More On Obama's Nobel

Ross Douthat argues that Obama missed a chance to show some guts by turning down the Peace Prize.  What, and emulate Le Doc Tho of North Vietnam?  Unless Obama can be forever paired with Che his fanboys (and girls!) won't be interested.

However, Mr. Douthat does close with a puzzle:

But by accepting the prize, he’s made failure, if and when it comes, that much more embarrassing and difficult to bear. What’s more, he’s etched in stone the phrase with which critics will dismiss his presidency.

Slick Willie. Tricky Dick. Jimmy “Malaise” Carter. Dubya the Incompetent.

And now Barack Obama, Nobel laureate.

I don't believe I have ever before heard "Dubya the Incompetent" and I am skeptical that I will hear it again.

I would have guessed that the tag line for 43 would be George "Mission Accomplished" Bush.  The Douthat title, "Heckuva Job, Barack", alludes to the other obvious tagline.  Other suggestions?

Comments

[Pofarmer]

How about George "the guy who decided not to ignore the folks that hate us because we're Americans and want to push us back from the face of the earth" Bush?

[narciso]

Again, Inigo Montoya "that word you're using doesn't mean what you think it does"
The North Koreans showed what they think of the prize, this morning. I mean there's no way to go but down, BECE, I can't claim that
I coined that formulation, a blogger called
Eddie Bear did.

[sam]

Breaking News: Obama fails to win Nobel prize in economics.

[Appalled]

Look, I can make W jokes all day long, and he deserves a lot of them. But the interesting thing about W is that, despite his rep, he did significantly change course in his Presidency, and thereby averted disaster. More interestingly, his course changes were the least popular moves he could have made.

I actually am curious about W's memoirs. If he gets a good enough ghost writer, I want to read about how he saw his second term.

[narciso]

Except for the Petraeus strategy, and replacing McClellan with Snow, I didn't see much improvement in the last half of the term. He had pushed for some subprime regulation, was rebuffed. He pushed for Social Security reform was practically spit on, and it turns out we didn't need any right. He put an investment banker as Treasury Secretary who was more loyal to his House, than to the administrations (shades of Dune) He relented on pressure on North Korea, and was forced by the Iran NIE
to give up the ghost on Iran's nuclear program. Replacing Eumsfeld with Gates, who we're just seeing a 'wet noodle" he is, So I'm trying to see what improvements you see.

[Let me tell you a little story about Peshawar.]

Dubya was prophetic with the mission accomplished. It just took his whole two terms. He even made Iraq so strong it will withstand Obama's brief tenure. It's Afghanistan, and now apparently Pakistan, which is critical.

So come on Peaceful One. What's it gonna be? I've got to know right now.
============================

[The Opium Den, I mean.]

If I hadn't left I'd still be there.
===================

[bgates]

I could have sworn I remembered the phrase "total failure" from somewhere, but that's gotta be a mistake. Nobody during 2001-08 stooped to such a ghastly, venomous assault on the President and, by extension, America itself.

[Extraneus]

Chavez says Obama did "nothing" to deserve Nobel

That's gotta hurt.

[Very interesting, the White House attack on pajama fringes.]

Chavez thinks he's gonna get it for socializing South America and points north.
===================

[hit and run]

TM:
I would have guessed that the tag line for 43 would be George "Mission Accomplished" Bush.

The interesting thing about Bush is that his presidency was so very complex, yet most people seem to have a very simplified and ossified view of the man and his two terms. And even though there are a number of very simplified and ossified views of Bush's presidency, many people claim theirs to be authoritatively singular in importance.

So what the heck, let's throw this one out there as at least possible by the time Obama is finished:

George "Miss Me Yet" Bush

[Gold, Gold, Everywhere I See, But Not a Bit for Me, Me, Me.]

Appalled, I used to not like Dubya. I changed my mind in 2004.

I've seen two other writers call the Nobel an albatross around Obama's neck. I hung it first, but it's just the sort of image that might occur to a lot of people because it so apt.

