Even the Nobel Prize is Being Devalued

I thought they pretty well devalued it when they gave it to Jimmy Carter and Yasser Arafat, and when they gave the Peace Prize to Obama for serving two whole weeks as president, but even the monetary awards are dropping:

Thanks to a sluggish economy and unstable financial markets, the Nobel Foundation is being forced to tighten its belt a bit, announcing Monday it would pare down cash prizes awarded to Nobel Prize winners.

The foundation, which awards the prestigious Nobel Prize in numerous academic fields and for humanitarian work, will slash prize winnings by 20 percent to around $1.1 million, the Associated Press reported, the first time the organization has done so since 1949.

Prize winnings, awarded in Swedish Kronor, were the equivalent of about $1.4 million last year.

The Peace Prize has become a bit of a joke, often awarded not for actual deeds but for whatever is politically correct at the time.

Do Liberals Ever Turn Down Unearned Honors?

Apparently not:

Despite the country’s respect for former Arizona Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, not everyone in the military community was thrilled with Navy Secretary Ray Mabus’ Friday announcement that the Navy’s new Independence variant littoral combat ship (LCS) will be named for her.

“The Navy motto is Semper Fortis, Always Courageous,” said Mabus during the Friday ceremony with Giffords, who was shot last year during an assassination attempt in Tucson.

“Unwavering courage has defined the Navy for 236 years and it is what we expect, what we demand of our sailors every single day,” said Mabus. “So it’s very appropriate that LCS 10 be named for someone who has become synonymous with courage, who has inspired the nation with remarkable resiliency and showed the possibilities of the human spirit.”

According to a number of former and current military members, however, the decision to name the LCS after Giffords was not, in fact, “very appropriate.”

Retired Rear Admiral George Worthington, former commander of the Naval Special Warfare Command, told The Daily Caller that there are many people more worthy of a ship bearing their name.

“Here is the issue. There are a lot of dead Marines out there whose names could go on anything that appears to be an amphibious ship,” he said, explaining that a past recipient of the Medal of Honor, Dakota Meyer, might be a good candidate.

Worthington added his email “inbox” has been filled with messages from military friends who are “shocked and angered” by the decision.

I'm glad Giffords is recovering and will hopefully be able to continue a relatively normal life, but she didn't exactly throw herself in front of the shooter or do anything particularly courageous to merit such an honor. This was a politically correct choice.

Of course, the prime example of accepting undeserved honors would be Obama and his Nobel Peace Prize which was awarded after he'd been in office for two weeks and hadn't done anything. Even the Nobel committee is having second thoughts about that one.

Obama Sets New Record For Nobel Peace Prize Winners

From bgates:

Barack Obama has now been responsible for firing more cruise missiles than all other Nobel Peace prize winners combined.

He’s still in 2nd place for number of Arab deaths caused (and 3rd place for Muslim deaths) behind Yassir Arafat and Mikhail Gorbachev.

We Can't See Through All the Transparency

Perhaps a little reality has crept into one organization planning to make an award to Obama:

The White House postponed an event scheduled for Wednesday afternoon where President Obama was supposed to receive an award for a commitment to transparency due to unspecified “changes to the president’s schedule.”

The award was to be presented by organizers of the Freedom of Information Day conference in conjunction with “Sunshine Week” for the president’s “deep commitment to an open and transparent government—of, by, and for the people.”

The Associated Press reported this week that despite pledges of increased transparency, the Obama administration last year responded to fewer Freedom of Information Act requests than the year before.

In 2010 there were 544,360 requests filed at the 35 largest government agencies. The AP reported that the administration “refused to release any sought-after materials in more than 1-in-3 information requests.”

The Obama administration has developed a reputation for ruthlessly prosecuting whistleblowers for leaks to the press. The heavy-handed approach has prompted concern about a “chilling effect” that could discourage future government transparency.

Before the event was cancelled Politico had this rather snarky headline:

"President Obama's only event at the White House that isn't closed to the press on Wednesday is a ceremony in which he'll accept an award for being open to the press."

Hey, if the guy could win a Nobel Peace Prize based on things he might do in the future, surely they can give him an award for government transparency based on transparency that might occur in the future (which is about as likely as Obama doing anything worthy of the Nobel).

Global Warming Headline of the Day

Sometimes the punchlines write themselves:

AL GORE: THE SNOWSTORMS ARE CAUSED BY THE 'WARMING'...

Cling to it, Al...cling to it...

I have this mental image of Gore, huddling in the corner, furiously fondling his Nobel Prize medal.

