Obama Wins the Nobel Prize

The funniest thing I read this morning was a post on the web comparing the Nobel Award to all kids getting trophys for 4 year old soccer. There certainly is a subset of the population that laughed hysterically when they read that post.

rs, extolling the virtues of irangate reagan? lovely.

or is this not your real opinion either? just throwing out turds for discussion?

that's how I troll

that's how you roll, p09. rs trolls.

four years of yale education and the only thing to show ..really bad poetry and left wing politics.....

I'd be delighted if the Obamas lived in my building."

Don't believe what anyone else types. You would love it. Building is very safe. You get to smoke all the weed you want. SS will never get involved in NY activities, couldn't be bothered.

rs: I think you meant to say "intelligent and delusional.

lp: nice thoughts, but conventional wisdom is that he is in over his head. Politics are lovely, reality sucks. Kinda reminds me of the Etrade commercial and the "golden pipes" comment.

no, patient 09. I think he's intelligent and sincere...just wrong and a really bad manager. Not qualities one needs in a chief executive. The George Carlin piece is really appropriate here. Is this the best we can do?

We had a better class of elected officials back when Nixon was president(on both sides of the aisle). They knew and understood the issues better(at least that's how I remember it or how history tells it)

lp - i think even Obama thinks this is a bit ridiculous. if he doesn't, he should. it's embarrassing, though mostly for the Nobel Foundation. it's ok to say someone has done nothing or little when they have indeed done nothing or little. Saying and doing are not the same (obviously!) which is why we've seen little divergence from the last 8 years thus far. We've heard a lot, but seen little.

rs, i don't know what you offer. other than obfuscation. nixon? decent on health care, price controls were a ballsy move, china i'll grant, but generally the issue has nothing to do with who was elected, but how their campaigns were financed.

p09, i'm in no way an Obama apologist. i'm disappointed in many ways. i agree, this is too much for ANY person. and again, i'll repeat, i blame gore. if he could only have run a halfway decent f'ng campaign we wouldn't be here now. we would still be in a world of hurt, but not this hurt.

Nixon:China, SALT.. and clearly understood world politics.
Reagan: Reunification of Germany and brought down Iron curtain....

Obama, makes good speeches and NADA

hey stupid..nixon's not available. how about truman or roosevelt if we're fantasizing?

uh oh...here comes the tube.

uh oh...here comes the tube.
lol. you seem more the teletubbies type

uwsmom, here i am, about to reveal myself as an Obama apologist (i'm not, really, but this issue really matters so here it goes).

there are HUGE numbers of people without health insurance. i don't know if you read the recent article about the public health org that came to a dome in california offering free health care to the first 1500 that showed up, and had to close the lines at 4:00am, and was performing open air root canals, etc., but this is a huge crisis. our leader in chief is desperately trying to avoid having the masses pick up the pitchforks. in a year when a large number of children have already died from the "hybrid" flue he faces a possible insurrection, i would think, if public health were to spiral out of control. we are very complacent, but this could be the straw. he is devoting almost 100% of his political bargaining to this issue.

as i have said, and said very early on and was derided for my position, his economic team can't get enough of uncle milty. but in terms of some of the other issues, i think we need to wait until the health care debate is over. rahm can be effective, but he is too political a creature. he needs to feel that he has a bit of rope to do some good, and health care is subject to enormous lobbies. it is just naive to think that with no money and states that are destitute that too much can get done. what makes it hard for some of us to take is that some things that wouldn't "cost" much aren't getting done. what they would cost is political negotiating power.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2751/is_56/ai_55015122/

The orthodox line that Ronald Reagan knew little and did less, and that his foreign policy success was the result of unusual good fortune - particularly in the form of Mikhail Gorbachev's coming to power - is losing ground. It is gradually being displaced by the revisionist thesis that Reagan was a shrewd strategist who orchestrated events, wanted victory in the Cold War, and sensed that it was possible. Still, the burden on those seeking to make the latter case is heavy, because Reagan has for so long been presented in terms of a thin, insubstantial persona, little more than a political brand name for a kind of class-B Hollywood anti-Sovietism. What is revealed by a close inspection of the record, however, is that the revisionists not only make the better case, but may even be underestimating the man.

stay away...the grownups are trying to talk. go watch some tubes.

rs, the minute you show some capacity for empathy, maybe i'll listen. wait, no, you'd have show some capacity for honesty as well. although you do seem to be revealing your true colors a bit more recently.

honesty and riverside? never.

there are HUGE numbers of people without health insurance.