What can we do with 'Water, Water, Everywhere'?
==============================

[Sue]

George "Miss Me Yet" Bush

Uh...hell yeah!

[Watch for the bumper sticker on otherwise unmarked cars.]

Yeah, h&r, 'Miss Me Yet' is perfect. It has instantly recognized meaning. We knew it though. Maybe 'Miss Him Yet'.
==========================

[lonetown]

"Dubya the incompetent"???

When Obama gets done Bush will look something like Charlemagne, at least to most of us.

Of course to me, given he propensity to spin, I'd say the Ross gives away his game by letting us know how unbearable it will be to hear painful jibes about Obama for the rest of his life!

[Jane]

Ahhhh the proverbial left handed slap - poor illiterate Bush needs a ghost writer.

[narciso]

Sadly most of these views were wrong, yet too many insist they were right. Wasn't till last fall, that we knew he had tried for sub prime derivative reform, can you imagine how he felt when he realized that
what he had tried to prevent from bringing about had happened anyways. McCain must have felt similarly, that's why he felt compelled to go on this stunt. Yet the ones who were the beneficiaries of this for the
most part, Obama & Biden, were as cool as a canary, in order to hide their hand.

[Whole big busses, though, instead of rock picks.]

OK, so I actually bothered to read Ross. I'm amused at the phrase 'post Christian, post Marxist' to describe some of Obama's voters. Yep, now they are finding out that Obama really is post Marxist; his regime is Stalinist.
=======================

[PD]

I hate to say it, but Chavez is right on this one.

[PaulL]

"I used to not like Dubya. I changed my mind in 2004."

That's an interesting take. I think he was vastly better in his first term, and almost useless after 2006.

[Extraneus]

Now that he has the hindsight to understand how dire the consequences were, I'd be interested to read Bush's justification for turning the other cheek and refusing to fight his domestic enemies.

[clarice]

I'm with Hit on the moniker.
A friend says her husband calls the Obama prize one of "premature congratulation". I like that.

[boris]

"refusing to fight his domestic enemies"

Unlike BHO pretty sure W didn't see it that way. If 51% of the people can be persuaded to hate your guts ... that's democracy.

[PeterUK]

"But by accepting the prize, he’s made failure, if and when it comes, that much more embarrassing and difficult to bear."

It will come,political careers all end in failure.Though nine months is probably a record.

[narciso]

That's not to say his communication staffm couldn't have been better, Fleischer was passable, McClellan is stupid, no matter which side of the aisle he's on. Snow, was the best, and sadly he passed on to soon,
Perino, besides not knowing what the Cuban
missile crisis was, sheesh, probably was
back to the Fleischer standard. But compared
to Press Secretary Peter Griffith,

[Original MikeS]

Wrong Way Corrigan was a pilot who couldn't get permission to fly from New York to Ireland in 1938.

So, Wrong Way Corrigan filed a flight plan to fly from New York to Long Beach California, but due to a navigational error he ended up in Ireland anyway!

Though the real Wrong Way Corrigan did not receive the Nobel Prize for navigation, I still think there are enough parallels for Barack to have earned the tagline, "Wrong Way Barack mmm mmm mmm."

[DAVOD]

After 2006 Rice invoked State Department views instead of Bush policies.

[narciso]

Hard to imagine, but he didn't think the people would be relentlessly vicious, and frankly antiAmerican, that they would want
their country to fail in it's overseas endeavors, and it's domestic ones, and that
the people could be made to acqiesce if not applaud in that effort

[boris]

W's Waterloo may have been Katrina. ISTM W ran it stictly by the book, stickler for the rules, defer to Blanco and Nagin while they make sure W gets zero credit. Eg Nagin turned away Red Cross volunteers sent by DC and of course W gets blamed for not sending any. Blanco and Nagin may have cost some lives but that does not seem to matter as much to dimorats when there are political games to be played.

So the consensus developed ...

