What the heck?

How would you like to have had press secretary Robert Gibbs' job this morning?

How would you like to be the one with the job of calling your boss--the President of the United States--to tell him the Press just informed you he was being given the Nobel Peace Prize?

Yowza.

I think both of them must have had the same first response. That is, "Are you kidding?"

I mean, I'm a big fan and long-time supporter of this President and a lot of his efforts, especially in view of the previous office-holder, but this President has only been in office 9 months.

And he's considering escalating the war in Afghanistan right now, keep in mind.

But apparently President Obama is such a refreshing change from President George W. Bush and his policies that so much of what he's done and is doing is so supportive and positive and fresh for the world that this group thought he needed to be rewarded for his work to date.

It must be a giddy day at the White House.

Link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_nobel_peace

For a good, brief read, go here for the text of the Nobel citation for the President:
http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-BarackObama/idUSTRE5981RA20091009?virtualBrandChannel=11604

Two updates:

Apparently the White House has notified the Nobel organization that President Obama will go in person to receive the award. This will be a great time for him to make a moving speech, imploring nations to work together.

And the harping and criticism from the Republican Party has already begun.

Sad. Really sad.

Link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/09/obamas-nobel-prize-inspir_n_315167.html

Are we getting smarter--or dumber?

While driving home this evening, I heard a report on NPR about a very sincere elderly woman who was at President Obama's town hall meeting who asked him a question.

This very nice woman asked the President, with what seemed to be fear in her voice if the rumor she heard about the possibility of there being a clause in his health care reform that required a government agent--of some kind--that was to come around and ask each senior citizen how they wanted to die.

I was nearly stunned.

Think about this.

If for no other reason but the sheer numbers of people it would take to accomplish that, you would think everyone would know this is nonsense.

But the woman had heard it, her friend no doubt "swore it was true", and so she believed it. Or believed that it was possible.

And that's all it took.

What is it about us?

It seems like, even with computers--maybe even because of them--we're as superstitious or just out and out foolish as we've ever been.

Consider:

--It seems we all get those superstitious emails we get, telling us if we only say some prayer and pass on that same email to 7 or 20 or whatever friends, something wonderful we've wnated to happen (maybe you have to make a wish) will happen "tonight at 11 O'clock" or some such;

--Then there's "glurge": "Glurge (a term which can be used to describe one story or applied to the genre as a whole) is the body of inspirational tales which conceal much darker meanings than the uplifting moral lessons they purport to offer, and which undermine their messages by fabricating and distorting historical fact in the guise of offering "true stories." Glurge often contains such heart-tugging elements as sad-eyed puppies, sweet-faced children, angels, dying mothers, or miraculous rescues brought about by prayer." Needless to say, glurge is disgusting and yet it bounces around our computers again and again;

--The increase, so it seems of really ugly and dangerous racism on the internet;

--A new wrinkle--and a clear outgrowth from the racism mentioned above--in our ignorance is the existence and increasing growth and proliferation of "birthers", who keep questioning the legitimacy of Barack Obama's Presidency because they just don't think he is a natural-born citizen of the US, for various, ridiculous, already repeatedly disproven reasons;

--Finally, there's all the conspiracy theories that fly 'round the internet involving everything from 9/11 to our "fake moon landing" in 1969 and who knows what all. It is a very long, tired, frustrating, confusing and nearly maddening list.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs seemed to hit on a very simple, poignant truth the other day when he said “Because for $15, you can get an Internet address and say whatever you want.”

And, sadly, lots of people will want to believe you.

We've given up intelligent, calm discourse for passionate heresay backed up by, frequently, not much more than intense sincerity.

Shouldn't we all be much smarter than this by now?

Link to story:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/27/gibbs-birther/

You can't say it any better than this

As an exception, I'm printing something from Truthdig.com here because, as I said, I can't improve on this.

Stuff the Bankers, Starve the Kids

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090526_robert_scheer_may_27_column/

Posted on May 26, 2009
By Robert Scheer

All sorts of startling conclusions are being drawn about the failure of California’s ballot funding initiatives last week. Newt Gingrich hailed it as another Boston Tea Party, and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman insisted that it condemns California, one of the world’s largest economies, to banana republic status. But if it was such a big deal, how come the voter turnout was so low?

Maybe because the statewide ballot initiatives were a bit of a political practical joke played by a Republican governor and leading Democrats pretending to be dealing on a statewide basis with the consequences of a national economic crisis that can be solved only through massive federal intervention. There is no way that the people of any state will vote to increase their taxes in the midst of a deep recession, and certainly not when the funding demands seem to have little to do with solving the problem at hand. As a subheading in the ever-sober Economist magazine put it, “Voters reject a ballot they could not comprehend.”

I tried, and after reading the opposing argument in the literature supplied at my nearly empty polling station I voted for the ballot propositions that our governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, had requested. I assumed that this would help our vastly underfunded inner-city schools. Later, my son Chris, who teaches in one of those schools, told me that I might have been wrong and that the convoluted paragraphs of the all too typically obtuse California propositions could not improve matters much at all.

So, filled with doubt and guilt, I took solace in the fact that in terms of the money involved it wasn’t that big a deal, and that surely the feds, to whom we Californians send more in revenue than any other state, would bail us out as they have the banks. Heck, the entire projected California budget shortfall comes to only $21 billion, a tiny fraction of the banking bailout. Yes, only—what is $21 billion in federal loan guarantees for California to skirt bankruptcy compared with the $45 billion given to Citigroup, along with $300 billion more in guarantees for that company’s toxic paper? Or how about the $185 billion doled out to AIG? If Citigroup is too big to fail, isn’t the state of California? Does anyone seriously believe that the national economy can snap back to health if California is in the dump?

The cause of California’s, and almost every other state’s, predicament is an economy ruined by deregulation policies that were secured by the lobbying efforts of Wall Street, led most prominently by Citigroup. So, I expected a federal government that has spent trillions salvaging the banks that got us into this mess to find the relatively minor sums needed to bail out California and other states that have been the victims of Wall Street’s dangerous games.

But I didn’t count on the tough-love steeliness of President Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod, who told Californians that “there’s a limit to what the government can do” when it comes to bailing out our state (as opposed to the banks). Or of White House press secretary Robert Gibbs: “Obviously, the state has to make some very tough fiscal decisions … [given] the budgetary constraints that they have.”

Tough for whom? Not the politicians of either party. The results of such decisions are tough for the poor of America, two-thirds of whom are kids, left to the tender mercy of the states, thanks to the sweeping “welfare reform” and other programs put into place by the Clinton White House in one of that Democratic administration’s signature triangulation ploys.

The Los Angeles Times summarized the direction of those difficult choices in a story headlined “Poor would be hard hit by proposed California budget cuts,” which stated that Schwarzenegger “is considering a plan to slash California’s safety net for the poor by eliminating the state’s main welfare program, health insurance for low-income families and cash grants to college students.”

Bail out the banks, but not the 500,000 poor families with children served by the CalWorks program, which will be dismantled, or the 928,000 children covered by the Healthy Families program, slated for oblivion.

At a time when the feds are spending with such abandon in an effort to stimulate the economy, why is it tolerable to leave states in a position where they are forced to fire teachers? As the Los Angeles Times reported: “Schwarzenegger has proposed slashing state spending on education by $3 billion to help close the budget gap, and the state would pay dearly for canceling classes, firing instructors, cutting class days and shortening the school year, experts said.” How can there be federal funds readily available for banker bonuses but not to keep teachers in the classroom with their students? It must have been the kids who caused the meltdown.