem the world. He doesn’t make mistakes, it seems, or won’t, or if he does, we will likely not hear of them. He’s “The One.” He’s superhuman. Also not fair.

These men are human, for God’s sake. Bush is not subhuman; Obama is not superhuman. Bush made mistakes; Obama will make mistakes. I abhor this black-and-white thinking. It degrades both men, actually, when neither of them is allowed to be human beings. It’s ridiculous and unfair.

Added bonus: Tracy shares my appreciation for William Bouguereau. But I digress.

Best perspective from across the pond (H/T The Anchoress) I’ve read all day: Melanie Phillips

I think that the desperate dangerousness and complexity of our world and a profound terror of what properly facing up to its problems would entail have led people to believe a cartoon version of why we’re in such a state - and to have invested their hopes similarly in a fantasy figure of hope, to such an extent that they have shut their ears to some very loud warning bells ringing from his past history.

People believe that Obama represents a renunciation of an America that throws its weight around the world. And they think it’s that ‘war-mongering’ characteristic, represented in particular by President Bush and the war in Iraq, which has caused so much global trouble and resentment.

I believe that’s a dangerously false analysis which fails to grasp the extent to which western civilisation is under attack from a world-wide enemy that intends to destroy it, and which further fails to distinguish between true aggression and true self-defence.

Ah, but now that Obama is in office the world will love us! They have to, we’re a totally different nation today…aren’t we? In Germany and France apparently it’s now cool to be an American.

Jennifer Granger, 34, a teacher from New York who lives in Prague, said she no longer hesitates to say she is American.

“Thank God! It feels better,” she said. “The people I work with give me high-fives and say things like ‘You can be proud to be from your country again.’ “

I’m with Rachel Lucas when she says in response:

I don’t know why this pisses me off so very much but it does. Just seems to me that if I’d moved to England a few years ago, the only decent and adult thing for any English or European person to do would have been to treat me with all due respect just for being a nice person who means them no harm. I don’t want their respect and interest just because of who the American president is, because that has nothing to do with me and my own personal worth as a human being.

So knowing that now, only now, because America has elected a black president, people overseas will like me better? I am unimpressed. They can blow it out their ass is what I’m saying. I’m the same person I was before any of them ever heard of Obama.

I know why it pisses me off:  Because I have ALWAYS been proud to be an American. I was proud to answer “America” in 1995 when people in Scotland asked me where  I was from, and I was proud to say “America” in 2007 when people in Italy asked me where I was from. I think of my family’s ancestors who emigrated to America in the 1700s and 1800s from England, Germany and Finland . If those countries were so damned great, if they could have lived safely and comfortably there, they wouldn’t have left. They deliberately chose to travel at no little risk and considerable hardship to a country where they didn’t speak the language and could only get jobs as laborers. They chose to become Americans, to raise their children as Americans, and to me it would be akin to spitting on their collective graves to deny my own citizenship. I am alive today because they chose America.

Okay, rant over.

I am trying, really I am, to adopt Andy Levy’s To Don’t List, particularly these key points:

DON’T make it personal. We don’t need another Derangement Syndrome. We don’t need people doing things like emphasizing Obama’s middle name in a derogatory fashion. How anyone would think that’s beneficial to their cause, or to the country as a whole, is beyond me. Also, it’s not even clever. Neither are smushwords like BusHitler, or sillywords like Rethuglicans and Dhimmicrats.

…DON’T automatically think people who disagree with you are stupid or evil. Some of them are, of course. But most of them aren’t, and you might actually learn something if you listen to them.

And finally, DON’T use the fact that many on the left behaved abominably for the past eight years as an excuse to behave the same way. America needs adults. And if it bothered you when they did it, it’s a good sign that you shouldn’t do it.

Loose change…

Recently read on Facebook (I have a like/despise relationship with that site):

M—- is welcoming the change now that Bush is FINALLY out of office. We will be the change of a new nation!

Welcoming the change? Would that be small change? Spare change? Loose change? Should I look under my sofa cushions for it? And when do we get a change from the Bush hatred? I want that change! What, that won’t ever change? Well gee, that seems unfair; how can we have a “new nation” if people continue hating on the past President?

Rejoicing in Bush leaving the capitol as though he were an unwelcomed houseguest, and tossing out semi-coherent platitudes like “We will be the change of a new nation!” are about as mature as this response to Bush’s departure. And This Ain’t Hell has video of a striking (pun semi-intended) display of BDS going on a mere 8 blocks from the inauguration. Where’s the change, people?

When the orgy of adoration finally ends, people like these are going to have one hell of a hangover.

According to Noel Sheppard, we’re stuck with Bush Derangement Syndrome for a long time to come. Maybe scientists could work on a cure. Perhaps they could try using Elizabeth Alexander’s poetry as an auditory form of lobotomization.