G E E E Z . . . Man! When roving gangs of killer zombies are rampaging, slaughtering and raping poor black folks SCREW THE RULES ... You Just Do What Needs to be done !!!

Of course small problem ... there is no way in the current cultural climate that kind of Republican ever gets elected. Any Republican suspected of being capable of bending or breaking rules is sure to fly off the rails, Go Rogue, and violate somebody's privacy you can be sure of that.

[PeterUK]

Original MikeS,
I think "One Way Obama" has a better ring to it.

[Extraneus]

Jonathan Alter (D - Newsweek) with Tamron Hall on Friday’s MSNBC Live:

TAMRON HALL: The reaction from around the world. The Taliban reacting to this, saying-

JONATHAN ALTER: Positive- mostly positive.

HALL: Mostly positive, but noting that there are still two war- wars going on right now- the President is meeting right now-

ALTER: Yeah.

HALL: One of the requests may be for 60,000 more troops-that’s on the- obvious extreme end of this, but you’re talking about a president having to decide to put more lives on the line for this war he did not start, but he certainly said it’s one of necessity. That’s got to be incredible pressure.

ALTER: Yeah- I mean, it’s important to know that the award doesn’t go for pacifists.

HALL: Right.

ALTER: It’s not for people who- you know, never get involved in- in conflict abroad. There have been plenty of examples of recipients who’ve been heads of state and were- were war presidents. But I- I also think it’s important to know who is actually sounding off against this. Everybody agrees it was premature- maybe undeserved. But who’s actually attacking it? Well, you’ve got the mullahs in the Taliban, and then you’ve got Mullah Rush [Limbaugh]- you know, you have his- his [Obama’s] critics here at home. Other than that, you don’t see- you know, John McCain attacking it.

HALL: Right.

ALTER: He thinks it good for the United States. I think- you know, reasonable Republicans would agree that when a president of the United States is recognized with- probably the most prestigious award in the world, it’s not something to attack.

HALL: Right.

ALTER: And so you do have to look at- when you say there’s criticism, the people who have been criticizing it have been the Taliban, Hezbollah- all America’s enemies around the world- enemies in Iraq and adversaries here at home. Everyone else has been pretty supportive.

HALL: Well- yeah, but the former president of Poland also criticized it. Lech Walesa of Solidarity-

ALTER: Yeah, he was surprised by it- understandably.

HALL: He was surprised and said it was too early. He said it was too early.

ALTER: Well, it was. I don’t think anybody has any doubt about that. I mean, it clearly was premature and maybe unmerited.

HALL: Yeah.

ALTER: But there’s a distinction between saying that and to actually- you know, attack.

HALL: Oh absolutely.

ALTER: Which is what- really, not very many people, other than the Taliban and talk radio and the Republican National Committee, are actually engaged in right now.

HALL: Point noted and taken- all right, Jonathan, thank you very much. It was a pleasure.

ALTER: Thanks a lot, Tamron.

So lame.

[narciso]

Certainly hope so Boris,that explains a great deal, With Katrina which really wasn't as big a storm as we thought it might turn out be, the cannibalism in the
Superdome, the firing at choppers as if this
was Biden's Hindu Kush, thus discouraging a Presidential visit, the overpromising grandeloquence of Gerson, was all played up.
Remember how they said that food wouldn't be
able to shipped out of the country, that their would be a toxic soup in the Gulf for
years at a time. Rest assured, there will be a major disaster in the future, although
Jindal will ameliorate it's impact, and we shall see the reaction.

[clarice]

"Lame" isn't the world I'd use..

[Jack is Back!]

Breaking News (and I am not kidding):

I just heard Harris Faulkner on Fox News give the news about the 5 new saints canonized by the Pope. One of them was, of course, Father Damian (Jozef De Veuster), of Molokai Leper Colony fame. He was Belgian (Flemish) and my Fleming wife was so proud she drank champagne all day yesterday:)

Being both Flemish and Catholic she is what they call "over the moon". However, Harris Faulkner ended her report by noting that the White House in response to the Vatican announcement indicated that Obama lobbied the Vatican for this canonization since Saint Damian (nee Father) is considered the patron saint of Hawaii where, of course, Barry was raised.