We all agree! But the solution is wrong. Proponents of current health care reform on the left don't get that people can think the system has issues, but don't agree on Pelosi's solution.

we agree....

you are a liar.

rs, bs. complete and utter bs.

your solution? and how did the free market f the people here in terms of health care? we have some of the worst health care at the highest costs in the wealthy world. and don't even go there with tort reform, because it's not the reason.

a friend of mine is an executive at one of the largest health insurance companies. she is spending a lot of time in the developing countries, china particularly, trying to spread the product. just like everything else, this industry has tapped out on its ability to rape the american consumer.

So, I guess no one could find a political blog to raise their voices on, so instead they had to take over a real estate discussion board?

My solution, AR, is for the government to decide on what constitutes a minimum basic health care coverage(something that our leaders have been afraid to do), mandate coverage and provide direct cash subsIdy to those that can't afford it based on an income criteria. Allow for insurance to be portable, ban the pre-existing coverage exclusion and get serious about Tort Reform

I know this is too intelligent of a response and you'll probably respond with an expletive or two.

Forbes did an interesting piece on Swiss health care. I believe the only reason it wasn't considered by Pelosi is that it violates her beliefs the role of the state..

http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/08/health-care-reform-switzerland-opinions-contributors-regina-herzlinger.html

n Switzerland costs are controlled by the people. They are the only purchasers of health insurance. There is no public plan. The poor are given enough money so that they can pick from different qualified health insurance plans just like anyone else. As a result, Switzerland has the highest equality in health metrics among developed countries. Although the Swiss spend 3% more than France, they spend a staggering 40% less than the U.S. And the choice of expenditures is theirs; each person can spend less or more by buying an expensive or inexpensive policy.

In this consumer-driven system, the Swiss achieve universal coverage and excellent health care to boot. One reason is that their 84 competitive health insurance firms spend only 5% of revenues on general and administrative expenses, economies achieved because they are driven by customers who want value for the money.

Only two things stand between the U.S. and a Swiss-style system. One is an archaic set of tax laws that permit only employers to use tax-free income to purchase health insurance. As a result, I allow my employer to take $20,000 of what would otherwise be my income and use it to buy my health insurance. If, instead, they handed me this $20,000, I would be required to pay taxes on it and then would have only what is left to use for buying health insurance. A simple, costless change in the tax laws would enable me to use all or part of this sum--tax free--to buy qualified health insurance.

The second impediment to a consumer-driven health care system is the absence of transparency. Again, new legislation requiring transparency about the quality and prices of insurers and providers would alleviate this problem. .

prnyc, what does it truly matter? although i generally agree, it hardly detracts from your existence to ignore a thread.

no, actually, rs. what i would suggest is how you think this could be accomplished? when the people of your right wing party are claiming that death panels will occur with ANY reform? or maybe you're not part of the right?

i really don't find any of your responses to be "too" intelligent. what i find them to be lacking in is realism, and of course, empathy. and no bad poetry invoked here.

Straw man argument and Pathetic. Linking me to death panels or people who support such discussions is just plain stupid. Must have been a two year program at Yale.

all you do is dance and dance ---post endless conversations with yourself and youtubes. no one takes you as seriously as AR and you diss her. good riddance, loser.

The funny thing is that Obama campaigned on change and a new way. Instead he represents atavistic thinking out of some LBJ playbook.

oh you poor, poor deluded soul. you see, you consistently announce that we couldn't possibly know where you truly stand, because you're that person who likes to stir things up.

i'm not tying you to anything. you can't be. you refuse to commit to a position.

i'm happy to commit to my beliefs. btw, you're so concerned with my educational credentials. why? just to be a nasty asshole? where did you go? what do you do? what is your experience with the NYC re market, other than buying a condo from Extell?

riversider,

the reform that you talk about actually is quite similar to the democratic reform: mandates that people buy insurance, and subsidies for those who can't afford it. that IS the reform proposal.

as for your ronald reagan apology, i don't really know what to say. compared to the leadership of the republican party over the last 15 years i am almost nostalgic for him....almost. let's not forget that he launched his campaign in mississippi announcing his support for "states rights'; that his fiscal irresponsibility began the long decline into unsustainable government indebtedness; that he refused to even mention AIDS for the first 7 years of his Presidency; that he supported the Apartheid government in South Africa despite a broad international movement to isolate that government; that he repeatedly demonized poor and black Americans with fictitious stories (remember the welfare queens) for his own political benefit; and that his illegal Iran/Contra flouted established law in the most egregious way.

