Rachel Maddow on Obama’s Prize

I was pretty skeptical about Obama’s Nobel win, and I maintain that there’s still much more that Obama needs to do, nonetheless I think Maddow makes a good argument in favour of the prize. Good enough at least to post here:

Obama as Nobel Laureate

The Peace Prize? The man has done little to draw down troops in Iraq, he’s toying with increasing the troop commitment in Afghanistan, and he’s still moving very, very slowly to shut down Gitmo. Now this is not to say that it’s inconceivable that Obama will merit the Peace Prize at the end of four or eight years – the man moves slowly on everything it seems – but so far the evidence is just not there. It’s also not to say that I would support anything that the party of Beck and Palin would offer up in 2012. Obama is still probably the best choice from among the serious contenders in the 2008 election.

This award for Obama is akin to giving a promising freshman their university degree on account of their potential. Worse, I fear that this takes pressure off of Obama to get serious about shutting down the legal vacuum of Gitmo and deciding how best to extricate his country’s soldier’s from two nasty conflicts where there is little evidence that they can effect much change.

Give ‘em Enough Rope

The more the birthers talk the stupider they sound:

(HT) I eagerly await their eventual tying of this story to black UN helicopters, the illuminati causing 9/11 and how the Clintons killed every tenth person in Arkansas.

Birfers Attack!

The Obama-is-a-foreigner set are making the 9/11 conspiracy nuts look positively sane by comparison:

Do they really believe that a secret cadre of Kenyan Muslims are trying to take over the US by using Obama as a covert agent? If, in 1961, you thought that the way to take over the United States – country that had just barely countenanced electing a white Roman Catholic the year before – was through a mixed-race baby (something illegal in several states in 1961) with a foreign-sounding name (to 1961 ears at least) who would be raised an atheist by his grandparents while this child’s one link to Kenya, his father, remained largely absent from his life, then words couldn’t describe how stupid your plan was 1961 terms.

Obama & Aesop on Iran

The neocons, the same gang that have shown themselves such experts on the Middle East in their Iraq blunder, now want Obama to embrace the protesters and take a hard line on the conservative clerics led by Ayatollah Khamenei. Obama continues to take the same gentle, warm approach of his Noruz greeting to the people of Iran. It all reminded me of this story attributed to Aesop:

“THE WIND and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger. Suddenly they saw a traveller coming down the road, and the Sun said: ‘I see a way to decide our dispute. Whichever of us can cause that traveller to take off his cloak shall be regarded as the stronger You begin.’ So the Sun retired behind a cloud, and the Wind began to blow as hard as it could upon the traveller. But the harder he blew the more closely did the traveller wrap his cloak round him, till at last the Wind had to give up in despair. Then the Sun came out and shone in all his glory upon the traveller, who soon found it too hot to walk with his cloak on.”

I think Obama’s approach has so far given the uprising a far better chance than if he had embraced them and denounced the regime thus allowing the regime to claim that the protesters were American stooges.

Instead Obama is there saying “happy new year” and “peaceful protest should be respected” – I mean how silly do the hardliners in Iran look calling this guy “the Great Satan” and calling him a threat:

Barack Obama, Master Politician

One of the things that helped Bush win the White House twice was the perception that he was the sort of guy that people would be more likely to want to invite to a BBQ and hang around with – at least more so than Al Gore or John Kerry. To the extent that the President can profit from being seen as everyone’s fantasy pal. I’d submit to you that no one in American politics right now is doing this better than Barack Obama. I have no idea the degree to which this is an act or whether this is just who the guy is, but he sure does have it down:

Why I am not an American

(H/T Matthew Yglesias) Damon Linker has a post up about Charles Murray’s definition of happiness:

“But that’s not all. Because genuine happiness, for Murray, requires spending one’s life striving to overcome an endless series of challenges and obstacles, the lavish European safety net ensures that individual Europeans will never experience spiritual contentment or satisfaction. The assumption seems to be that a life of leisure — or at least a life with open access to health care, quality child care, generous unemployment insurance, and 4 – 6 weeks of guaranteed vacation time a year — will be an unhappy one. (It doesn’t sound half-bad to me, but I’m a Euro-loving liberal.)

Luckily, though, there is the American alternative (at least until Barack Obama gets through with us). Unlike coddled Europeans, Americans face the constant possibility of personal economic catastrophe. They work their lives away just to make ends meet, never knowing if they’ll be rewarded for their efforts by being fired by their employer or impoverished by medical bills after a life-threatening illness. And that constant insecurity is what opens up the possibility of genuine happiness for them, because if they manage to survive, let alone thrive, they’ll know that they did it on their own, without the help of the state, through heroic acts of self-reliance. This ideology — equal parts Christian masochism, Emersonian individualism, and Nietzschean striving — forms the core of American exceptionalism, according to Murray.”

Now obviously both Yglesias and Linker are Americans and both have deep disagreements with Murray. It’s impossible for anyone to say that the US all one way or another. US contains both San Francisco and Colorado Springs to use a geographic explanation. Yet Murray’s idea of how to be happy is implemented in many aspects of US government policy. Very expensive post-secondary education and a lack of universal healthcare seem to be a pair of obvious examples. Murray is praising this state of affairs probably in light of conservative fears that Barack Obama is on the cusp of changing all that.

As for me, I am more fearful of those that would have Canada more closely conform to Murray’s vision of a happy society. I would say I would be far less happy if I had an ongoing fear that I’d lose my medical insurance if I lost my job. There would be much more stress anyway, that’s for sure. Canada’s social safety net, much as it has been wilfully frayed in the past couple of decades by right-wingers, still gives me some comfort that I can get the help I need if I fall on hard times. The fact that the United States lacks these things makes it unlikely that I would ever give up my Canadian citizenship to become an American.

A final note: Now there is a reason I titled this post “Why I am not an American” and that is because this is, really, a choice of my own. I have no idea how to impose happiness on everyone. I would rather everyone have as much leeway as possible in deciding this. In other words, if Murray’s vision is what makes a great majority Americans happy, I have no desire to impede their happiness. I’m just saying, it’s not my choice.

All sound and fury…

…signifying nothing. What else did anyone expect from a eight hour stop by Obama in Canada? Can we please stop looking like some two-bit hillbilly town every time someone important swings by?

End of the Bush Torture Regime

Amid all the (over) hyping of Obama, it is nice to see that he’s followed up his suspension of the Gitmo kangaroo court with a ban on torture:

“Executive Order revokes Executive Order 13440 that interpreted Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. It requires that all interrogations of detainees in armed conflict, by any government agency, follow the Army Field Manual interrogation guidelines. The Order also prohibits reliance on any Department of Justice or other legal advice concerning interrogation that was issued between September 11, 2001 and January 20, 2009.”

Whatever else Obama does, this is praiseworthy.

Simplified Version of Harper’s Response to the Plan to Close Gitmo

Barack Obama: This system is unjust and we will close it down

Stephen Harper: LALALALALA I can’t hear you! LALALALA!!!