My wife is laughing so hard she pulled a muscle. This guy knows no bounds. He is beyond narcissist - he is life of delusion and as a result we are too.

[Appalled]

Jane:

Hey, you are the guys right hand slapping Obama by claiming he had a ghost writer...

Seriously, there's no crime in having a ghost writer or an editor. It wasn't intended as a slap.

[daveinboca]

"Utterly pathetic" is the word I'd use. Alter doesn't have any cred at all and Chavez was mysteriously omitted from the conversation, as well as dozens of other skeptical comments to BHO's Nobel.

"Post-Marxist" = Stalinist, in Anita Dunn's POV.

[boris]

"right hand slapping Obama by claiming he had a ghost writer ..."

Guess that just shows how dimwitted I am for thinkg it was because his ghostwriter was a 60's commie domestic terrorist.

[narciso]

The Tollyban is complaining because it obviously regards it as an incomplete, the RNC is complaining because he doesn't have
a problem with the Tollyban. Was Alter always this stupid? well he voted for the Green Party so never mind

[Extraneus]

Not to mention he didn't credit him and gets to claim a great literary talent, never seen before or since.

[Captain Hate]

Oh c'mon Ext; how can you so blithely dismiss this:

Under water grottos, caverns
Filled with apes
That eat figs.
Stepping on the figs
That the apes
Eat, they crunch.
The apes howl, bare
Their fangs, dance,
Tumble in the
Rushing water,
Musty, wet pelts
Glistening in the blue.

[MayBee]

More interestingly, his course changes were the least popular moves he could have made.

When it came to the Iraq war, it's almost as if his lack of popularity finally freed him to do the thing he considered to be right.
About 3 people in Washington wanted the surge, and the press was eager to write against it. Bush was considered incompetent for not taking the suggestions of the Iraq study group.

Yet Bush had nothing to lose but a war, and made the unpopular choice, and the right one.

[narciso]

Right, Casey and whoever was the JCS chief was opposed, the media from Engel toWoodward
to Ricks, all were saying "Abandon all Hope"
It was only Petraeus's staff with Keane serving as a relay, no Hadley had very little to do with it. Very nearly, nothing in the first draft of news is true. When they tell you the sky is blue, you better double check, it might be orange

[Gabriel Sutherland]

Alteruniverse has lost his marbles. Lech Walesa and Rush Limbaugh can issue the same quote, "what has he done?", and only Alteruniverse can interpret one as an ask and the other as a tell.

This is where one casually spills their drink on Mr. Alter's finely creased pants and pronounces "it was either my drink or your own lack of self control that would have carried your trousers to the cleaners on Monday. Let's call it a wash."

[Mike Myers]

Actually when I see that Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize, I was reminded of Sally Field's exclamation upon receiving a best actress Oscar a few year's back.

"You really really love me!" So the world "really really loves" Obama. Us poor misbenighted, uninformed, bitter clingers in the USA--not so much.

But Obama will always be thought of as the guy who needed endless and repeated expressions of "I'm really really loved"--and will sell us all out to get that fix.

[Dave (in MA)]

Capt. Hate, that fig one is certainly a piece of work, but his true masterpiece was the one about sniffing his old man's smell.

[Dave (in MA)]

The Ørganizer has been awarded yet another prestigious prize.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Seriously, there's no crime in having a ghost writer or an editor. It wasn't intended as a slap.

Damn right.

Now to get back to editing this paper....

[Charlie (Colorado)]

This is where one casually spills their drink on Mr. Alter's finely creased pants and pronounces "it was either my drink or your own lack of self control that would have carried your trousers to the cleaners on Monday. Let's call it a wash."

If you call it a wash, won't the pants shrink on Monday?

