Five reasons Obama now deserves his Nobel Peace Prize

People around the world were shocked when Barack Obama earned his Nobel Peace Prize last October. Voices all around were saying that he won the Prize far too early--citing the fact that Obama had not even completed one term of a US Presidency. An article from Reuters, quoted below, sums up the public sentiment of the time, I think (emphasis mine).

"It would be wonderful if I could think why he won," said Claire Sprague, 82, a retired English professor as she walked her dog in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. "They wanted to give him an honor I guess but I can't think what for."

Hospital worker Itya Silverio, 33, of Brooklyn, said: "My first opinion is that he got it because he's black. What did he do that was so great? He hasn't even finished office yet."

Harsher criticism, from deep right-wing territory, comes from a letter to the editor of the Catholic Herald.

Secularists around the world rejoiced as their false god, President Obama, was crowned with the once prestigious Nobel Peace Prize. Although not President Obama's fault, this award reflects a culture which is sadly and dangerously falling away from the "Way, the Truth, and the Life," who is Jesus Christ.

While the letter is largely nonsense, there was some truth to the general idea that Barack Obama received his Peace Prize a little too early. I felt that the Peace Prize would have looked far better on Obama if he had been able to accomplish more good deeds to fill up his resumé with.

So what has Obama done?

1) Passed health care reform

As much as conservatives hate it, this is actually a GOOD THING. While I'm not going to make a whole post out of it in the foreseeable future, let me quickly summarize the benefits, with cited sources:

The American Medical Association and many labor unions endorsed the bill's final version(1). And even insurance companies gave their support after the public option was removed in December 2009(2).

Plus, although the bill costs $940 million US dollars, spread over ten years, the result of the bill's policies means that there will be an overall $138 billion dollar federal deficit reduction(3). Despite the deficit reduction, though, the bill provides insurance for 32 million Americans(4).

The reform is also good for smaller pocketbooks too, as it immediately offers tax credits for up to 35% of health care premiums to small businesses that pay for their employees' health insurance. By 2014, the tax credits will pay for 50% of the premiums(5).

2) Reduced the number of nuclear arms

I have a somewhat conservative friend. Right when Obama made this breakthrough, he sort of jumped out at me and said that Obama now deserves his Peace Prize. He actually gave me the inspiration for writing this post.

And then it dawned on me, this really was a HUGE breakthrough! After all, nuclear weapons are perhaps some of the most terrifying and dangerous icons of the Cold War, and making a good effort to dismantle a significant number of them is possibly far more nurturing to freedom than tearing down the Berlin Wall.

3) Improved student loans for all

There are definite complaints here, there are many that shout "Socialism!" at this development, but cutting out the middleman is going to benefit students because the saved money will go to provide good educations to more students.

I could keep talking about student loans, in an attempt to convince whatever conservative reader actually made it this far down the list, or I could go on to talk about the next accomplishment--which is far more important.

4) Ordered Guantanamo Bay's suspension

Waterboarding is torture. I try to be an agreeable person, and am generally for all of those reach-across-the-aisle type of efforts.

But when a person starts making changes to their definition of torture, then one has reached too far right.

I applaud Barack Obama's efforts to stop the horrors of torture, caused by the horrors of September 11th. I would also like to mention that he accomplished this before he received his Peace Prize. He signed the Executive Order in the first week of his Presidency. So perhaps October 2009 was not a completely inappropriate time to give Obama an award.

5) Doing his best to find out whose ass to kick for the Deepwater Horizon disaster

Okay, maybe it is not something that makes him more eligible for the Peace Prize.

But at least he is... showing anger.

(This may be the precursor to my next post).

To Bachmann, five horrible mistakes made by Presidents other than Obama

People these days have horribly short memories, it seems. But nobody has a shorter memory than politicians. Now, while I may not be able to find my netbook occasionally, I pride myself on being able to see farther into the past than Michelle Bachmann and her sympathizers can. The Huffington Post highlights a BigGovernment.com interview of Michelle Bachmann, which includes the following little tidbit:

SHAPIRO: Is President Obama better or worse than Jimmy Carter?
BACHMANN: Worse. Easily worse.
SHAPIRO: I agree. So far, you’d have to say he’s the worst president in United States history …
BACHMANN: No question. No question.
SHAPIRO: … with the possible exception of James Buchanan.