and then there's Nixon! Quite different from Reagan--he was a moderate, and he was unquestionably brilliant. He was also a psychopath who attempted to politicize the administration of government and even the armed services and who actually believed that any action taken by the President was legal by definition. Bob Dole, one of his close allies, told this famous joke years later:

History buffs probably noted the reunion at a Washington party a few weeks ago of three ex-presidents: Carter, Ford and Nixon - See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Evil

When even your own close allies describe you as evil, you probably shouldn't be anyone's model of a good President. Not to mention his disastrous economic policies that led to the stagnation of the 70s, and his horrific and illegal escalation of the war in Southeast Asia. Eisenhower and George H.W. Bush, while far from great Presidents, were decent. But Reagan and Nixon? No.

reagan left an amazing legacy. in his 8 years he was able to convince the majority that it was ok not to care about the condition of others. just take care of your own well-being and society as a whole will improve.

mediocre actor with a simple message that was very appealing at the time. horrid human.

Time for the productive members of society to go on strike :)

those who still have employment?

HappyRenter, I can appreciate your views. Nixon was terrible on the economy, the watergate actions appalling, and an anti-semite, but he was smart and remembered well with regards to foreign policy...and agree Iran/Contra was a disgrace.

more of your usual on the one hand on the other hand crap.

Nixon was "remembered well with regards to foreign policy" as long as you forget the fact that he secretly and illegally expanded the war to Cambodia and Laos at the cost of perhaps millions of lives, and set the stage for the rise of the Khmer Rouge. He was a truly awful President, the worst between Harding and Bush 2.

unlike bush2, he doesn't have the excuse of stupidity.

Guilty of Rose colored glasses, I guess. After 30 years of time, I seem to recall the successes more than the failures....

and guilty of being an obnoxious, pompous blowhard. what did ah say to you the other day about writing your thoughts down first before posting and then burning them?

I was surprised to hear of the prize; OBAMA was surprised & apparently embarrassed BUT he has indeed taken this country in a new direction. Even during the campaign he went to Europe & held out his hand to our allies & presented a new face of the US ~ and a black face at that! Having a black president immediately rebrands this country to our friends & foes around the world. Now if we could just get rid of this nonsensical hubris that we have to be the leader rather than just one amongst equals .......

redbaiter--it's aall about the joe mccarthy memorabilia collection you keep stashed away in your closet--generaly you keep it tucked away, but every so often, while spewing your typical voluminous random garbage, you cant help but open up and show your finest with pride--it's a beautiful collection, redbaiter

This is the indication that NOTHING is happening in our little tiny world of RE. That's why this thread is getting so much play. The activity here at SE is always an indication as to what's happening out there in the real world of rough and tumble real estate.
Always quietest just before the storm..................

I don't think anyone cared that much for Norwegian Wood (or what it thought) except for maybe the Beatles.

In the words of the great JJ Walker.............D Y N O M I T E!!!!

Shocker - Obama fails to win the Nobel prize in economics:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/obama-fails-to-win-nobel-prize-in-economics-2009-10-12

he got gyped! because he bought at least 5 things in his first week in office.

Has aboutready always been this wacko with her political views, or has she gotten worse over time?

Nobel prize will backfire. He'll be perceived as weak and will now have to act very tough on an international issue to regain that. Maybe he'll bomb Iran Nuclear faciliity or be more intransigent on Afghanistan...

i assume even you don't believe this crap.

Just five years ago, Barack Obama was still a local politician in Illinois, preparing for a run for the US Senate. His office wall in Chicago at the time was decorated with the famous picture of Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston, after knocking him out in a heavyweight title fight. Ali famously boasted that he could “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.” But now that Mr Obama is president, he seems to float like a butterfly – and sting like one as well.

The notion that Mr Obama is a weak leader is now spreading in ways that are dangerous to his presidency. The fact that he won the Nobel Peace Prize last Friday will not change this impression. Peace is all very well.