[bluechek]

Perhaps, like "tear down this wall," George Bush might be eventually known as "Surge-ant George Bush"

[PD]

There's no crime in having a ghostwriter, and in Sarah Palin's case, there is also no mystery about whether she has a collaborator, because this information is right up front. We know who the collaborator is, she's even being interviewed about the writing process.

A model of transparency.

In Obama's case, we know nothing. Well, maybe that's not fair. We know as much as we know about his Columbia transcripts, his thesis, etc.

[PeterUK]

Mike Myers,

"You really like me".

[bgates]

Google has its own idea for an Obama catch phrase (check out the 'related searches').

People who defend the award say that the Nobel people want to encourage Obama. What's puzzling about that is it has always been obvious that Obama would act just as the Nobel people would want - giving unsolicited concessions to Russia while stabbing Eastern European allies in the back, offering gifts to Iran while confounding the hard line Western European allies wanted to take, groveling to Arab tyrants while demanding our Israeli allies come to heel, etc.

If anyone needed "encouragement" from the Nobel people, it was Bush. He should have been given the award, in the hope that it would make him act completely differently. Bush should have won in 2002 in the hopes that he would withdraw from Afghanistan, and again in 2003 in the hopes that he would not invade Iraq, and again every year until 2008.

Obama should only have been criticized with great vitriol by the Nobel people for not changing course even faster.

If anybody suggested this to the Nobel people, they would probably object that it would be foolish to give away something to a committed ideological opponent in the hopes that the gift would cause a fundamental change in their world view, or to give valuable gifts to an opponent while conspicuously denying them to a friend. And they'd be right!

[narciso]

Well we know one of his mentor's at Columbia
was Zbigniew Brezinski, we can surmise that Eric Foner, the Marxist reconstruction historian was another. Derrick Bell, and his 'critical legal studies' that's Alinsky
applied to law, was a major influence. His
dissertation was likely the same ludicrous
anti-nuclear garbage peddled by Helen Caldicott, and broadcast in the "Day After".

[JM Hanes]

Douthat has always struck me as a pedestrian thinker. Insight is definitely not his forte!

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.

That's the very last line Obama wants to draw! Those overzealous Obamaphiles are his most loyal get-out-the-vote troopers. He needs the folks like Joan Walsh and Rachel Maddow, last seen busily rationalizing his prize (Aung San Suu Kyi hasn't "achieved" peace in Burma, either!), and pretending that the only people who object are right wingers afflicted with Obama derangement syndrome. They're the same sort of revisionists who have managed to sell nearly universal opposition to shamesty as right wing xenophobic, racial prejudice against immigrants.

Obama didn't accept the award on behalf of America, but as an endorsement of "American leadership." It's not about me, it's about my leadership! He doesn't want to be defined as the quintessential American president. He'll never give Tom Friedman's speech. The award is a "call to action" for "all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century." Obama wants to be the president who finally remade "Americans" into worthy citizens of the international community of man.

[Extraneus]

An inspired masterpiece, PUK. I was just about to post it, but you're up early today! (Or really really late.)

[Extraneus]

Oh geeze. Wrong timezone. (I'm too used to Singapore time these days.)

Carry on.

[Jim Ryan]

Derrick Bell, and his 'critical legal studies'

I love that: "Critical" meaning "not reasoned." It's simply the attempt to convince one's audience that one's opponent's beliefs are based only on brute forces and not on reasons. No reasons are ever given for this view. So, if your child is taking some sort of "critical studies" in anthropology, English, sociology, etc., he is not learning critical thinking skills. On the contrary, he is learning how to avoid them. He is taking his place in the Marxist intellectual tradition of intellectual vacuity.

[JM Hanes]

In a surprising development today, the Hanes Foundation's prestigious Special Prize for Post-Game Nobel Comedy did not go to Saturday Night Live's Fred Armisen, but to James Fallows, for lauding Obama's "natural-sounding" delivery when he equated the Nobel Prize with the family dog's birthday.