Political Quote of the Day

From my friend Bob Hughes:

I find it ironic that the winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize is currently hosting the man who has imprisoned the winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.

Heh.

10 Years Ago Today

On this night in 2000 I was getting ready to sing in a Christmas concert at Saddleback Church.  About an hour before the show they put a breaking news story up on the auditorium's huge video monitors - Al Gore's concession speech.  After the Supreme Court the night before essentially destroyed any further hope of stealing the presidency from George W. Bush, Gore finally gave up the 36-day fight.

It should have been over when he lost the recounts in early November, but Gore tried everything from getting military ballots thrown out to selective recounts in heavily Democratic counties to steal away the votes he needed to win.  He begged, pleaded, cajoled, lied to and even bullied the courts, election officials, party hacks, and anyone else he thought could bring him the victory he coveted.  Before it was all over 48 lawsuits had been filed by both sides.

And it was all for naught.

Ten years later he has a set of consolation prizes - an Oscar, a Grammy, a Nobel Peace Prize - all for his work in perpetuating the global warming hoax.  Some president he would have been.

Fox News did a great wrap-up of the 36 day saga in a special that ran last Saturday night.  The best written recounting I've read came from Bill Sammon called "At Any Cost: How Al Gore Tried to Steal the Election".  As you can see from the Amazon box above you can get it pretty cheap, but it's a really good read (I've read it at least five times) and it brings back all the emotions and drama of those days.

Political Headline of the Day

From Drudge:

Obama honors Nobel winner with statement about himself...

That kind of sums up the problem, doesn't it.

America Less Respected?

How'd that happen?

A majority of Americans say the United States is less respected in the world than it was two years ago and think President Obama and other Democrats fall short of Republicans on the issue of national security, a new poll finds.

The Democracy Corps-Third Way survey released Monday finds that by a 10-point margin -- 51 percent to 41 percent -- Americans think the standing of the U.S. dropped during the first 13 months of Mr. Obama's presidency.

"This is surprising, given the global acclaim and Nobel peace prize that flowed to the new president after he took office," said pollsters for the liberal-leaning organizations.

Wow, liberals are shocked that other Americans don't love Obama the way they do, and they apparently believed the rest of us would be impressed by the whole Nobel thing.

Silly liberals.

Climate Alliance Collapsing

Big corporations don't like looking like dummies, and with the general collapse of global warming hysteria several top energy giants have had enough:

The sudden pullout of three corporate giants from a leading alliance of businesses and environmental groups could be the death knell for climate change legislation languishing on Capitol Hill.

ConocoPhillips, BP America and Caterpillar's announced Tuesday they will pull out of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, citing complaints that the bills now in Congress are unfair to American industry.

BP spokesman Ronnie Chappell said Tuesday's announcements are not a statement on the likelihood that climate change legislation will fail.

"I would never speculate as to what would happen with a pending piece of legislation," Chappell said.

But he said the bills on the table no longer "conform" with what USCAP envisioned for a climate change bill. He said the legislation -- including one bill that passed the House but is stalled in the Senate -- does not provide adequate protections to U.S. refineries.

If any bills are passed, they will result in more oil imports, the closure of U.S. refineries and the loss of U.S. jobs. Plus he said it's too hard on the transportation sector.

"We do not believe that the bills now pending in Congress conform to the USCAP blueprint, in that a disproportionate share of the emissions reductions and disproportionate share of the cost fall on the transportation sector and on transportation consumers and motorists," he said.

Cap-and-tax is dead. It was dead before this, but it's really dead if they can't get some major energy corporations to go along with the government extortion of their profits.

In a somewhat related story, Donald Trump is calling for the Nobel Committee to take Al Gore's prize away. Won't happen, but it's entertaining nonetheless.

The Norwegians Are Revolting!

Well, may not revolting but they are peeved:

Barack Obama's trip to Oslo to pick up his Nobel peace award is in danger of being overshadowed by a row over the cancellation of a series of events normally attended by the prizewinner.

Norwegians are incensed over what they view as his shabby response to the prize by cutting short his visit.

The White House has cancelled many of the events peace prize laureates traditionally submit to, including a dinner with the Norwegian Nobel committee, a press conference, a television interview, appearances at a children's event promoting peace and a music concert, as well as a visit to an exhibition in his honour at the Nobel peace centre.

He has also turned down a lunch invitation from the King of Norway.

According to a poll published by the daily tabloid VG, 44% of Norwegians believe it was rude of Obama to cancel his scheduled lunch with King Harald, with only 34% saying they believe it was acceptable.