Well, as a loving liberal, I think that Michelle Bachmann is being more than a little harsh on the President. Sure, there are plenty of things not to like about Barack Obama, such as the way he handles press leaks, but it is definitely a horrible exaggeration to say that other Presidents haven't screwed up worse than he has.

To prove my point, here are five Presidents, including some very good Presidents, that have done at least one thing that was worse than anything Obama has committed so far in his term.

After all, Obama can only become the worst President ever if he tops every action on the below list, plus many more.

1) Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Court packing

He is recognized by many to be one of the greatest Presidents of all time. He valiantly guided the United States of America though the greatest armed conflict in the history of mankind; what wrong could he have possibly committed?

Well, Roosevelt's sin was one born out out of the frustration of the party politics of the time. The conflict was worst between Roosevelt and the Supreme Court, where conservative judges fought many New Deal policies.

Roosevelt's solution to this was the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937, which, among other things, expanded the number of justices on the Supreme Court. If the bill had managed to pass, then Roosevelt would be able to add more liberal justices to the court and then be assured that the court would vote the way Roosevelt wanted.

While Obama may have had his faults, and definitely has not yet demonstrated leadership on the level that FDR did, Obama has not attempted to drastically change the American government in the way that Roosevelt's court packing plan would have.

2) Herbert Hoover: Horrible economic policy

Tea partiers love to complain that Obama is incompetent in his dealings with the economy and that his tax policies will empty the wallets of the nation.

But Herbert Hoover, the predecessor to Franklin Roosevelt, bungled the Depression in a way that Obama has not even come close to. The Hoover Administration saw unemployment reach the point where nearly one out of four people were out of a job.

Hoover was also notorious in his use of increasing taxes to respond to the disaster, taxing in a manner faintly reminiscent of whoever these guys were protesting:

So, when somebody says that the late 2000's recession could have been worse, they might have a small idea as to how it would be worse.

3) Richard Nixon: For obvious reasons

Yup, Watergate.

Choosing Richard Nixon was the obvious choice for this blog post, perhaps too obvious.

But I chose to put Richard Nixon in this list so I could discuss him in contrast to Barack Obama.

Obama loves bipartisanship. He very badly wanted the health care bill to be a bipartisan thing. But instead, Barack Obama received nothing but vitriol from the Republican party, but managed to fix the health care system anyway. Whereas Nixon and his pals were obviously not being kind to the other party.

4) Harry Truman: ka-BOOM!

Like Roosevelt, Roosevelt's successor was a pretty cool guy in many respects. He helped found the United Nations and rebuilt Europe.

But Harry Truman also did something that I REALLY disapprove of. I consider this to be the worst mistake mentioned in this blog post, and perhaps one of the worst mistakes ever to be made.

Yes, it would have to be the bombing of Japan. Though a full analysis of the bombing and the time period that it occurred in would require an entirely new blog post, I will speak of it shortly. The main excuses were that a direct land assault on Japan would have resulted in too many American deaths, because Japan would not have surrendered easily, and that America could not have let the Soviet Union handle it because then Japan would have ended up as another satellite state.

While there is truth to both excuses, Japan would have surrendered under the condition that their emperor's status was kept as a puppet ruler, but only an unconditional surrender would have appeased the Allies.

(And of course, I approve of the Manhattan Project itself, building the bomb was necessary, but using it on the Japanese was not).

5) Barack Obama: Stuff that might happen in the future

(Yeah, I was too lazy to write about another President. There are plenty of bad Presidents to choose from anyway).

Barack Obama is not the worst President ever.

Not yet, anyway.

Even though I am a liberal that fully supports Obama, I recognize the possibility that something could happen before the end of his first, or possibly even second term.

Nobody predicted the oil spill, and that is already becoming a horrible environmental disaster. Chances are that something else may happen in the future, tainting Obama's legacy, whether or not Obama could have influenced the situation for the better.

The point that I'm trying to make, though, is that as of the publishing date of this blog post, Barack Obama is definitely far from being the worst President. Once he tries to appoint a lot more Supreme Court justices, runs the economy into the ground, gets his cronies to break into something, or detonates a nuclear weapon, then he will be on the level of the Presidents I mentioned above. And some of those Presidents, such as FDR, still enjoy a lot of respect today.

Favorite TED Talk: Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives

What I like about TED talks is that it is nearly impossible to find a bad one.

Pretty much every TED talk has some kind of new, meaningful insight to give to the viewer--happily delivered by one of the world's most brilliant minds.

But once in a while, there comes a TED talk that I just keep linking to everywhere I get into a conversation online.