[PeterUK]

extraneus.
Credit must go to the maestro of Photoshop,Big Fur Hat.

[PeterUK]

JM Hanes.
The man is a liar,he would have been sounded out about the the Peace Prize well in advance.

[narciso]

Fallows, get the Kevin Bacon 'all is well' prize for missing the Japanese financial bubble, while talking up the invincible
MITI (now Karl von Wolferen, indulged in that theory for a time, but no one has heard from him, so did Pat Choate, Perot's second runningmate, enough said) and Crichton used it as his premise for Rising Sun, but that was a passing fad. How do you miss the key event in your decade long
stay in one country and remain credible. Tom Friedman to the red courtesy phone.

[Appalled]

PUK:

Got anything to back that up? (Seriously -- nothing published here suggests Obama sought the award.)

[Jack is Back!]

Does anyone know who nominated The Once for the Nobel?

Have they released the nominating papers? Will they? This may be another birth certificate/Pakistan trip passport/Columbia report card goose chase but it would be interesting to find out.

OT: I'm wondering if the reason for the dithering on Afghanistan has to do with the Once's innate distrust of the military including Jones and Gates. Now,after appointing McChrystal, is he the one having buyer's remorse since he may be thinking they are setting him up. Remember, one of the symptoms of narcissism is paranoia.

[bgates]

Peter, InTrade had absolutely no activity in their prediction market for the peace prize that involved Obama. To suggest anyone in Obama's circle knew about the prize beforehand is to assert that none of them would trade on insider information to get a few bucks. Put that way, I'm sure you'd agree it's inconceivable that he knew in advance.

[PeterUK]

Appalled you seem to have changed the subject. There has been no suggestion that Obama sought the NPP,though I wouldn't put it past his backers. What was said, in plain English,was that Obama would have been "sounded out". Do you really believe awards are decided in secret and sprung on the recipients?

[Extraneus]

I read on the nobelprize.org site that the nominations are kept secret for 50 years, Jack. Maybe someone will admit to it before then, and be telling the truth.

[bgates]

JMH, try reading the column as concern trolling:

"Gee, fellow moderates, it sure is too bad our President didn't take this opportunity to show the world what a down-to-earth, levelheaded American he is. He could have proved to everybody that he is exactly the kind of traditional Democrat that smart people like you loyal Times readers know him to be. But he didn't. Huh."

I may be giving RD too much credit there, but your excerpt at least has a much lighter touch if he's poking at the "center"-lefties than if he's empathizing with them.

[Pops]

Obama, the next Seinfeld.

He was given a prize worth nothing for doing nothing.

[Uncle BigBad]

Has the Nobel committee ever bestowed the prize on one recipient two years in a row? Any rules against it? No?

Watch this space same time next year. Calculating odds . . . [tick]...[tick]...

[narciso]

Anyone want to doubt that Axelrod made the contacts, clearly he is on the same length on the committee, it was a closely held
secret, because Intrade didn't catch notice of it.

I wondered about MacChrystal's appointment
at the time, specially in light of the whole
Tillman matter, which curiously enough there's a Krakaeur book on the topic just now. They might want to stigmatize him like
they did to another former Delta figure, General William Garrison, of Black Hawk Down. Kristol suggested that parallel as much in the post commentary to Sunday's
Fox News roundup, not the name but the event

[Appalled]

PUK:

I really was looking for information, and nothing more than that. You're suggesting there must have been advance warning, because there is no way there wouldn't have been on something like that.

That's a surmise -- curious what you base it on? I think Obama's Olympic adventure suggests that Oabam's people do not have the best Euro sources. But, I'm willing to be wrong, and Fleet Street would kill for that story.

[Extraneus]

Another from IOTW.

[Pops]

In keeping with the new Obama Nobel tradition. Today the Nobel Committee announces the prize for physics goes to GRAVITY - for simply existing and the prize for medicine goes to the SWINE FLU VIRUS for showing up.