"Of all the things he is cancelling, I think the worst is cancelling the lunch with the king," said Siv Jensen, the leader of the largest party in opposition, the populist Progress party. "This is a central part of our government system. He should respect the monarchy," she told VG.

Hey, only 26% of Americans think he should have won the prize, so it looks like he's doing better with Norwegians right now.

Will It Soon Be 1978 Again?

James Carafano has an analysis of the presidency which most closely matches Obama's:

He followed an unpopular president. He received a strong election mandate. He changed the tone in Washington.

He said that Human Rights mattered. That America's image in the world had to be remade.

He would receive a Nobel Peace Prize.

As the end of his presidency's first year drew near, the future looked bright. He had brought change -- change that mattered.

It was 1977. The next year was very bad.

In 1978, President Jimmy Carter negotiated the Camp David Accords, formalizing peace between Israel and Egypt. (It's what won him the Nobel.) He also signed a bill that legalized the home-brewing of beer. Almost all the other news that year proved uniformly bad.

A Soviet-backed coup in Afghanistan paved the way for Moscow's future invasion of the country. Demonstrations against the shah wracked the Iranian regime, paving the way for revolution and the rise of the ayatollahs. Trouble erupted across Africa, from Somalia to Zaire and Zambia, some of it inspired by Soviet meddling.

From there on, national security challenges and foreign policies only worsened. It helped make Carter's stint in the White House a one-term deal.

Why did things go south for Carter so fast? Because America's enemies had taken measure of the man during his first, change-filled year in office. They saw weaknesses they could exploit. In the second year, they made their move.

God help us all if Obama can't have a better second year that Jimduh Carter.

Tea Party Sign of the Day

San Francisco blogger Zombie attended the recent Tea Party event that broke out while Obama was visiting the city for a fundraiser and got some photos of the creative protest signs. This was among his favorites:

You can see the rest of the signs here.

The Untold Story Behind the Balloon Boy

Scrappleface has the details:

(2009-10-16) — Congratulatory messages poured into the White House this morning from global heads-of-state celebrating President Barack Obama’s dramatic rescue of a 6-year-old Colorado boy, whose apparent flight in an experimental balloon yesterday captivated viewers around the world.

While the White House declined to comment on how the president could have flown to Colorado, retrieved the boy from the balloon, and returned him safely to the attic of his family home, press secretary Robert Gibbs said President Obama was “surprised and deeply humbled” by the international attention. He said the president views this latest round of global tribute as “a call to action” to lend urgency to the cause of passing comprehensive health care reform as well as cap-and-trade climate change legislation.

The incident comes just a week after Mr. Obama stunned the world by winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his diligent labors during the initial 12 days of his administration to promote fraternity among nations and to abolish or reduce standing armies.

Wouldn't surprise me a bit if that's exactly what happened.

A Man of Peace

Gateway Pundit has quotes from the latest Nobel Peace Prize winner:

Obama on his political opponents:

"They Bring a Knife...We Bring a Gun"

Obama to his supporters:

"Get in Their Faces!"

Obama on ACORN mobs:

"I don't want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry! I'm angry!"

Obama to his mercenary army:

"Hit Back Twice As Hard"

Obama on the killer Iranian regime murdering their own people in the street:

"The Iranians are having a robust debate."

Obama on defending genocide (2007):

The United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn't a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.

Obama defending killing babies who survive an abortion:

"Essentially adding an additional doctor who then has to be called in an emergency situation to come in and make these assessments is really designed simply to burden the original decision."

Truly, this is a man of peace.

He's a regular Martin Luther King Freakin' Junior.

Nobel Committee Defends Their Award

How brain dead do these guys have to be?

Members of the Norwegian committee that gave Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize are strongly defending their choice against a storm of criticism that the award was premature and a potential liability for the U.S. president.

Asked to comment on the uproar following Friday's announcement, four members of the five-seat panel told The Associated Press that they had expected the decision to generate both surprise and criticism.

Three of them rejected the notion that Obama hadn't accomplished anything to deserve the award, while the fourth declined to answer that question. A fifth member didn't answer calls seeking comment.

"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.

He said most world leaders were positive about the award and that most of the criticism was coming from the media and from Obama's political rivals.

"I take note of it. My response is only the judgment of the committee, which was unanimous," he said, adding that the award to Obama followed the guidelines set forth by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite, who established the Nobel Prizes in his 1895 will.

"Alfred Nobel wrote that the prize should go to the person who has contributed most to the development of peace in the previous year," Jagland said. "Who has done more for that than Barack Obama?"

Uh...me? And millions of other Americans who didn't divide the country into racial camps in the last year.