In truth, the Norwegians did the US president no favours by giving him the peace prize after less than a year in office. The award will only embellish a portrait of the president that has been painted in ever more vivid colours by his political enemies. The right argues that Mr Obama is a man who has been wildly applauded and promoted for not doing terribly much. Now the Nobel committee seems to be making their point for them.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/940c78c8-b763-11de-9812-00144feab49a.html

if george bush defines strong, then weak looks good to me.

do you really believe that the first black man to gain the presidency of the united states is weak? there must be a youtube that you can find to understand this.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33291989/ns/politics-white_house

"We simply disagree that he has done nothing," committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland told the AP on Tuesday. "He got the prize for what he has done."

Jagland singled out Obama's efforts to heal the divide between the West and the Muslim world and scale down a Bush-era proposal for an anti-missile shield in Europe.

"All these things have contributed to — I wouldn't say a safer world — but a world with less tension," Jagland said by phone from the French city of Strasbourg, where he was attending meetings in his other role as secretary-general of the Council of Europe.
...
Aagot Valle, a left-wing Norwegian politician who joined the Nobel panel this year, also dismissed suggestions that the decision to award Obama was without merit.

"Don't you think that comments like that patronize Obama? Where do these people come from?" Valle said by phone from the western coastal city of Bergen. "Well, of course, all arguments have to be considered seriously. I'm not afraid of a debate on the peace prize decision. That's fine."

1)Let me be clear: I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments.
2)I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize

I know this is a foreign concept to many on the right, but that is what is called humility. Check out Webster's.

He was lying?

now there's a concept you're familiar with.

he said those things because they are true. he knows he did not have any accomplishments that merited the prize. This was agreed to by those on the right & the left. Malthus, they might as well have called this the , "you're not george bush" award.

A.R.
You rely quite heavily on the use of Ad hominem to win your points.
Interesting.

Let's nominate Riversider for the most boring, persistent and anti-democrat ranter SE Prize.

better than obfuscation and quotes from Rand and Machiavelli.

not so interesting.

How is a world with less "tension" more peaceful? Some more international "tension" in Darfur would probably be a good thing. Some international "tension" in Afghanistan prior to 2001 would have been a good thing.

Lessening "tension" on Iran will not make things more peaceful.

The word liberal is interesting. Those that profess it are often the least tolerant of views other than their own.....

There is no doubt that the less tolerant are in the right. Watch FOX and tell me about tolerance.

Have to agree with Riversider that:
1) this is embarrassing on an international level b/c of its implications for how Obama is "perceived" as a leader. can you imagine the chuckles our enemies (and there are many) had over this one. it does make him look weak (and I'm all for world peace, in theory at least).
2) far left and far right tend to be the least tolerant of differing views.

uwsmom, but you do have to admit that the very, very far right has better media access? who would be the far left's Hannity, Limbaugh? Moore? Grayson? Franken? i'll admit i'm biased, but there's no contest as to whom is spewing the more hateful messages.

"Lessening "tension" on Iran will not make things more peaceful." Are you sure? Last I checked the reformists were in power when Bush gave his brilliant Axis of Evil speech and the hardliners won in the next election. Heckuva job Brownie. The whole concept that our words and actions have repurcussions beyond next November's elections seems to be lost on a lot of people and its exactly what the Nobel committee was trying to point out.

I guess the hardliners "won" the last election too? The tension on Iran helped bolster the revolts. I guess you like helping make things comfortable for the mullahs or people like Chavez or Castro.

The left has just as many wacko, hateful commentators as the right. Olbermann, Moore, the Hollywood crowd (who are defending Polanski), etc.

Media access?
on average...

TV Media-LEFT
Radio Media--Right
Newspapers--Left
Blogs--Right

oh heavens, MSNBC = biased left. Matthews, Olberman, Maddow...they can all be pretty hateful toward the right. anyone who thinks the other side is the only problem is only half listening.

Interesting article on Arms Treaties Republican vs Democrat.(This might be counter-intuitive for some)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204518504574418890778615748.html

The surprising fact is that the entire alphabet soup of U.S.-Russian strategic arms-control treaties was negotiated and signed by Republican presidents. Nixon gave us the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) and Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, Reagan the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, Bush 41 the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), and Bush 43 the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT).

By contrast, their Democratic counterparts have a much thinner record of accomplishment. President Jimmy Carter signed the SALT II treaty but withdrew it from Senate consideration after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; the treaty never entered into force. President Bill Clinton labored for eight years but never signed a strategic arms-control treaty with Russia.