[PeterUK]

God you are boring Appalled. Do some research on honours systems.

[JM Hanes]

If the only people who would have been offended had Obama declined the prize were on the Norwegian Committee, I'm not sure how acceptance makes everything he does in future that much harder, except perhaps getting the Prize as a crowning achievement later. Douthat's own observation that Obama is "a gifted rhetorician with world-class speechwriters" would seem to apply either way. Nor do I see how it would make "failure, if and when it comes, that much more embarrassing and difficult to bear." Failure to live up to his Nobel is likely to be his least piercing regret. Indeed, if success proves elusive, he may well have reason to be grateful if his epitaph reads "Barack Obama, Nobel laureate." Right now, it looks more like Obama, the Undeserving.

The Prez might have short circuited a few critics had he turned the Nobel down, but most of the damage has already been done. The Emperor's new clothes have been revealed so clearly for what they are, that all but his most ardent admirers are hard pressed to deny the obvious. They're getting to work on it, but the timing, and the contrast, couldn't have been worse, coming on the heels of his painful rejection in Copenhagen, and the SNL satire which pulled the comedic finger out of the protective dike. Last night's SNL opener was not particularly clever, but when Obama won a $90 million lottery with the first, and only, ticket he'd ever bought, the audience laughed knowingly at the joke. The fact that the usual emblematic loser was recruited to deliver the check was a touch that didn't go entirely unnoticed either.

Another pundit credited the McCain campaign for (momentarily) zeroing in (so to speak) on Obama's Achilles heel. What our "celebrity" president has most to fear is ridicule, and the line he most desperately needs to draw is the one between Obama, the Unaccomplished and Obama, the Incompetent.

[narciso]

THE IOC was clearly not well informed,after all, Jon Lee Anderson's feature on thegangs in Rio, in the New Yorker, should have settled the argument,in Chicago's favor.

[Appalled]

narcisco:

The IOC folks likely hit the beach in Rio, and saw all they needed to see.

[JM Hanes]

bgates:

I went back and tried to read Douthat's opener as a little elbowing, but I think he was serious about proposing a missed opportunity for Obama to disassociate himself from all the memes which swirl around him. I don't see much indication that Douthat realizes it would be like disassociation in the psychiatric, not the political, sense. The rest of the column is more plodding than sardonic -- which seems more in line with Douthat's skill set, IMVHO, but I could be wrong as to his intentions.

[narciso]

You know I should figured that out, they aren't going to venture near the favelas
anyways, But you're right, JM, he is nothing
but a celebrity, same fatuous causes, actually worse than your typical actor, he gets prizes for caring, but not actually knowing anything about a given subject, No wonder he was a hit on the View, whereas McCain try as he might, could never win them over, no matter how many of their causes (Gitmo, CFR, AGW) he adopted

[Extraneus]

It would have been a good move - no guts necessary, just political instinct - and I thought he would take it at the time. People would still be talking about how Obama refused the honor, rather than piling on with funnier and funnier jokes. I wonder if they regret it yet.

[JM Hanes]

Appalled:

"Hey, you are the guys right hand slapping Obama by claiming he had a ghost writer..."

It's not the (unacknowledged) ghost writer per se. It's that Obama claimed the life experiences of William (Bomb Maker!) Ayers as his own, and used that putative biography to get elected President of the United States.

[Rocco]

Has anyone heard of this linguistics software called ALIAS? Last night on a forensics tv show, it was used to determine that a suicide note was not written by the victim, but his jealous boyfriend who killed him. I was thinking it might be useful to determine without doubt, who wrote Dreams.

[narciso]

Douthat, hasn't figured out that is not in Obama's character, to do that, much like the faux speech that Friedman suggests. I don't know when he will come to terms with
that, of course they would have to fire him
and hire Conor F. as his substitute at the Times, when that happens

[Charlie (Colorado)]

I'm too used to Singapore time these days.