Based on this report Obama got the award for making one speech to Muslims and for throwing various allies under the bus. Alfred Nobel would be so proud.

If You Voted for Obama You Deserve the Nobel Prize

Yep, this column by Richard Cohen is just that silly:

My love of lo these many years came into the room and asked what I was working on. I detailed some topics, enthralled as usual by my brilliance, but she scoffed at them all. She said that if she were writing a column, she would say something about how the Nobel Peace Prize committee got matters a bit wrong. Instead of citing Barack Obama for things intended, it should have cited the American people for things done. After all, we elected him.

I guess liberals want to feel like they've gotten something from the Obama presidency. If this makes them feel better I guess there's no harm in that.

Obama Asked to Do Something No Nobel Winner Ever Had to Do

Prove he deserves it.

While making the 500 mile drive home today I was thinking about Obama's Nobel Peace Prize and the very mixed blessing it will be for Obama (I was bored). To my knowledge there has never been a Peace Prize recipient for whom you couldn't draw at least a crooked line to some sort of accomplishment that justified consideration for the award. There have been some real doozies, like Jimduh Carter and Yasser Arafat, but if you squinted real hard and tried your very best you could come up with some sort of reasoning by which they might be qualified for a good look by the Nobel Committee.

With Obama, not so much. He's the first Peace Prize winner in the history of the formerly prestigious award who will have the unenviable task of creating the accomplishments necessary to live up to the award. Instead of the award recognizing actual accomplishment, Obama's award will require some future accomplishment lest it forever be a joke.

For the first time good intentions have been recognized as a prize worthy achievement. But good intentions without concrete results are meaningless, and sadly that's what the Nobel Peace Prize has become.

Obama's Ignoble Nobel

He should have turned it down, says Ross Douthat:

This was Barack Obama’s chance.

Here was an opportunity to cut himself free, in a stroke, from the baggage that’s weighed his presidency down — the implausible expectations, the utopian dreams, the messianic hoo-ha.

Here was a place to draw a clean line between himself and all the overzealous Obamaphiles, at home and abroad, who poured their post-Christian, post-Marxist yearnings into the vessel of his 2008 campaign.

Here was a chance to establish himself, definitively, as an American president — too self-confident to accept an unearned accolade, and too instinctively democratic to go along with European humbug.

He didn’t take it. Instead, he took the Nobel Peace Prize.

Big mistake....

Obama gains nothing from the prize. No domestic constituency will become more favorably disposed to him because five Norwegians think he’s already changed the world — and the Republicans were just handed the punch line for an easy recession-era attack ad. (To quote the Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, anticipating the 30-second spots to come: “He got a Nobel Prize. What did you get? A pink slip.”)

Overseas, there was nobody, from Paris to Peshawar, who woke up Friday more disposed to work with the United States because of the Nobel committee’s decision — and plenty of more seasoned statesman who woke up laughing. (Vladimir Putin probably hasn’t snickered this much since John McCain tried to persuade Americans that “we are all Georgians” during last year’s weeklong war.)

Like every good liberal would Obama did not accept the Nobel Prize for actual accomplishments, but for good intentions, for in their world that's all that really counts. Just by feeling the right feelings he's already accomplished all that is required of the good liberal.

And he's not George W. Bush. That counts a lot in liberal circles too.

Turning down the award would have made Obama appear to be a grown-up. And maybe that explains why he didn't.

Obama Fails to Win Nobel Prize for Economics

This is not a parody piece, but an actual item from MarketWatch, part of the Wall Street Journal network:

In a decision as shocking as Friday's surprise peace prize win, President Obama failed to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences Monday.

While few observers think Obama has done anything for world peace in the nearly nine months he's been in office, the same clearly can't be said for economics.

The president has worked tirelessly since even before his inauguration to wrest control of the U.S. economy from failed free markets, and the evil CEOs who profit from them, and to turn it over to wise, fair and benevolent bureaucrats.

From his $787 billion stimulus package, to the cap and tax bill, to the seizures of General Motors and Chrysler, to the un-dead healthcare "reform" act, Obama has dominated the U.S., and therefore the global, economy as few figures have in recent years.

Yet the Nobel panel chose instead to award the prize to two obscure academics, -- Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson -- one noted for her work on managing collective resources, and the other for his work on transaction costs. See full story.

Other surprise losers include celebrity non-economist filmmaker Michael Moore, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and Larry Summers, head of the U.S. national economic council.

It is unclear whether the president will now refuse his peace prize in protest against the obvious slight to his real achievements this year.

The capitalists are not happy with The One.