If I’m ever expected to teach her poetry in an English Lit class, they’re going to have to force me to do it. Worst free verse I’ve ever endured.

Whomever decided that would be a Good Addition to President Obama’s coronation inauguration better not have anything whatsoever to do with appointing a Culture Czar.

speaking of mistakes, of all the mistakes the man will undoubtedly make over the next four years, this, as Confederate Yankee points out is hardly worth noting. It just makes him seem a bit more human, which is truly not a bad thing.

The Anchoress underscores what we have to look forward to in the Obama Presidency:

Tomorrow morning, President Obama’s first act will be what had also been Bill Clinton’s first act as president, to overturn the Mexico City Policy, thus allowing federal funds to be spent on abortions overseas.

Well, that does not give me much hope. This is interesting:

President Reagan first put the Mexico City Policy in place and it is named for a population conference that took place in the Mexican capital in 1984 when he introduced it.

President George H.W. Bush continued the pro-life policy, President Clinton overturned it, and President George W. Bush kept it for eight years and threatened to veto any Congressional spending bill reversing it.

So, this policy keeps going back and forth - Republicans come in, they end funding for overseas abortions, Democrats come in, and the “first thing” they do is put the funding back.

It almost seems like the first thing they’re doing is making a token offering to Moloch - to the Culture of Death.

Which is why we need to pray for our presidents.

I don’t think much of Obama as a person, but I don’t know him personally either. I just know that like it or not, he’s now my President. And I refuse to hate the man, no matter how much I might hate his implementation of policies like the Mexico City one. Ultimately, Obama’s going to have to answer to a Higher Authority for that sort of action.

So we’re all about change now? Positive change, the real kind of change which would make things like the Mexico City Policy unnecessary in the first place, occurs in people’s hearts. And a heart full of hatred for another human being–be it Bush or Obama–will never experience that sort of change.

President Bush will undoubtedly be praying for the good of the nation. If you can’t make a positive prayer for Obama, then make that your prayer, too. Don’t let your heart be consumed by this stuff, or your soul. Remember that half of what you see is illusory and passing.

Indeed. More than half, I’d guess, but point well taken.

At the corner stoplight…

It’s been a rather disconcerting day.

Youngest Son (who is 12) walked to his Karate class this morning. He told me afterward of a chance encounter he’d had on the way there. At the corner stoplight as Youngest Son waited for the light to turn green, a  white haired elderly lady dressed in a white shirt and white pants approached him and said, “I don’t know where I am.”

At first he thought she was joking. We don’t live in an area of town where homeless people ever congregate, and from his description I doubt she was homeless. She was clearly lost and confused though, and that confused Youngest Son. The absence of his grandparents has made him utterly unfamiliar with what can happen as life draws closer to its end. He took her comment literally and asked her, “Oh, where did you come from?”

She said she didn’t know. At this point he started to wonder if she was “a little crazy.” He asked her where she lived, and she pointed up the street.

So he told her, “Then keep going straight and make a right.”

He explained to me, “I’ve never seen her in our neighborhood and I’ve seen all our neighbors so I figured she must be from the other neighborhood.”

It was a logical assumption. We don’t live in an area of town where homeless people ever go, and from his description I doubt she was homeless. She was clearly lost and confused though, and that totally confused Youngest Son. The absence of any elderly relatives in his daily life has made him utterly unfamiliar with the vagaries of age.

I explained Alzheimer’s disease to him, and said that if he ever finds himself in such a situation again, to treat the person like he would a lost toddler, and take her (or him) to the nearest store. There, I explained, one of the staff can call for help.

After discussing it with me, youngest son said, “I wish I could have helped her more, if I’d known what to do.”

Now he does. I just hope we don’t read about her in tomorrow’s newspaper.

And I think it’s time I got Youngest Son his own cell phone. If he’d had one he could have called me, and the situation might have ended quite differently.

Considering the beginning of life, President Bush gives us this proclamation. Today is Eldest Daughter’s birthday. 22 years ago, shortly after her birth, I was advised “Next time take the test [referring to the AFP test which I refused in all of my pregnancies] and you don’t have to have another one like this.” To the attending pediatrician, being born with a physical disability was reason to reject her completely.

The value of Eldest Daughter’s life is not now and ought never to have been predicated on how perfect a body she was given, or how much she might have been “wanted” before her birth by a hormonally imbalanced and sometimes hyperemotional mother. Of all the times a woman is ill equipped to make major decisions, life or death decisions, during the early months of pregnancy is at the top of the list.

I am profoundly and forever grateful that I ignored the crappy medical advice of an attending pediatrician. I’m even more grateful that my Ob/Gyn supported my refusal of prenatal testing and treated all of my unborn babies as equally precious. And I’m grateful that for the past eight years we’ve had a President who acknowleged the sanctity of human life.

Happy birthday, baby girl!