It's my next favorite card after my credit card!

"All presidents have sucked, so it's okay that he sucks, because he sucks with charisma!"

All he has done is continue all the WORST parts of Bush's domestic policy, along with all the WORST parts of the liberal agenda, and doing it all the the worst kind of shady chicago style of politics.

The Nobel Prize is a joke. It has been for a long time, if not forever.

I think you might have misinterpreted what I am saying a little bit. I like Obama, I will admit. I do not think that Obama should have won the prize by any means, nor do I think Obama is doing a good job because he has "charisma". All I am saying is that if you are going to choose which president is better than the other, Obama is the one you should be choosing. Not Bush.

But one could retort that he's only been in office for 10 months or so. The economy could tank in the next 3 years because of his domestic spending spree, we could face rising inflation with an increase in money supply or government spending, we could fail in Afghanistan, Obama could piss off Iran / North Korea, etc

Which is exactly the point why people are so incredibly outraged. You can't argue that "Bush was worse than Obama". If anything, Bush at the exact same point in his presidency had higher approval ratings (even discounting 9/11, which boosted them massively. You'll need to check me on this though if you want, I'm just going off loose memory, so obviously I'm talking pre 9/11 rating), and was probably doing better in the eyes of the populous because of his tax relief program in 2001. It's true that Obama came in with a very desperate situation, but it seems that a lot of people are starting to get the picture that his policies in response to them aren't exactly working the way they were intended.

To be clear: The cutoff point for the Nobel Peace prize was in early February. Beyond that time, nothing can be considered for the prize.

That's right. They gave him the prize for only 12 days of work. Utterly rediculous.

I'm a Europeean so I automatically like Obama right now but I will agree that this is pretty absurd, although it does offer people a welcome chance to reevaluate the credibility of the award.

The thing is he didn't actually have to DO anything, this is really just just because he's some sort of "yay, we can all be friends with the most powerful country in the world again" symbol.

It's likely that it would have been awarded to whatever "liberal" you elected after Bush.

This thread makes my head hurt.

Obama has to spend pretty much his entire term trying to clean up a massive cluster-****. But hey, **** him... he's had 10 months. He hasn't made it all ok after 10 months so he's a total ****ing failure and he's probably one of the worst presidents in American history... plus he's BLACK for christ's sake!

I hate it when a bunch of *******s get together and discuss politics. Congress is allowed to do this, and everyone else who doesn't do it for a living should shut the **** up.

I don't think most people here are saying that, though. The point is that people think he's yet to prove himself worthy of the award.

What a dumb choice, he hasn't done **** in office yet and won't do **** in office, got elected because he is a minority and not conforming by any means necessary is "cool". I guess this prize is just the final "We're sorry" to his race.

Gay.

Well yeah, it's Obama's job to try and clean up and not leave people with enough distate of the democarts to not elect Al Gore.

Way to read the thread.

We're discussing if Obama was worthy to be awarded the Nobel Peace prize. Not if he is good, or bad, or if he should ever win it. But the man hasn't had the time to be worthy of the award just yet. He just started, and any of his efforts needs time to determine if they were effective or not.

Exactly. Even if you believe this, he's had only 10 months. He has done nothing "Nobel" worthy. You are just proving the point of people who are against this nomination/prize. It doesn't matter whether he walked in with a clean slate, or a "massive cluster-****", he has in all practical terms achieved absolutely nothing that would be "nobel" worthy. He hasn't ended the Iraq war, he just pushed 40k troops into Afghanistan, he hasn't closed Gitmo, and he's kind of started a pissing match between Iran. That doesn't sound Nobel worthy to me.

This is a ploy of questionable efficacy to coerce Mr. Obama to live up to his peacemaking intentions.

Definitely. The Nobel committee must have real faith in him, because if things turned for the worst, they would look like absolute fools (although history shows that they may have already achieved that status)

They're considering what he has attempted to do. Just because he cannot get support for any of his initiatives doesn't mean he isn't putting forth the effort to accomplish great things. It's not his fault most of congress are morons with deep pockets.

ding ding ding!!!




well folks it looks like Rational-discussion is in the lead, rounding the track heading for the home stretch... OH! BUT WAIT!!! its Racecard pulling ahead on the inside! its gaining momentum! wait! their neck and neck! and Racecard wins by a nose!!! ITS UNBELIEVABLE!!!!

yeah thats just it! the deadline for being considered for the prize was 12 days after he took office! he had not attempted to do ANYTHING at that point. this seems like pure unabashed grandstanding about "yay!!! bush is out of office!!!!"