The principal reason that recent Democratic presidents have failed with Russia has been their excessive enthusiasm and ambition, which perversely encourages the Russians to overreach, dooming prospects for agreement. This was a problem for Messrs. Carter and Clinton. And it promises to be an even bigger problem for Mr. Obama, who comes to office with an arms-control agenda—the abolition of nuclear weapons—far more ambitious that of any previous administration.

so tell us how the war in iraq and afghanistan has made us a stronger more powerful country.

newspapers left?

cc, it has made us stronger because it has provided a great deal of profit for companies such as Halliburton.

oops, I think I just said something liberal.

damn...i hadn't considered the halliburton upside. of course.

LICC: Sorry if nuance is too difficult for you to grasp but Khatami does not equal Ahmadinejad or Chavez. It is oversimplistic, idiotic ideas like that that damage our position. But keep going if it makes you feel better.

so tell us how the war in iraq and afghanistan has made us a stronger more powerful country.

Hello! Vietnam War? Kennedy & LBJ?

stupider and stupider. what's your point? lbj and nixon followed disastrous course in vietnam so why shouldn't george bush do the same thing 30 yrs later?

newspapers left?

Hello!!!!!
Washington Post & NY Times?

Majority are.

where is youtube?

what's your point?

Democrats have engaged and expanded wars while not being successful at arms treaties.
Looks like we're upping the anti in Afghanistan now..

So now we are debating the history of US warfare?

The Afghanistan war has made us a safer country. Are you saying we shouldn't have taken military action after 9/11?

malthus, you can't be that clueless. The supreme leader and the hardliners pushed Khatami out because they opposed his reformist ideas.

So LICC, if they had that unilateral power to do so, why did they wait for him to serve 8 years (2 terms) before doing so?

So now we are debating the history of US warfare

Not at all. Republicans and Democrats have been involved in war efforts. Will leave it for another
discussion to debate the merits. Point is that to paint Republicans as bad for peace and
Democrats as good for peace, is incorrect, naive and not supported by history.

no one said that. this is about obama getting the nobel peace prize, you dummy.

http://i448.photobucket.com/albums/qq201/LockedChaos_photo/MortimerSnerd.jpg

Red herring.

Red is right....

http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-43160620091014

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/15/AR2009101502763.html?sid=ST2009101502792

more spam from Riversider
more nasties from columbiacounty

thanks for the commentary. who are you--the reincarnation of walter cronkite?

Obama had my support. Was very swayed by Paul Volcker's endorsement.
It's quite clear that Obama gets his advice from Rubin/Summers and not Volcker.

It is a shame..

Havel, the 73-year-old former Czech president, who didn’t win a Nobel Peace Prize despite leading the Czechs and the Slovaks from communism to democracy, turned the tables and asked Smale a question about Obama, the latest winner of the peace prize.

Was it true that the president had refused to meet the Dalai Lama on his visit to Washington?

He was told that Obama had indeed tried to curry favor with China by declining to see the Dalai Lama until after the president’s visit to China next month.

Dissing the Dalai was part of a broader new Obama policy called “strategic reassurance” — softening criticism of China’s human rights record and financial policies to calm its fears that America is trying to contain it. (Not to mention our own fears that the Chinese will quit bankrolling our debt.)

F.D.R. asked to be judged by the enemies he had made. But what of a president who strives to keep everyone in some vague middle ground of satisfaction or dissatisfaction, without ever offending anyone?

White House advisers don’t seem worried yet that Obama’s transformational aura could get smudged if too much is fudged. They say it is the normal tension between campaigning on a change platform and actually accomplishing something in office.

Yet Obama’s legislative career offers cautionary tales about the toll of constant consensus building.

In Springfield, he compromised so much on a health care reform bill that in the end, it merely led to a study. In Washington, he compromised so much with Senate Republicans on a bill to require all nuclear plant owners to notify state and local authorities about radioactive leaks that it simply devolved into a bill offering guidance to regulators, and even that ultimately died.

The above are taken from the NYT Sunday edition

The Nobel prize comittee should discuss why they never picked Václav Havel.

why don't you send them a youtube explaining the situation?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQlZMPohgNE

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_djgssszshgM/SwvnKkok2BI/AAAAAAAABEA/6gZHFjNNAJM/s1600/terminatrix.JPG

Riversider
about 8 hours ago
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Let it rest you are obsessed.