For politics, the TED talk that I am speaking of is the one given by Jonathan Haidt in 2008.



He speaks of five moral values that affect our political choices:

1. Harm /Care
2. Fairness/Reciprocity
3. Ingroup/Loyalty
4. Authority/Respect
5. Purity/Sanctity

Why have I bolded the first two items? Because Mr. Haidt says that liberals--at their most extreme--only value the first two values. He says that liberals are far more likely to reject the ideas that purity, authority, and loyalty are a part of morality.

Surprisingly, I couldn't agree more. While authority, loyalty, and purity are certainly important--and will be key to bipartisan relations in American politics--they are far less important than caring and fairness in terms of morality.

Stupid, hateful people: The Anti Ground Zero Mosque Movement

(I try to be a good person, but I take no shame in titling this post with "Stupid, hateful people." I am simply calling out the hate, and hoping that the haters become good people eventually).


Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf wants to build a mosque near Ground Zero.

I see nothing wrong with this. There is nothing inherently bad about a mosque, is there?

But some people think there is, and they've created a website and started a movement.

Now, the movement claims not to be hateful, but the contradictions are obvious. On one page in their website, titled Responding to common objections, the hypocrisy is revealed.

Because I am not the first person to charge that this group is nothing but a manifestation of intolerance to Muslims, the administrator of the website made an attempt--a poor attempt--at appearing to be not hateful.

Part of their response was:

The notion that because "not all" Muslims are terrorists, and therefore we should all act as though we must always trust each other, unless proven otherwise, is unsafe.

Which is highlighted below in a cropped screenshot of their article. Click the image for the uncropped version.

Now, think about that statement for a second. Good human beings are supposed to trust Muslims, even though some may be terrorists. The idea behind that is known as being innocent until proven guilty. The idea is common in many Western democracies often targeted by Islamic extremists, yet presumption of innocence is nowhere to be found in the minds of the members of the Anti Ground Zero Mosque Movement.

And now let me conclude with this:
Islamic extremists get political support by showing America and other Western democracies to be the enemy of Islam. America and other Western democracies are now presented with a choice:

1. To be the enemy of Islam, for real.
2. To be the enemy of all flavors of terrorism, and an ally of peace.

Guess which choice is the right, moral one?

The perfect solution to the abortion debate

I'm a nice, friendly kind of person. I really don't like huge, shouting debates.

But, in America, the abortion debate is probably the largest and loudest debate that one can find.

It's a debate fraught with stereotypes, misconceptions, and propaganda.

And when I encounter shouting debates, I have a tendency to go hide somewhere in a corner.

And when I was hiding in a corner a few days ago, I thought up an idea which I think is probably the best--if not perfect--solution to abortion.

However, to agree with my idea, a person would have to have already agreed to the following beliefs:

1. Even if abortions are immoral, that will not stop some desperate women from going through with them illegally.
2. Illegal abortions are unsafe for the mother and child, and policies that reduce illegal abortions should be encouraged.
3.  There are some cases in which an abortion may be an ethical thing to do.
4. Discerning which abortions are ethical or not is something that should be done on a case-by-case basis. There is no dichotomous key to killing babies.
5. Only the pregnant woman has the right to make the decision about the baby.

If you agree to those, then you probably will like my awesome, and very general idea:

1. Set little preconditions on the specific type of abortions that will be allowed or disallowed.
2. The main exception to #1 is that all pregnant women must go through mandatory counseling before being able to go through with an abortion. The counseling will be quick; pregnant women are on a time schedule.
3. The counselor will help the woman explore solutions to the problem that she is facing (unable to take care of baby, baby has birth defects, etc.) that do not involve abortion.
4. At the end, the woman will make the decision of whether or not to get an abortion. Neither the counselor nor relatives of the woman will have any power beyond suggestion in regard to the abortion decision.

The benefits of my idea are:

1. The number of illegal abortions being performed will go down as there is a safer, legal alternative.
2. Data can be collected on the women seeking abortions. This cannot happen reliably when abortion is illegal.
3. Unnecessary abortions would be reduced.
4. Mothers that desperately need abortions would not be stopped.

The main issue with my plan, besides the fact that it is not nearly specific enough to be put into law without much modification, is the cost of the plan. Getting counseling for every woman that wants an abortion in the United States will not come cheaply.

However, I would like to see a Tea Partier challenge the idea of spending money to save as many babies from both legal and illegal abortions.