I was being sarcastic....

That's a pretty ****ing stupid thing to say.

He didn't exactly attempt much in 12 days.

You know, this explains a whole lot.

I was thinking about running for president in 2016 a couple of days ago. I received a Nobel prize in the mail today.

then my mistake, i apologize.

next thing you know nobel peace prizes will be found in cracker jack boxes

You are mistaken. That's a subpoena.

Well to be fair, SOME of you are discussing the fact that he should not have won the peace prize, and some are just criticizing him as a president in general. I think he was talking to the latter group.

Everyone had to predict that when Obama couldn't magically make everything better right away, people were going to turn on him. Americans should have known they were voting for a man, not a messiah, and not a magic pill.

As for the prize, whatever, it's ridiculous, but I won't work myself up into indignation unless someone who deserved it got robbed. Then, I'll be all up in arms.

Did one of those 204 others deserve the prize over Obama? I report. You decide.

Fair enough - it's completely ridiculous and unfair. If you could see me now, you would see my arms up (and me in them? I don't know where I'm going with that)

I don't think I've heard anyone argue that Obama really deserved this award. It seems to be a split between the surprised/confused and the outraged. The latter are of course louder.

Yes

Free our white bretheren

anyone who thinks more tax cuts would be working better than the government spending right now needs to take basic macroecon again.

For most the last decade, if someone had told you "The US President has won the Nobel Peace Prize", you'd think the person you were talking to had mispronounced the word 'peace'. Apparently, one White House staffer said 'It's not April the 1st is it?'. Not a ringing endorsement!

Oh and the Taliban have come out against it. Not the nomination specifically, just the very concept of peace.

Who is the Taliban's press officer?

Oh, right.

Because the government is doing WILDLY better right now.

Keynesian Economics FTL.

And if you kept going in the macroecon path you'd realize that the fiscal mutliplier depends wildly on many many conditions :). Because of inability to borrow at this current time, a tax cut may end up with a higher multiplier effect!

Sometimes a tax cut CAN actually have a higher multiplier. But the problem with fiscal stimulus, especially incredibly large ones like Obama is proposing, is that there is going to be a bit of Ricardian theory going on. For the first time, actually, I have seen people adjust spending / saving patterns in anticipating of greater taxes (to fund the fiscal stimulus). Therefore the multiplier would be less than proposed. The theory has come under a lot of criticism, and does not have much support, but recent occurrences are starting to show some ground for the theory.

Currently, we have a very low interest rate, which was intended by the Fed to increase investment in the recession. That makes some sense, actually, because the problem was that people were so god damn scared to invest any money into an economy in freefall. If Obama manages to pass many of his plans, which cost up to trillions of dollars, that low interest rate is unsustainable. I'm pretty sure the last thing America would want is some mega inflation. Interest Rates will have to rise, and crowding out of private investment will occur. It's a real damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Obama's projectors somehow think the interest rate will remain constant, therefore the multiplier that they project (1.6) will be constant. Other's project a lot less. We want people to start investing, but we are currently constrained by a near 0% interest rate (which really hasn't helped too much).

Fiscal stimulus has less of an affect on countries like the US, because a lot of the stimulus also can shift into the import/export sector.

Bottom Line: No one knows! But that doesn't mean just go balls out and start spending and hope for the best. Smaller experiments are needed before you jump head first. I would argue the first stimulus plan was that kind of experiment (rather a large one) and we've yet to see really anything substantial come out of it yet.

Most of you should stop complaining about the president and start calling up your representation in Congress...

actually in California tax cuts and moderate deregulation in the business climate would do a world of good and would certainly help more than any government spending long term.

My representation is doing exactly what I want them to do. They're running as close to 100% on voting the way I want as I can hope to expect. Ahh, Oklahoma.