Send black pepper crab, stat.

[narciso]

It's kind of amusing the headline on Memeorandum, from John of Ameriblog, who did
they think they were dealing with, were the
Soviets that progressive on homosexuality,
the Cuban UMAP, the Kenyatta successor regimes, other third world state lets

[Charlie (Colorado)]

SNL satire which pulled the comedic finger out of the protective dike.

Homophobe.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

The man is a liar,he would have been sounded out about the the Peace Prize well in advance.

PUK, I've heard several people say this, but I've always understood that the Nobel Prize process is extremely secretive. Do you have any actual evidence of this?

[Charlie (Colorado)]

The IOC folks likely hit the beach in Rio, and saw all they needed to see.

And probably a bit more.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Dammit.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

George "Misunderestimated" Bush.

[PeterUK]

Charlie,People are sounded out under the honours system here.It saves extreme embarrassment.
Imagine,the Committee has awarded a prize to a rabid norwegophobe who is in the tertiary stages of psittacosis contracted on a cruise up the fjords.They announce it and the recipient tells them to nail it next to the parrot.
Besides,a friend of mine just got an OBE and he was told,though bound to secrecy. It avoids the above.

[clarice]

I don't know how the NPP works, but the real Nobels do seem to come as a genuine surprise to those who garner them.

[Rocco]

Dr. Chaski talks about the Forensics show I watched last night.

She found her calling in 1992 when Detective W. Allison Blackman of the Raleigh Major Crimes Unit requested her help in determining the authorship of a suicide note left on a home computer. Using a method based on syntax and statistics, Dr. Chaski concluded that the decedent had not written his own suicide note, but that his roommate Joseph Mannino had. In the State of North Carolina vs. Mannino, Joseph Mannino confirmed Dr. Chaski's analysis when he admitted on the witness stand that he had indeed authored the phony suicide note to cover up the death of his roommate Michael Hunter. Her analysis was crucial to determining the appropriate suspect who was charged and convicted of his roommate’s death. Years later this case was documented on TruTV’s popular Forensic Files as the “Letter Perfect” episode, the first episode featuring forensic linguistics.

Ayers said Prove it and he'd split the royalties...let's prove it!

[megapotamus]

If you run Nobel application through the Googltrola you will find that all the nominating documents and even the identities of the nominators is embargoed for fifty years. This is the same as the US embargoes national security information so you can see how seriously they think secresy is to the process. Narciso, interesting shakedown of Gates with which I mostly agree, however recall that the real reason for Rummy getting the boot was his lack of enthusiasm for "nation building" in Iraq or anywhere else apparently. Gates was chosen for his malleability on that issue. So does that make Gates the relative wimp? The litany of dunderheads hailing from the Ivy League recalls a frank statement from a gentleman, in his cups, on that topic. Basically, if we had half the stones of our fathers we would go up north and convert Harvard, Yale, Columbia and a handful of others to a smoking ruin. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

[JM Hanes]

The nominator who threw Obama's name in the hat might well have told him, but I doubt the Prez would have taken it seriously, especially a week into his Presidency. Given the adulation from his fans, he probably wouldn't have been particularly surprised. After all, even Bush got a nomination nod. If Obama had known it was coming, he'd have baked a bigger acceptance cake.

[boris]

convert Harvard, Yale, Columbia and a handful of others to a smoking ruin

Pretty sure they're all no smoking now. Plus they're already ruined.

[Chris Brown]

I wish I was there...

[Frau Tazelwurm]

IMHO Obama most likely knew he had been nominated. Better to have the NPP now while undeserved than later when undeserved and really wee-wee'd up.

narciso - This *entire* administration has reminded me of the worst characters of Dune, including puppet master Uncle Soros.

[Frau Tazelwurm]

George "Misunderestimated" Bush.

Sara gets my vote.

[Extraneus]

Maybe they confirm with the nominee early on, so that the award would come as a real surprise, but not the nomination, or the nominee's opinion of it.